new research debunks trad views on nutrition

[Sally PB]

I guess I'm among the very lucky... I have 25 acres. (Actually, I'm the luckiest person I know.) The soil is very different in different areas. Heavy clay is about 100 feet east and 50 feet up from soil that is very sandy. My method of improving them is the same, though: add as much organic matter as I can.

There is also a large area of woods. Oak, maple, white pine, poplar, beech, black walnut. The soil there is black, rich, moist (we have a creek and we're on a river).

I'm working on growing more and more of our own food. I can't get hubby to agree to eating any of our chickens, but he's happy to eat the eggs. That would probably change in a SHTF scenario.

 

[igorsMistress]

Due to predator issues we have to keep them in their coop/run 95% of the time. There are days they get let out but most days it’s only in the later afternoon. So to answer your question, yes but not free roaming.

We are going to make some changes to the run soon. It will be used as a compost system and there will also be a yard for them to get some “free time” in.

Be careful about possible botulism if you’re going to compost.

 

[Perris]

I worked with a doctor who realized this in patients who had lost their natural gut fauna - usually due to either the effects of their medical problem or to the effects of the meds

how long ago was that? Unpalatable treatments can take a long time to find acceptance.

Your comment also reveals the falsehood of the idea that giving antibiotics 'can't do any harm' (which I have read more times on BYC than I care to remember), which is especially egregious when the poster has no clue what is actually wrong with the bird, and probably made them sicker by so treating them.

 

[saysfaa]

how long ago was that? ...

Roughly ten years ago

 

[Geena]

Sure.
"...Despite the presence of freely available feed [from the excreta-free feed] birds consumed an average of 61.3 g of excreta diet per day (~37.2 g of the 33%, ~13.7 g of the 66%, and ~10.4 g of the 100% excreta diet)..."

Given a choice in the experiment, they chose to eat some.

In deep litter, they can choose to eat it or not.

My take on this is that they only ate some excreta because they were confined to a very small area, the excreta was mixed in with the food making it rather indistinguishable and that they hid the kernels of corn in it. I have never seen my chickens peck at their own feces.

 

[ManueB]

also to help get us back on track, I found this open access paper

Gastrointestinal microbiomes of broilers and layer hens in alternative production systems
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psj.2019.12.017

which will give anyone interested some useful information on the benefits of free ranging for your chickens' gut health. It's not as good as Spector on people's microbiomes and guts, but it's catching up, as I said at the start of this thread.

Am I understanding correctly that they are pointing out an important difference between chickens in their ability to forage, and that this is not only due to breed, genetics and age, but also between individuals in a similar group?
In that case I guess improving that "foraging behaviour" should go hand in hand with improving the quality of what is foraged. Which is I guess what you and some of the people on the thread are trying to do.

On a side note, trying to get "real" food for the chicken this monday was an epic fail. No pigeon peas, no organic wheat, only broken corn that came from "EU and outside EU". Not our usual place so I'll try again.

(And I certainly don't want to derail this thread again but I believe food, ours and that of the animals we are responsible for, has a lot to do with politics and religion actually, and a bunch of other things. It's not easy to keep to a strictly scientific approach to nutrition as so many other factors play a role in how we deal with and think about food. That's what makes it an interesting and controversial subject.)

 

[Perris]

they are pointing out an important difference between chickens in their ability to forage, and that this is not only due to breed, genetics and age, but also between individuals in a similar group?

yes, absolutely. That has come out in a number of papers I've read recently, but it only shows when the data isn't all aggregated and averaged, and what each chicken did was tracked. They even put RFID tags on some free ranging birds to track exactly where and for how long each bird foraged!

trying to get "real" food for the chicken this monday was an epic fail. No pigeon peas, no organic wheat, only broken corn that came from "EU and outside EU"

It took me a while to source straights within 20 miles. My first sack of peas came from a pulse producer in East Anglia, on the other side of the country! Then I discovered peas are a major component in pigeon food; if you can find where the local pigeon fanciers get their supplies, try there. Likewise getting bran for mealworms was initially tough; you need somewhere that does equine supplies normally for that I think. But straight wheat, barley, oats etc. should be at any agricultural supplier - the problem may be getting it in less than 1 ton sacks!

 

[3KillerBs]

I don’t understand the connection between diabetes an not eating cheap factory farm meat. Sounds like you got the wrong info for a healthy diet.

In general you can say that veggies are way more healthy than meat.
Eating just ½ a portion of meat and double the amount of vegetables has proven to be more healthy without any other changes.

You need to make some changes if you delete all the meat. You shouldn't just take the meat off your plate. In addition you need to add some beans, seeds and nuts for good proteins, iron and such.

People who change to a vegan lifestyle improve their health if they do it wisely (in general). And it’s better to change step by step. Not change your habits overnight or your intestines will protest.

The only thing I will say here beyond what I've said before is that if you can say this it is clear that you have been sufficiently fortunate in your life to have never been truly poor -- poverty being an experience that I certainly would never wish on anyone.

The 10# bag of chicken leg quarters costs less per pound than the 2lb bag of frozen vegetables (which is much less than the per pound price of fresh vegetables). If you take away the cheap protein from the poor they will not eat more vegetables, they will eat more starch. Because starch is cheap and vegetables are not.

and tying it back to the original conversation? Soil type, quality, climate has a LOT to do with the quality of pasture forage. Assuming that because you have good number of acres means you have good forage is definitely NOT a safe assumption.

Well said.

My soil is likewise acidic -- requiring what I would have considered a ridiculous amount of lime to support any crops other than blueberries or muscadine grapes.

I also have to heavily water anything I grow at certain times of the year. It's technically a fairly wet climate, but because of the sand and the fact that summers tend to be dry (with an option on periodic torrential downpours associated with named tropical storms/hurricanes),

We have a deep well on this property and thus have enough water available at a low-enough price to water food crops daily when needed (and could water forage a couple times a week), but in our previous home we had town water that was sufficiently expensive that I stopped growing any vegetable that I could buy under a certain price based on the water bill.

 

[BDutch]

In my country brown, white and red beans are cheap if you buy them in larger pots. If you mix them with an egg, spices and breadcrumb you can make tasty burgers, cheaper than any meat. They have lots of proteins.
Fresh and cheap vegetables are carrots, onions and cabbage.

 

[3KillerBs]

In my country brown, white and red beans are cheap if you buy them in larger pots. If you mix them with an egg, spices and breadcrumb you can make tasty burgers, cheaper than any meat. They have lots of proteins.
Fresh and cheap vegetables are carrots, onions and cabbage.

Beans and breadcrumbs are starch.