I'm ambivalent on the whole "ingredient count" thumb rule. Its perhaps a good guide if you don't know anything, but the number of ingredients does not necessarily make a feed better, or worse. Right now there are a large number of feeds being produced with a laundry list of latin coming from the vitamin.mineral premix being added to raw grains during milling to make a complete feed.
Here's example from a very popular one:
Monocalcium Phosphate, Organic Dehydrated Kelp Meal, Salt, DL Methionine, Calcium Carbonate, Vitamin A Supplement, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Vitamin E Supplement, Menadione Dimethylpyrimidinol Bisulfite, Riboflavin Supplement, D-Calcium Pantothenic Acid, Niacin Supplement, Choline Chloride, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Folic Acid, Thiamine Mononitrate, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Biotin, Manganese Sulfate, Ferrous Sulfate, Zinc Sulfate, Copper Sulfate, Sodium Selenite, Dried Aspergillus oryzae Fermentation Extract, Active Dry Yeast, Dried Lactobacillus acidophilus Fermentation product, Dried Lactobacillus casei Fermentation product, Dried Lactobacillus plantarum Fermentation product, Dried Enterococcus faecium Fermentation product, Dried Bacillus licheniformis Fermentation product, Dried Bacillus subtilis Fermentation Product.
If you don't know the vitamin and mineral content of the grains you are grinding (and chances are, you don't), that Premix provides a phytate Phosphorus source, some trace minerals, Salt, extra Methionine (because its so hard to get in green growing things), another calcium to ensure an appropriate CA : P ratio, Vitamin A, D3, E, K, B2, B5, B3, Choline Chloride (you don't need this - its included as a growth promoter - but its also found readily in nature in animal and fish meat, in chicken eggs, in soybeans, and in some grains, like the germ of wheat kernals), B12, more B12, B1, B6...
and then you get to all this stuff [Dried Aspergillus oryzae Fermentation Extract, Active Dry Yeast, Dried Lactobacillus acidophilus Fermentation product, Dried Lactobacillus casei Fermentation product, Dried Lactobacillus plantarum Fermentation product, Dried Enterococcus faecium Fermentation product, Dried Bacillus licheniformis Fermentation product, Dried Bacillus subtilis Fermentation Product]
Those are almost entirely enzymes either to make nutrition in the feed being offered either more bioavailable, or to coutneract some of the antinutritional factors present in the assumed grain mix.
Do they make things better? Maybe. Depends on your grain mix. Do you need them? Again, depends on your grain mix. They (like all those water soluable B-vitamins that get flushed if they aren't used) are present as insurance, possibly entirely unnecesary insurance.
OTOH, if your feed is "corn, whole wheat, milo, peas, oyster shell (as a source of calcium carbonate)" its not necessarily superior just because it has a limited number of ingredients, all of which you can pronounce. Neither is it necessarily worse. Does it have at least the minimum levels of the desired B vitamins? Selenium, non-Phytate Phosphorus? a bunch of other things I could rattle off? WHO KNOWS. In regards trace minerals particularly, their content in grains varies with climate and grounds - two bushels of corn, from the same state, harvested the same day, may have hugely differing levels of selenium, based entirely on its presence (or lack) on the fields where its grown. and another bushel harvested later in the year on the same fields could have still different levels.
Read your guaranteed nutrition tag. It and the mill date are the two most useful piece of information on the bag.
