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I am curious about a more natural feed.
There is no real " natural feed " for chickens as most people know them. They are a type of fowl that were bred by man from junglefowl so a chickens most "natural feed " food wold be processed/ ground food and scraps with some whole grains now and then.
I understand what your trying to achieve but there are other ways of doing it.
If you can come up with a completed feed that meets the needs of your poultry with the proper amount of protein, fat, energy, amino acids, vitamins, minerals etc. then I would suggest either coarse grinding the feed your self or having a mill doing it for you.
I am not against feeding whole grains to chickens, I just don't think that a solely whole grain diet is the best diet for most of today's chickens.
Chris
I want my chickens to mostly forage for food but what I do have to supplement I want it to be of as high a quality as I can. The whole grains would be a component of the feed not the sole ingredient. Currently I am feeding a mixture of crumbles and grains of different sorts. The seramas are the only ones not currently spending the day foraging.
Not to get too off-topic here, because this only indirectly relates to scratch grains...
But ya know, since the subject of "natural diets, etc." was mentioned, I'd be really interested in the idea of maybe trying to find some balance between the hyper-domesticated breeds and the wild jungle fowl. See, I think there IS such thing as a "natural" chicken diet, and that would be what the red jungle fowl eat. These birds are actually not that different from chickens--well, they ARE chickens. They make all the same noises, have the same social behaviors, etc. And they eat a diet that is entirely "natural" in the sense that it consists of whatever they can find to eat and that they THRIVE on it--they are vigorous and seem pretty healthy.
Just so you get where I'm coming from, I'm in Hawaii, and there are feral chickens (mostly jungle fowl combined with wild fowl-type reverts from feral chickens, but they all share that wild jungle fowl body type, habits, etc.) These are small, lean chickens, kind of like small games, I guess, that require no care or feeding whatsover--in fact the population grows every year because they have no natural predators. They are often likened to rats with wings here. Anyway my point is that I do have years of directly observing wild/feral chickens (pesky little things) that qualify me to at least add that perspective to the discussion.
The unfortunate trade-off of this is that these chickens are pretty small and skinny, so they don't have much meat on them, but they are certainly edible, and they make a great soup stock, and they also lay eggs, if not as many as a production strain. In fact, while I don't generally eat them myself (although I have in the past). I do know people who eat them regularly, and I also know people who have captured hens, caged them, and gotten small, tasty eggs from them.
Anyway, my point is that a continuum does exist up to and including chickens that are completely able to find all of their own food if given enough space to forage. So there are possibilities for people who want a more self-reliant chicken, but it's not going to be like cornish X. There is a trade off. But hey, who cares if the amount of meat from a chicken is small, when you paid nothing to feed it? I think it would be a really interesting idea to discuss, or possibly even experiment with in breeding--trying to find the best balance between domestic-type and wild-type chickens that satisfactorily meets people's needs for specific applications.
Along those lines I'd also be interested in landrace chickens, and how they fit into this... And relevant to this particular thread, how people think the use of scratch grains might fit into this. I would think that landrace chickens or jungle fowl would do quite well on forage with a only little scratch to supplement if times where lean, since they are already finding all the other trace nutrients they need from forage and are perfectly adapted to it.
This particular thread might not the best place do that ultimately, since I don't want to hijack it, but right now I couldn't resist jumping in...
