Made my own feed

@U_Stormcrow if you can help I’m trying to work out how much seaweed I need to add to get the methionine levels where they should be and anything else you think I might have missed. Thanks in advance for looking into it.
@Alyooo14 I’m new to this too so not the best person to get advice from but from what I’ve read it’s really important to balance the level of nutrition to be suitable for them at the different stages of life, they need more protein as chicks and many of the things they eat are lacking in things they need like methionine so this needs to be corrected by adding the right quantity of something else that’s higher in it.
You basically add up all the percentages of nutrients and divide them by the number of parts and that’ll give you a total percentage for the mix.
You’ll need less protein in your mix than I’m using for quail so you just use less of the higher protein ingredients and more of the lower protein ones until you reach the correct total percentage your birds need.
Hope that helps.
My chicks are 8 & 10 weeks old. There's 10 of them. I used chick starter feed until yesterday. Yesterday I put them in the coop & run and started giving them the feed I made. I knew they needed lots of protein but that's about it.
 
My chicks are 8 & 10 weeks old. There's 10 of them. I used chick starter feed until yesterday. Yesterday I put them in the coop & run and started giving them the feed I made. I knew they needed lots of protein but that's about it.
Keep them on grower until they're full grown (35 weeks), for this stage of growth it's essential that they have the proper nutrition. Then you can work of a formula if you want.
 
My chicks are 8 & 10 weeks old. There's 10 of them. I used chick starter feed until yesterday. Yesterday I put them in the coop & run and started giving them the feed I made. I knew they needed lots of protein but that's about it.
I’m only making my own mix because I can’t go near gluten or oats and all the commercially available ones contain both.
It works out pretty well for me though because I’m only planning on keeping a small flock and the same ingredients can be used in different proportions for the different growth stages so I don’t have to buy a big bag of each that would probably go off before being used even if I could find a gluten/oat free mix which I can’t.
Some of the ingredients are labelled gluten free (less than 20 parts per million) so I’ll be able to eat them too which will help with using them up while still fresh.
I probably would just get a normal organic pre mix if I could, it’s not easy to work out the correct ratios and my brain hurts so I’ll be glad of any help I can get from the forum.
 
First time making feed... What do you mean by no nutritional target? I researched things that are nutritional for chickens had them shipped to me and mixed them together. I have little knowledge over this that's why I asked on here.
I knew they needed lots of protein but that's about it.


I don't mean to hurt your feelings, but that's a sign you shouldn't be doing this.

A nutritional target is what you want your final nutrition results to be. I wasn't even mentioning whether you got to it, but just aiming for it. You've shot blindly into the dark and it's not safe for your birds.

How is this mix on B vitamins? A deficiency here will leave your chicks with severe leg problems, making it hard for them to walk.

What is the final, moisture adjusted protein level? I don't think it's going to work out as high as they need. Without enough protein, birds grow weak, dull, and even patchy feathers, and grow slowly or stunted themselves.
Because of the uniquely isolated nature of our hobby, people don't often get to see their same breeds / lines in person as raised by someone else. It's common for people to not even realize their feathers look like poo.

I won't touch on the other essential nutrients because our humble expert Stormcrow is the best one to explain that when he has the time.

I understand wanting to be self-sufficient or to do things more wholesomely... I once wanted to as well, or at least know how to feed the birds in some dystopian scenario, lol.
But the scientists who study this stuff know more than you or I do, and the feed companies can put that balanced mix in a bag cheaper than we can buy the ingredients.
 
‘Melamine is used in the production of resins and has numerous industrial uses. It is also a metabolite of a pesticide called cyromazine. Cyromazine is used in various countries and is sprayed on various crops. Cyromazine has also been used in poultry farms, particularly as a larvicide additive in laying hen feed.’
😱 growing your own everything is the only way to avoid this sort of thing. Shocking.
 
‘Melamine is used in the production of resins and has numerous industrial uses. It is also a metabolite of a pesticide called cyromazine. Cyromazine is used in various countries and is sprayed on various crops. Cyromazine has also been used in poultry farms, particularly as a larvicide additive in laying hen feed.’
😱 growing your own everything is the only way to avoid this sort of thing. Shocking.
It also highlights the problem with looking only at the numbers on the feed label, and not the ingredients. Anyone using commercial feed should ask themselves whether they really know - in terms of actual foodstuffs, not chemical compounds - what their chickens are eating.
 
@Perris Even buying organic doesn’t preclude the possibility of unknowingly ingesting genetically edited plants. I suspect that the increased gluten intolerance in humans is a result of whatever was done with oats and wheat to increase pest/disease resistance and yield after the war, they probably pre soaked it with colchicine.
The following is from my grain suppliers website.

‘Many people prefer Spelt to ‘modern’ wheat because its DNA has not been changed by farming methods and it has a more extensive nutritional profile.
Some people who cannot tolerate wheat find spelt does not cause them problems because the gluten is water soluble and more easily broken down.’
 
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