Hi all, I just had a few questions regarding chicken feed and the ingredients therein.
Now, I haven't been raising chickens very long at all, and I'm nowhere near as well-read about the dietary and nutritional requirements of avians as I am about, say, dogs or ferrets, heh. However, I like to try my best, and I'd like to give my birds the absolute best in the way of nutrition. So, keeping in mind that my knowledge of animal nutrition is chiefly pertaining to mammals, could anyone well-read on poultry nutrition help me out with a concern I have?
The first thing I notice when I grab 90% of chicken feeds is that it's made pretty much entirely of corn! Now, all of my knowledge about feeding my dogs makes me BALK immediately at this! Now, certainly not trying to get on any high horse here, but for the uninformed, corn is generally a very poor thing to have in dog food for a host of reasons (minimal nutritional value + very common allergen + primarily used a cheap filler etc etc, for anyone genuinely curious, I can go on). So, years of reading dog food ingredient lists specifically to avoid corn, I'm not sure what to think?
Is poultry digestion and dietary needs so dramatically separated from mammalian ones that corn is actually, like, awesome for them and I need to stop comparing chickens to dogs xD? Or this another matter of ignorance -- I hate to use such a harsh word, but ignorance in the same way that 90% of the dog foods you can buy at the grocer are made mostly of corn and the average consumer don't even bat an eye at it?
If corn is good for chickens, can someone give me a fairly detailed explanation as to why (and not to be any way, but a more scientific one than "well that's what they've always eaten" or such, because animals certainly don't choose the best for themselves, unless my dog knows better than me and roadkill and chocolate are actually the pinnacle of canine health xD). Search hasn't yielded any answers, at least to my specific question of "corn as it pertains to avian health relative to mammalian health", and I was hoping someone with a little more book-smarts than me about chickens could help.
And, if my apprehensions about corn are well-founded, can anyone give me any recommendations as to alternative chicken feeds?
Thanks so much for reading all of this and bearing with me, you guys are so helpful ^^;.
Now, I haven't been raising chickens very long at all, and I'm nowhere near as well-read about the dietary and nutritional requirements of avians as I am about, say, dogs or ferrets, heh. However, I like to try my best, and I'd like to give my birds the absolute best in the way of nutrition. So, keeping in mind that my knowledge of animal nutrition is chiefly pertaining to mammals, could anyone well-read on poultry nutrition help me out with a concern I have?
The first thing I notice when I grab 90% of chicken feeds is that it's made pretty much entirely of corn! Now, all of my knowledge about feeding my dogs makes me BALK immediately at this! Now, certainly not trying to get on any high horse here, but for the uninformed, corn is generally a very poor thing to have in dog food for a host of reasons (minimal nutritional value + very common allergen + primarily used a cheap filler etc etc, for anyone genuinely curious, I can go on). So, years of reading dog food ingredient lists specifically to avoid corn, I'm not sure what to think?
Is poultry digestion and dietary needs so dramatically separated from mammalian ones that corn is actually, like, awesome for them and I need to stop comparing chickens to dogs xD? Or this another matter of ignorance -- I hate to use such a harsh word, but ignorance in the same way that 90% of the dog foods you can buy at the grocer are made mostly of corn and the average consumer don't even bat an eye at it?
If corn is good for chickens, can someone give me a fairly detailed explanation as to why (and not to be any way, but a more scientific one than "well that's what they've always eaten" or such, because animals certainly don't choose the best for themselves, unless my dog knows better than me and roadkill and chocolate are actually the pinnacle of canine health xD). Search hasn't yielded any answers, at least to my specific question of "corn as it pertains to avian health relative to mammalian health", and I was hoping someone with a little more book-smarts than me about chickens could help.
And, if my apprehensions about corn are well-founded, can anyone give me any recommendations as to alternative chicken feeds?
Thanks so much for reading all of this and bearing with me, you guys are so helpful ^^;.