organic scratch & peck vs. purina

[angidee]

While this soy conversation is way off topic from discussing Scratch and Peck feed, I must stop those who say no harm comes from soy.
I have seen the harm first hand in my sister, who does get the immediate ill effects of the hormones in soy. They are very real and very uncomfortable. The slower more silent effects are easy to brush off and ignore, just as it is for smoking-not everyone who smokes gets cancer.
For people this sensitive to soy, they look for products that do not contain soy- those include the foods their meats and eggs were raised on. It's a non-issue for most, but in time and with constant exposure, the number of people it touches will increase.
I have no judgements for those who do or do not feed it to their chickens, but it drives me nuts when people who simply have not seen the effects claim there are no effects. The effects are real, painful, and can be life threatening.

I apologize for adding to this completely off topic heading conversation!

 

[ChickenAl]

Quote:
Not quite. When they genetically modify plants they can take many other genes that were not from the same genus and splice them in. Like genes from a lightning bug being put into organisms to make them glow. Centuries of breeding have only bred a chicken with a chicken, not with a daffodil, dandelion or dog. Have you wondered what genes they used to make corn resistant to herbicides?

Seems to me there is something unnatural about GMOs entering the food chain. Until we fully understand what we've done, and the ramifications, it is totally reasonable to avoid them.

 

[gale65]

What part of the soy gets into the eggs? I am pretty sure it's not the protein at all since people allergic to soy (not sensitive but anaphylactic to it) would have to avoid eggs and I know that they generally do not (unless they're allergic to eggs as well). What part of soy is the 'bad' part?

eta: the people I know who are allergic to soy also do not avoid meats even though the vast majority of commercial meat animals raised in this country are fed a soy based diet.

 

[chickens friend]

To Centrarchid: my chickens handle the amount of corn just fine, they first eat the black sunflower seed, then the wheat and some of the corn and oats, they later come back and eat all the corn and the rest of the oats. Corn amounts are not that important just as long as your chickens get exercise daily, corn gives them plenty of energy and if not burned off will result in fat chickens. If your chickens are raised like the factory chickens are (bound in a foot by foot cage their entire life) then yes you need to be very aware of the corn intake, but if you let yours out in the yard or even a large run during the day then you should not be worried about corn amounts. I currently have 17 hens, 2 roosters, and 5 chicks that eat entirely the same feed and get access to a run during the day and then the yard during the evening and none of them are in bad health or are of excessive weight.

 

[centrarchid]

chickens friend ,

My birds number around 120. A flock of about 40 free ranges 24/7. I not confident they could handle so much corn in diet. To many calories per unit protein. How do you determine whether birds overweight or not. Mine can fly pretty good and if overweight would have difficulties getting to roost.

 

[chickens friend]

I am sure you have seen pictures of the same breed as your have, how do yours compare, are they in the middle, on the low end, or are they monsters? If they are monsters then you have your answer, if they are on the low end then they need the higher amount of corn, if they are in the middle then don't worry. As for the ones that free range so much try the extra corn, if the hens don't want it then they will not eat it, if they do want it then they will eat it. Feeding in my mind is just like raising chicks, watch them and they will tell you what they need or want. As for the other 80 the questions would be about the living environment, if they have a run and can exercise then the corn is no problem, but if they can't exercise then the corn would be a problem.

 

[centrarchid]

chickens friend,

Mine are either American game in flying / fighting trim, American dominique that adhere pretty close to SOP in respect weight or crosses involving American dominque. The game rooster folks (the real ones), tend to stay away from large amounts of corn or any single feedstuff such that components are much more equally repressented. Weight is one criteria used to determine if diet good but also nature of fat and it distribution.

Cracked corn for my game chicks has been associated with impacted crop when chicks younger than 8 weeks. Other breeds such as dominiques much more forgiving.

Your formulation is what I suspect is called incomplete. The birds must be getting significant nutrition from the free range activities to stay in good health. Activity alone will not compensate for the high ratio of corn carbohydrate to protein from all components of diet.

 

[chickens friend]

I don't have any game birds or know anything about them so I cannot comment on that area, but for my regular chickens they do fine on this diet, I forgot to mention they get all of our table scraps also. Really the only reason that I put the layena pellets in there to begin with is to make sure the diet is in somewhat of a balanced ratio. Activity will keep the fattening effect of the corn away. I forgot to mention that my neighbor feeds his chickens solely on cracked corn and nothing else besides what they get from free ranging when they get let out. He has 20 brown leghorn hens that are about 2 years old and he gets anywhere from 15-19 eggs per day, so a large amount of cracked corn cannot be all that harmful. As far as feeding chicks cracked corn, the chicks that are with the rest of the flock where hatched by a hen and they stay with her, but the chicks I am raising by hand right now are feed Purina start and grow solely. Chicks raised by hand get feed starter feed until they are 8 to 10 weeks old then they too are put on the same feed as the rest of the flock.

 

[Sudsy Chick]

Our chickens love Scratch & Peck feed. The first time I was purchasing feed for our new girls; we looked at the display of jars full of different feeds. The only one that looked like food a chicken would eat in nature was the Scratch & Peck. We usually purchase organic for ourselves and since we're eating our eggs, this was the one.

Our whole flock prefers the layer; you should have seen the acrobatics the chicks were displaying trying to get to the adult feeder! So we had to switch entirely to starter. We just picked up a bag today, so I'm able to provide these photos of starter, sorry no layer!

Starter (in the layer there are whole grains mixed in.)

still starter - the yellow that looks like corn it is actually yellow peas.

The starter lable.

I picked this up at Bothell Feed Store - but only a 25 lb bag because I plan on going to the co-op in Seattle next time to save some money!

http://seattlefarmcoop.com/products.html

And this is the 3‐Grain Scratch: (have had this so no label, sorry!)
Crude Protein MIN 10.00%
Crude Fat MIN 2.00 %
Crude Fiber MAX 5.00%
Ingredients:
Organic Triticale, Organic Wheat, Organic Barley

take care; dawn

 

[centrarchid]

Thanks for the pictures.


A point I will make is that feeds we buy are very different in many ways from what chickens naturally consume. First, a very large percentage is represented by small animals, mostly as arthropods (insects and crustaceans) but also small vertebrates (reptiles, small rodents, small birds, and amphibians). During summer months a couple of my hens with chicks capture and consume multiple small frogs daily. Chicks during first four weeks of life get by almost entirely on animal protein. Second, for juveniles 4 weeks and older through adults, vegetative plant parts, especially new shoots make a very large contribution to intake which I suspect exceedes 50%. Their large and well developed cecum is an obvious adaption for fermentation of such materials. They will also consume seeds but the gramnivorous nature for my free range birds seems to prevail only during winter. The diets normally consumed are less nutrient dense (dry matter, energy, carbohydrates) than the diet formulations we purchase in bags. Stuff we buy for our birds are also dry and often pre-ground, both of which can conflict with normal operation of the chickens digestive tract, The conflict is behind frequent complications involving sour crop or crop impaction as well as constipation, especially in chicks. The dry diets we apply require nearly constant access to water while my free ranging birds can get by with only a single trip to water hole just after dawn. Live forages require less water to process.