Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[ManueB]

As you know but maybe others reading this do not, my birds do not depend entirely on me for food as they free range dawn to dusk and I have good forage (that doesn't just happen; I encourage it with piles of rotting wood of many sizes and species scattered around, and letting 'weeds' grow in more places than many people feel comfortable with, including things that are toxic to chickens) so what I actually offer them is less important than it would be if they were confined and depended on me for all their nutrition. They spend all day rummaging around and I'm sure I know only a fraction of what they find and eat while they are at it. Among the plants I only notice when something I really like is heavily browsed, but very few are eaten to destruction. Grass is 11-28% protein. I know their diet includes things a lot of people would rather not know about, like amphibians, fallen fledglings, dog poo etc. I have no idea of the nutritional profile of those foods, but expect they have some useful even essential substances, and I trust the chickens to know what is and is not good for them to eat. They don't eat the foxgloves or hemlock, or a lot of other things growing in the garden and beyond.

I use a sack of mixed grain (traditionally labeled 'mixed corn', but is 80% wheat, 20% cracked maize, and a splash of veg oil) as the base. For one feed's worth I add (by eye) about 5% whole oats, 10% dried green peas, and 5% whole sunflower seed; all dumped into a mason jar and covered with water and a dollop of natural yogurt, given a good stir and left to ferment in a warm place for 24+hrs. Bubbles rising tell me when it's fermenting, but I give it and they eat it in any stage of development, and I use developed liquor as the base for the next batch. Excess over-gelatinous liquor (starch drawn out of the stuff fermenting) is dumped to make a more dilute starting brew. Some of the flock don't like or eat the peas, other do. Peas + grain make a complete protein like animal and dairy proteins. I sprinkle a handful of live mealworms (source of essential lysine and methionine, plus the other amino acids) on this when I serve it. They eat more of this in winter and less in summer (very little now while the forage is booming).

Irregularly I add:

• a tin of sardines (in brine to boost calcium, in oil to boost fats; either for boost of all amino acids),
• wheatbran wetted with a little milk for 4+ hours (good source of potassium, magnesium, phosphorus, iron, zinc, manganese and a lot of vitamins esp niacin; soaking with milk reduces the antinutritional factors of dry bran, and I have wheatbran on hand for the mealworm farm)
• plain natural yogurt (calcium boost)
• banana (potassium and B6 boost)
• cod liver oil (vit A and vit D boost)
• evening primrose oil (linoleic acid boost if egg size decreasing across the board)

Assuming you even wanted to try this, it's not obvious to me that any of this is feasible at the allotments.

That's wonderful! If I may ask, would you care to explain why you began doing that, and also why do you ferment (I read Shadrach's article on the subject ) ? And do you raise the mealworms or buy them ?

Yes, we call that "corn" too.
With all the different colors, people sometimes call it "indian corn" or "ornamental corn" or when it is all one color they may call it blue corn or red corn or whatever.

Is there a reason you need to grind the grains at all? Chickens usually do fine with whole grains, as long as they have enough grit in their gizzards to grind it up. Those gizzards are their own personal mills

Thank you for the explanation! We grind it because when we give it whole, it comes out whole . The gizzard is not up to it somehow!

 

[RoyalChick]

Because of the used poisons and devastation of the rainforest in Brazil, I hate the GMO soy and corn in the commercial feed too. So I feed my chickens organic.

The organic layer feed and scratch they eat now is a commercial feed for laying hybrids too (for the organic egg industry).

The organic chicken feed from, a shop for pets/hobby animal keepers, is more expensive and has almost the same amount of calcium. 3,5 vs 4 mg /100 g.

I am just moving mine over to a no soy brand. It uses insect protein. So far it seems popular with my Princesses.

 

[BDutch]

I am just moving mine over to a no soy brand. It uses insect protein. So far it seems popular with my Princesses.

Meanwhile I hope they don’t feed gmo soy to the insects 🕷

 

[RoyalChick]

Meanwhile I hope they don’t feed gmo soy to the insects 🕷

That is a good point. I picked it because it is grub protein that is organic and non-GMO certified.
The insects are fed ‘pre-consumer food waste’. I am not sure exactly what that means. They are grown and certified in the US so I imagine the whole food chain of the insects is clean to be certified, but who knows, at some point you just have to trust.

 

[BDutch]

I think pre-consumer food waste is the waste from the human veggie-food factories. All what is not good enough or too much before it’s processed/ packed and enters the shops.

