Prolific Pooers

[alabama49]

Resolution-sorry for my denseness....but is ultrakibble a chicken feed and who makes it? I am in the south and I have never heard of it and I patronize several feed stores regularly (have horses) and also to buy my layer pellets but have never seen ultrakibble.

 

[silkiechicken]

I figure a new dropping every 20-30 minutes, so yeah they produce lots of waste. They are more efficient at digestion than let's say a cow, but they also do run hot and with a high surface area to volume rato, they have to eat to keep warm. Humans have to eat about 1500 kcal's to just sustain basic metabolic functioning. And my parakeets eat probably a 1/4 cup of seed between the three and produce easily 100-200 or so droppings a day depending on how much free flight time they get. (more free flight, more energy burned, more food eaten and wastes expelled) They are even smaller than chickens, run warmer, and thus have a high metabolic baseline to keep up via eating.

 

[Resolution]

Quote:
http://foragecakes.com/

 

[alabama49]

Thanks for the link Resolution-that stuff is a little on the pricey side isn't it??? Do you mix the kibble with your grains to feed? By the way, what part of Colo are you in-thats my home state!!!

 

[Resolution]

Quote:

It may at first glance seem pricey but one gets out the calculator and examines savings made over time: the reduction of feed consumed by the birds ( upwards of 20% per day);
savings in trips to and from the feed store- savings in time and energy required to clean the poultry enclosure; savings in preventative health measures-

It has contributed to a radically more sustainable agriculture at the farms using it as directed.

Yes, to answer your question regarding mixing- the suggestion on the bag is to mix upwards of 10% of the supplement to scratch grain and oystershell.

I end up putting out only as much feed as the birds can eat in a few hours twice a day. This can also be accomplished by putting food out after dark so that the birds eat first thing in the morning and again a few hours later when you get up. If there is any feed left in the foraging table trays - don't feed anything else, unless its something like cooked sweet potatoes, kitchen trimmings and more of the same.

The birds can only fill their crops with so much material. The scratch grain requires time and energy to digest. The bulk it provides the birds contributes to satiation -the birds will not be craving more food- which is what happens when the birds gorge on material that goes straight through their digestive tracts- largely pooped out with a minimum of digestion I might add-. The kibble provides the entire nutritional package - and as UltraKibble is 40% protein ( largely completely digistible protein versus crude protein as is the case with mashes, crumbles and pellets) one only has to feed a tiny percent of the daily diet- in the supplement.