no animal by- product feed- help please!

[Chris09]

Quote:
So very true..

Chris

 

[le neige homme]

Quote:
Have I not mentioned that I live/work on an organic farm? Maybe not. But I did mention that I sell my eggs at the Farmers' Market.

Ergo, I am a farmer. You wanted my resume, there's part of it.

Thanks.

 

[le neige homme]

Quote:
At this point, they're all non organic except for the veggies and comfrey from the farm. Rectifying this is simply a matter of time and money. My boss feeds the same ingredients, in a different recipe, and uses all organic with the exception of the black oil sunflower seeds. So she's already done the hard work of sourcing it all, which sometimes is more than half the battle. Azure Farm in Oregon grows most of this stuff and the delivery train rolls through here every other month. We have a local source for organic wheat here.

The sunflower seeds are kind of a pain to find organic, aren't they? But, I think that as far as using nasty stuff on crops goes, sunflowers are probably receiving much less of that than just about anything else, especially in the latter stages.

 

[le neige homme]

Lazy J Farms Feed & Hay :

Quote:
I look forward to the explantion you have for your assertion that commercially produced feeds will kill our poultry.

Okay, picture it...a flock of 65 chickens. Their feeders are fed with layer pellets and they go crazy, climbing and jumping all over each other to get at it ASAP. It would be ideal if they never ran out, but the world is not ideal. Every time they're fed, it's absolute pandemonium. Live Vince McMahon would say, "It's a total debacle." They're acting like a bunch of junkies fighting over a crack rock.

Anybody smaller is being pecked and bullied away from the feeder. It's not just the smaller ones though, the biggest chicken in there, a Black Penedesenca cockerel, was mortally wounded in all the chaos. 100 lbs. of feed per week went into just keeping these chickens above starving.

Switched to the whole grain diet, total peace. The feeder remains full for most of the day, until shortly after lunch, and that's it. They're happy with it. No more panicked mobbing and acting like crackhead junkies. They're good to go for the rest of the day. Poops are less frequent and much drier and cleaner. They're no longer busting recon. missions (flying over the fence and pillaging the farm) between meals because they're no longer starving between meals.

How about the number of threads on BYC about impacted crops? It's no surprise to me that this would occur with some frequency when birds are jam-packing their crops with a bone-dry mixture of pelleted/powdered junk. It's like having a peanut butter eating contest. Not good on paper, huh? Somebody could choke.

Now, what were chickens meant to eat? In order to answer that, you need to know what a chicken actually is. Do you really know what a chicken actually is?



ps, the soy farming industry is one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) destroyers of the Amazon Rainforest, and now we're learning that it's not even good for you whatsoever. What a cruel joke somebody played on the beatnik hippies.​

 

[Chris09]

Quote:
"Commercial" feed will not cause Impacted Crops things that cause impacted crops are anything a bird eats that is too big to move into the digestive system. Some of these things could be whole grain (especially for small birds), grapes, and greens.

Chris

 

[Organics North]

Sure Katy, I am interested in what you have done in the last 50 years to avoid soy and animal by products in your flock... After all that is what this thread is about...


ON

 

[Chris09]

Quote:
"Commercial" feed will not cause Impacted Crops things that cause impacted crops are anything a bird eats that is too big to move into the digestive system. Some of these things could be whole grain (especially for small birds), grapes, and greens.

Chris

Can you post proof that "Commercial" feed causes Impacted Crop.



Chris

 

[le neige homme]

So here's the idea I'm cookin' up for the guppies...

http://www.equinehits.com/rubbermaid.water.trough~12439

These troughs are really sweet, I've had one set up as a temporary koi pond before. I could set up a series of them, sharing the same filtration system, and harvest the guppies in rotation. More troughs could be added to the system as needed. I have no idea how many might be needed, but that's cool.

I'd also like to look into some sort of freshwater shrimp, like the Ghost Shrimp perhaps. It sure would be nice to quit using fish meal, as well as to quit buying it at $1.59/lb.

 

[Wifezilla]

LNH, I have a pond with rosy minnows in it. The minnows live on mosquito larvae and algae. I also have duckweed growing on the top of the pond to shade the water to keep the algae reasonable. The minnows reproduce well and so does the duckweed. I scoop out excess of both and feed it to my ducks. Its a little self-perpetuating feed making machine

As for the rest...I am staying out of it, but Organics North knows how I feel about soy and corn

 

[Chris09]

Quote:
Wifezilla,
I saw your "Duckponics" post and it is very nice.
It is somewhat like a Bog Garden...

Chris