Need a No GMO, No Soy, NO PEAS feed. Halp!

[PeepOverlord]

Name Names.

We do all the time.

Plenty of threads on the feed forums of new chicken owners whose birds are suffering deficiencies, while feeding them very expensive whole grain organic feeds. Roughly half as many complaining about the powder.

Recommends for fixing both are generally the same. Mix it all with water, serve as wet mash, sprouted, or fermented feed to help ensure they get their vitamin powder and don't select out favored grains in accordance with their position in the flock - just like recalcitrant wild birds throwing all the red millet out of the feeder, so they can get at the white mllet and sunflower seeds...

Also, do you know how to read your feed bag for mill dates???

Apart from the vitamin premix most organic mills are adding to their grain mix to make it a complete feed, the next most common source of dust in feed bags is age and handling. Not just organic feeds, either - TSC's DuMor brand is famous for bags of pellets pouring out like dry grout mix.

@U_Stormcrow Yes I can read the mill dates
I can Name And Shame here?? Well then! Let's get to it:

Mile Four was amazing feed Starter, Grower, and Layer up until recently. My hens and I were huge #1 fans! Even the wild birds and critters snarfed it up. Whatever grains fell (even in pine needles or wood shavings) sprouted and grew (yay more feed!). Since M4 started making all their feeds mainly peas, took out the oats, alphalfa, barley (?) and added waaay too much dust - NOPE.
The hens will only eat M4 scratch feed - except 35% of the bag is powder. And very sadly, none of their feeds sprout anymore

Scratch N Peck was a horrifying experience. Hens walked out of their way to avoid the feeders that had SNP. Short version: When fermenting found LOTS of teeny black seeds that the local co-op ID'd as rapeseed/Canola. When I contacted SnP to ask what the "teeny black seeds in my feed are", they laughed it off, "Oh haha that's just rapeseed/canola. It happens, stuff gets mixed. Not all our products are Organic or non GMO."
Unlisted, non organic, GMO in their feed, and it's funny? NOPE.
Rapeseed/Canola = not USA grown, and bad for laying hens. (one of many links).
The bag I dumped out back is still there. A month of trail cam footage shows nothing will even get close to it. Birds and critters get a sniff and jet away like my hens did. None of the grains sprouted. None.
At least they refunded. After having to be reminded.

New Country Organics "Unmilled Layer Feed" - just a big bag of whole corn and whole peas, with an tiny amout of oats and fish/alphalfa meal.
The hens, bunnies, coons, wild birds or possum: NOT EATING THAT NOPE. Not fermented, dry, or wet. A couple squirrels tried some of the corn and never came back. I have 50 lbs of it laying all over the ground with a trail cam on it.
Also - not a single grain will sprout indoors or out. Not in water, or potting soil, or growth medium, not even with a grower heat mat.

Dead feed/seeds usually = extremely old seeds. or it's been glyphosated ("ripening" "growth inhibitor"), or irradiated (like most store bought food).

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Rape is seeded in my area as a winter cover crop and to help with nitrogen fixing in the soil. Its probably GMO (though I used non GMO seed last winter on my acres), but its definitely available in the US. In quantity? Yes, likely cheaper for the mills to import it.

Other than its high fat content, I'd not object to it in a balanced poultry feed - and I didn't object (much) to my birds eating many of the seeds before they sprouted.

That said, I'd avoid any mill that takes such lax response to factory mix ups. Accidentally adding some seed not part of the recipe is one thing - adding too much calcium, otoh, can kill a bird.

 

[PeepOverlord]

WOW Thanks so much for that chart and the Fertrell PDFs. Very very helpful. I already buy Organic grains from Azure so that's where I'd start.
I only have 8 hens for now.
I'm in extremely rural central/SE Louisiana. Land of GMO soy, GMO corn, GMO sugar cane and highly round-upped, chemically doused, commercial crops. The co-op can't (or won't?) order half decent, healthy, anything.

I cleared and till a small plot to grow winter rye, winter wheat, red clover, alphalfa, and buckwheat. I just chuck it all out there willy nilly as a cover crop to enrich and break up the soil for next years veggie garden, but I'll likely let the hens run occasional raids through it like they do my current veg garden.

