new research debunks trad views on nutrition

[Shadrach]

Folly's place pointed out that excercise was an important factor regarding nutrition. It's a very interesting point. For a chicken, foraging is excercise. It's inextriably linked to finding food.
Confined chickens don't forage once they've stripped their run. They know there is nothing there to forage. They get bored. Same old shite day in day out. They don't excercise and they have feed constantly available in many cases.

I must add that I can't help seeing some great irony in humans dismissing the chickens ability to regulate it's diet.

 

[saysfaa]

Apologies, Perris. I know you didn't want to get into the weeds, particularly amino acids and such.

I get amazed at how detailed the chickens can balance their own.

Maybe, when they don't match the commercial feed - they do it better.

 

[Folly's place]

I don't expect my chickens to self regulate their diet from individual ingredients, given that we live in the 'frozen north', our birds are not 'original type' breeds, and offering 'original' ingredients isn't practical, or possible here.
So we are fine with offering them a good base diet, and then any foraging they do is a bonus. This last year, and right now, has been difficult because of AI.
And I could eat better, and exercise more too.
Mary

 

[NatJ]

50 kg of fish meal???? can you recheck that???

2 parts soft wheat, 4 parts corn, 2 parts fish meal, 1 part "everything else" comes out of my calculator before moisture correction at over 23.5% Protein, 1.7% fiber, 4.7% fat, 13.33 Mj/kg (right in the middle of the range) with .6% Methionine !!!!! (yes, TWICE the recommended minimum), 1.47% Lysine!!!, .9 Threonine!, and .25 Tryp.

I'm a big fan of highly nutritious feeds, but even by my standards, and even for broilers, that's likely wastefully excessive.

Did you account for the "handful each of whole grains to scratch out of their straw or litter"?

I took that as meaning one handful of whole grains per hen per day. To feed that much whole grain, and not have deficiencies, the free-choice mixture you analyzed would need to be rather high in some things.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Did you account for the "handful each of whole grains to scratch out of their straw or litter"?

I took that as meaning one handful of whole grains per hen per day. To feed that much whole grain, and not have deficiencies, the free-choice mixture you analyzed would need to be rather high in some things.

No, I didn't.

The cuba libre caused me to overlook it.



Good catch

 

[Sussex19]

50 kg of fish meal???? can you recheck that???

2 parts soft wheat, 4 parts corn, 2 parts fish meal, 1 part "everything else" comes out of my calculator before moisture correction at over 23.5% Protein, 1.7% fiber, 4.7% fat, 13.33 Mj/kg (right in the middle of the range) with .6% Methionine !!!!! (yes, TWICE the recommended minimum), 1.47% Lysine!!!, .9 Threonine!, and .25 Tryp.

I'm a big fan of highly nutritious feeds, but even by my standards, and even for broilers, that's likely wastefully excessive.

I can recheck it later today, but I'm pretty sure I got that right.

Oh reading on a bit more, it looks like its been sorted it out!
I'll still check it though.
What do you think of this feed? Could it cause problems in the long run?
I'm not thinking of using it, but I just like to know of feeds that I could make, if I had to. (like in the past we have been stuck at home because of flooding)
Could the fish meal be swapped out for a different meat?

 

[Perris]

".. Food selection can be very precise: it has been shown that the fowl has specific appetites for such essential elements as calcium (Hughes and Wood-Gush, 1971a), phosphorus (Holcombe etal. 1976a) and zinc (Hughes and Dewar, 1971), for vitamins such as thiamine (Hughes and Wood-Gush, 1971b), and for protein (Holcombe et al. 1976b). The central thesis, that fowls possess an effective self-selection mechanism, is not in dispute. What is at issue is the control system underlying the selection, whether it applies to all theindividual components of adiet, and whether or not it offers apractical means of formulating diets for choice of feeding regimes with advantages over the feeding of complete diets. Choice feeding was a recognized method in the past (Winter and Funk, 195 l), before knowledge regarding formulation of complete diets had reached its present high standard...."

Source

Unfortunately, I can't access the entire paper. Later, I will try to sift through his sources and those listed as using thos paper for a source.

the link 'source' goes to Google Scholar search page, leading with Funk, but that's from an earlier date so I guess you didn't mean that. If you try linking again I may be able to help.

 

[Perris]

Apologies, Perris. I know you didn't want to get into the weeds, particularly amino acids and such.

I get amazed at how detailed the chickens can balance their own.

Maybe, when they don't match the commercial feed - they do it better.

I'm sure they do. And, to answer another point you made while I was sleeping, when they are raised by a broody, foraging on grass and leaf litter from hatch, they are trained from day 1 what's good eating, and how generous the natural buffet is (when they are not confined to a run, soon stripped of all goodness, as Shadrach pointed out).

 

[Perris]

Further to the last, proper experimental set-ups to test poultry's ability to choose a balanced diet always starts with sterile chicks, raised artificially, and usually given commercial feed for the first N days before the experiment starts. Those selected for the test group then have to discover it all themselves, as chicks (test subjects are usually killed on or before they are a couple of months old).

Real chicks raised by a broody have an adult to teach them what's good eating and what's not. And free ranging birds can eat anything they find. But that's too hard for the human experimenters to cope with - all those variables! non-sterile birds! the great outdoors! could eat anything!!! - so they stick with walking nuggets and a controlled environment. It's better than nothing, but it's not normal. Just because something can be measured, it does not mean it is correct, or better than something that can't be measured.

I don't bother with the weeds of the calculations because I don't think less than one percent, or less than one half of one percent (even in bold type), matters one whit with free ranging birds.

 

[Perris]

I don't doubt the ability of chickens -- at least of game-type and landrace birds -- to balance their own nutrition in a sufficiently-rich and varied environment when given space enough to never run short and/or a sufficient supply of the minimally-processed feed ingredients that the birds never have to compete for them. Especially when kept on this regime for a number of generations to naturally cull out birds that don't balance their intake.

You might be interested in a little experiment I started last year.

I let 3 hens that went broody raise clutches. The first clutch, June hatch, consisted of 6 purchased hatching eggs (bought from a reliable source I've used before to bring in some new genes) and 2 home grown. Only 3 hatched, 2 out of the 6 purchased and 1 out of the 2 home grown, the rest were infertile. This was very disappointing compared with previous years. I don't know why fertility rates were so poor, but was glad I had a mix of purchased and home grown and that they performed similarly, because it suggested that whatever the problem, it wasn't just me.

The second clutch, July hatch, consisted of 8 home grown eggs. All hatched, but the chick in the largest and freshest egg set did not manage to extract itself from the shell before the broody abandoned it and brought the rest out.

The third clutch, August hatch, consisted of 6 home grown eggs. 2 hatched. One had died about day 19, the other 3 were infertile.

So the fertility rate was quite erratic; I don't know why.

The experiment started as soon as they hatched. None of these 12 chicks has eaten any commercial feed, ever. I gave them chick-feed as described in old poultry manuals, from an age when commercial feed did not exist, and their broodies took them foraging from the moment they exited the nest. Nor have they been medicated, ever.

One - one of the two purchased eggs - died at 4.5 months old, cause unknown. The rest, 11 out of 12, have made it to adulthood. And that's free-ranging with dogs and hawks around, as well as eating a concentrate-free diet.

All the 8 pullets have started laying, with no issues bar one shell-less egg and a couple of thin-shelled ones when one or two of them were coming into lay. The three cockerels have taken their place below the dom and help him look after the hens and pullets.

I am looking forward with interest to see if fertility rates are better this year.