Here they have a new brand with chicken feed from such pre-consumer food waste. But this is quite expensive and they added quit a lot of calcium too. So I didn’t see the benefits compared to the organic brand I have now.

 

[RoyalChick]

I think pre-consumer food waste is the waste from the human veggie-food factories. All what is not good enough or too much before it’s processed/ packed and enters the shops.

Here they have a new brand with chicken feed from such pre-consumer food waste. But this is quite expensive and they added quit a lot of calcium too. So I didn’t see the benefits compared to the organic brand I have now.

Ah. I wondered if that might be what it meant. Like ‘ugly carrots’. This is also more expensive than the non-organic regular feed and I picked the grower crumbles which has less calcium - mainly because I have young ones who will eventually feel brave enough to share the food I hope!

 

[Perris]

would you care to explain why you began doing that, and also why do you ferment (I read Shadrach's article on the subject ) ? And do you raise the mealworms or buy them ?

I began doing it for a couple of reasons. I hope listing them doesn't make me look like a conspiracy theorist or a cynic, because I'm neither!

First I really don't like not being able to identify on sight what's in the food, and the absence of a list of ingredients that are clearly foodstuffs rather than additives worries me. I understand why it is that way, but I don't want to buy into things done for the convenience of manufacturers needing to meet regulatory standards, instead of for my convenience, as the customer they are both supposed to be serving. Connected to that, things that are not naturally food can also look, on lab analysis, like food, so could go into feed and pass regulatory muster, but still not be something I want my chickens to eat (melamine to boost the protein in baby milk is a famous recent example). Which raises the spectre of food fraud, which exists in the human food chain (horse meat sold as beef for example) so is almost certainly present in the animal food chain; and there can be few places easier to hide it than a homogenized pellet for an animal with a relatively very short life (which takes us back to 1).

Long supply chains and globalization both offer serious impediments to anyone along the chain knowing where something has come from and what it is going into, and an excuse for anyone along the way to shrug their shoulders and claim ignorance. Again you see that with the human food chain, which has higher standards than animal feed. So I prefer to buy locally grown recognizable foodstuffs for me and mine. I don't think it's more expensive and it may even be cheaper. It's certainly fresher.

I ferment because I think it helps a lot with whole grain feed; it reduces the anti-nutritional factors that seeds have built in and that a lot of the industrial processing also aims to overcome; it also adds some nutritional goodies, softens the grains, reduces waste to zero, and more; if you're interested have a look at the article Jenjens linked to https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...-me-research-study-on-fermented-feed.1428955/ or other papers and webpages - there's lots out there.

I raise the mealworms. I bought the first tub from a fish supplies shop early 2020 and we're still going strong on that same £2.50 investment! Story here https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/first-attempt-at-mealworm-farming.1350136/
They eat 1 sack of bran a year, which is going up in price but still a tiny fraction of the cost of a year's supply of dried mealworms. They get the bits of vegetables we don't want to eat, so I count that as free. And, bringing the story full circle, I know exactly what my mealworms have eaten! (Live mealworms are also permitted under current UK legislation, unlike dried.)

 

[Perris]

The insects are fed ‘pre-consumer food waste’. I am not sure exactly what that means.

I believe it means waste from food intended for human consumption but that didn't make it as far as the consumer. So it does not include what people left on their plates at a restaurant, for example.

 

[ManueB]

I began doing it for a couple of reasons. I hope listing them doesn't make me look like a conspiracy theorist or a cynic, because I'm neither!

First I really don't like not being able to identify on sight what's in the food, and the absence of a list of ingredients that are clearly foodstuffs rather than additives worries me. I understand why it is that way, but I don't want to buy into things done for the convenience of manufacturers needing to meet regulatory standards, instead of for my convenience, as the customer they are both supposed to be serving. Connected to that, things that are not naturally food can also look, on lab analysis, like food, so could go into feed and pass regulatory muster, but still not be something I want my chickens to eat (melamine to boost the protein in baby milk is a famous recent example). Which raises the spectre of food fraud, which exists in the human food chain (horse meat sold as beef for example) so is almost certainly present in the animal food chain; and there can be few places easier to hide it than a homogenized pellet for an animal with a relatively very short life (which takes us back to 1).