 

[allenw]

I haven't seen any bugs but I didn't know about the white paper and a light trick. THANKS for that! Any EvilWeevils I've ever seen in grain were pretty obvious. Oh man, I gotta check right now. brb..

YES. One of the three feeds has tiny black weevils. I've never seen any so tiny, or black ones.

Weevil damage can cause the fines like your talking about and the seed to not sprout. It could also make it nonpalatable to your birds.

Is all of your feed coming from on source or multiple?

 

[PeepOverlord]

@U_Stormcrow WOW Thanks so much for that chart and the Fertrell PDFs. Very very helpful. I already buy Organic grains from Azure so that's where I'd start.
I only have 8 hens for now.
I'm in extremely rural central/SE Louisiana. Land of GMO soy, GMO corn, GMO sugar cane and highly round-upped, chemically doused, commercial crops. The co-op can't (or won't?) order half decent, healthy, anything.

I cleared and till a small plot to grow winter rye, winter wheat, red clover, alphalfa, and buckwheat. I just chuck it all out there willy nilly as a cover crop to enrich and break up the soil for next years veggie garden, but I'll likely let the hens run occasional raids through it like they do my current veg garden.

 

[PeepOverlord]

Weevil damage can cause the fines like your talking about and the seed to not sprout. It could also make it nonpalatable to your birds.

Is all of your feed coming from on source or multiple?

@allenw Multiple sources. The one [other] time I found EvilWeevils in some feed they were the brow/greyish ones you can easily see. But that was horse feed.
IDK about bugs being off-putting to my hens, anything that moves where my hens can get their beady little eyes on it, gets murdered and ate; so I didn't dare dump the black weevs - I put the whole sack in the trash.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

No big thing. I'm new to chicken keeping myself, begining month 20, I believe. I'm not an expert, though my opinions on feed are gaining some weight around here, primarily because I link my sources and encourage others to check my work. I have read a LOT of studies.

Happy to have been at least a little bit helpful. Sort of surprised I wasn't viewed as one of the posters contributing "drama" and opinion. I rub a lot of people the wrong way in print, and more so in person. I don't care, but I am aware of the tendency.

 

[PeepOverlord]

You can't have a whole grain complete feed without the addition of vitamins, trace minerals, and synthetic amino acids (meaning fines, i.e. "dust"). Unless you choose to use animal proteins. Most no Soy no GMO diets don't.

Unsure of your reasons for such a restrictive list, but good luck finding it.

@U_Stormcrow Re: "Animal proteins"
do the mice, frogs, snakes, lizards, nightcrawler worms and baby bird (sorry but true) the hens devour, count? How about the pile of cat fish heads, tails and guts my elderly neighbor threw over the fence for them: "Ah, its good for them let em have it."
Or the cat food they sometimes manage to STEAL.

 

[allenw]

Hate to break it to you but chickens eat anything that doesn't eat them first, bugs being way up on the list. If not caged in a sterile environment they are eating whatever they find.

Weevil can cause feed to heat and just basically empty a grain and leave the shell.

Well this post is mostly a mute point after reading the above post.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

@U_Stormcrow Re: "Animal proteins"
do the mice, frogs, snakes, lizards, nightcrawler worms and baby bird (sorry but true) the hens devour, count? How about the pile of cat fish heads, tails and guts my elderly neighbor threw over the fence for them: "Ah, its good for them let em have it."
Or the cat food they sometimes manage to STEAL.

Most assuredly, YES!!!!

@saysfaa was kind enough, in another thread, to link a feed book from the 1960s??? The state of the science at the time was such that numerous ingredients had comments that they included some unknown but critical nutritive value. Anyhow, many of the old mixes contained about 20% "Meat Scraps" - no longer allowed in US animal feeds - but when you do the math, those old grain and meat scrap mixes come out surprisingly close to the modern, and more scientific, recommendations.

Without those scraps? Deficient across a host of measures - like taking the fish meal out of the J Rhodes recipe.

Of everything listed, only cat food might be cause for concern. Some of the trace stuff for cats can be a bit high for chickens - but occasionally, in moderation - don't sweat it.