Long supply chains and globalization both offer serious impediments to anyone along the chain knowing where something has come from and what it is going into, and an excuse for anyone along the way to shrug their shoulders and claim ignorance. Again you see that with the human food chain, which has higher standards than animal feed. So I prefer to buy locally grown recognizable foodstuffs for me and mine. I don't think it's more expensive and it may even be cheaper. It's certainly fresher.

I ferment because I think it helps a lot with whole grain feed; it reduces the anti-nutritional factors that seeds have built in and that a lot of the industrial processing also aims to overcome; it also adds some nutritional goodies, softens the grains, reduces waste to zero, and more; if you're interested have a look at the article Jenjens linked to https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...-me-research-study-on-fermented-feed.1428955/ or other papers and webpages - there's lots out there.

I raise the mealworms. I bought the first tub from a fish supplies shop early 2020 and we're still going strong on that same £2.50 investment! Story here https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/first-attempt-at-mealworm-farming.1350136/
They eat 1 sack of bran a year, which is going up in price but still a tiny fraction of the cost of a year's supply of dried mealworms. They get the bits of vegetables we don't want to eat, so I count that as free. And, bringing the story full circle, I know exactly what my mealworms have eaten! (Live mealworms are also permitted under current UK legislation, unlike dried.)

I'm certainly not thinking you are a conspiracist, in fact you have just made it on the list of my personal heroes !

Thank you for all the explanations and the links, I will read those carefully. Everytime a thread comes up on BYC about making your own feed people are basically saying it's impossible or very difficult, so I'm really pleased to hear you have a different perspective.

 

[Shadrach]

As you know but maybe others reading this do not, my birds do not depend entirely on me for food as they free range dawn to dusk and I have good forage (that doesn't just happen; I encourage it with piles of rotting wood of many sizes and species scattered around, and letting 'weeds' grow in more places than many people feel comfortable with, including things that are toxic to chickens) so what I actually offer them is less important than it would be if they were confined and depended on me for all their nutrition. They spend all day rummaging around and I'm sure I know only a fraction of what they find and eat while they are at it. Among the plants I only notice when something I really like is heavily browsed, but very few are eaten to destruction. Grass is 11-28% protein. I know their diet includes things a lot of people would rather not know about, like amphibians, fallen fledglings, dog poo etc. I have no idea of the nutritional profile of those foods, but expect they have some useful even essential substances, and I trust the chickens to know what is and is not good for them to eat. They don't eat the foxgloves or hemlock, or a lot of other things growing in the garden and beyond.

I use a sack of mixed grain (traditionally labeled 'mixed corn', but is 80% wheat, 20% cracked maize, and a splash of veg oil) as the base. For one feed's worth I add (by eye) about 5% whole oats, 10% dried green peas, and 5% whole sunflower seed; all dumped into a mason jar and covered with water and a dollop of natural yogurt, given a good stir and left to ferment in a warm place for 24+hrs. Bubbles rising tell me when it's fermenting, but I give it and they eat it in any stage of development, and I use developed liquor as the base for the next batch. Excess over-gelatinous liquor (starch drawn out of the stuff fermenting) is dumped to make a more dilute starting brew. Some of the flock don't like or eat the peas, other do. Peas + grain make a complete protein like animal and dairy proteins. I sprinkle a handful of live mealworms (source of essential lysine and methionine, plus the other amino acids) on this when I serve it. They eat more of this in winter and less in summer (very little now while the forage is booming).

Irregularly I add:

• a tin of sardines (in brine to boost calcium, in oil to boost fats; either for boost of all amino acids),
• wheatbran wetted with a little milk for 4+ hours (good source of potassium, magnesium, phosphorus, iron, zinc, manganese and a lot of vitamins esp niacin; soaking with milk reduces the antinutritional factors of dry bran, and I have wheatbran on hand for the mealworm farm)
• plain natural yogurt (calcium boost)
• banana (potassium and B6 boost)
• cod liver oil (vit A and vit D boost)
• evening primrose oil (linoleic acid boost if egg size decreasing across the board)

Assuming you even wanted to try this, it's not obvious to me that any of this is feasible at the allotments.

You're right. It isn't feasible for the allotments the way things are currently.
I do have some ideas on a dry feed with fish meal and I'm looking ito this.
Just getting the new commercial feed with 17.5% protein and 4% calcium has been a result.
What I have the prospect of now is trying to persuade C to get the same feed instead of birdseed.
It's all small steps and slow progress.