Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[BDutch]

I want to change over into all flock but that one is I think around 16% protein, while layer feed is 14.4%. The highest protein chicken feed I have found so far was 19.1% chick crumble. Although this was all in the Welkoop shop, so maybe I need to change shops.

I buy organic feed from AR (Agri Rijnvallei) together with my friend. Its cheaper, fresher and has more protein than Welkoop. But you can only buy if you are willing to take at least 100kg. PM me if you want more details.

 

[Perris]

The mixed grains (scratch?) the agri-shops sell in the Netherlands are not a complete feed, but are good to give solely if chickens can free range in a lush environment all day.
The experts in the Netherlands say its okay to give free rangers mixed grains once a day in the afternoon during the warmer months. But it’s very important to give complete feed too from late fall till early spring when there’s not much food to be found in the garden/ fields/ woods.
In fact the mixed grains should always be supplemental. The 10% is probably a good advise for chickens who are locked up in a stable or a coop/run with a concrete floor.

the term 'scratch' seems to be as broad and long as the word 'treat' - it seems to mean a huge range of different things and leads to lots of confusion.

Why do you think 10% is appropriate? why not, say, 5%, or 15%, or any other percent? Does it matter what the mixed grains are? Does it matter if the 10% treats are whole grains of wheat or ultra-processed Twinkies/ jam-filled deep-fried donuts, for example?

 

[rural mouse]

Where does wheat grow in the States? My child-like mental image of the great plains is endless wheat fields and grain silos.

Canadian wheat is a thing here, attracting premium prices for bread-making for example. Has it got too hot on the US side of the border for wheat?

Montana grows wheat (among other things). There's 2 types. Winter and Spring wheat. Spring wheat get planted in the spring, usually March or April. Winter wheat gets planted in the fall and comes up sooner than Spring wheat does (it wint survive the cold). We also grow Barley, Alfalfa, (for hay) Cows, lentils, peas, beans, sugar beets, some Corn, some sheep, and some pigs.

DH has some family farming in Nebraska

Top 10 crops from there are (in no particular order) Corn, Soybeans, Wheat, Sorghum, Hay, Millet, Peas, Potatoes, Sunflowers, Oats.


I know...Wikipedia...but for a quick list of where wheat is grown in the US, it works.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_production_in_the_United_States

Geography and classification submenus have some stats on where it's produced.

 

[thistlewick]

Where does wheat grow in the States? My child-like mental image of the great plains is endless wheat fields and grain silos.

Canadian wheat is a thing here, attracting premium prices for bread-making for example. Has it got too hot on the US side of the border for wheat?

rural mouse kinda hit on it, we do corn and soybeans mostly -- those beautiful visions you have... don't exist much anymore D:

@BDutch it was just regular chickens in a run like most people keep chickens -- it was not meat birds, just regular ol' hens who were 3-4 years old and had kinda slowed down laying and they killed them to eat.

They noticed that being on the 'scratch grains' (their neighbor's birds) (which is what we call it here in the US is about 8-10% protein and looks, to our eye, fantastic, because it's seeds and pieces of corn, etc) they were gross. Fat. They showed pics of the processed bird with all the fat all over the carcass. It was disgusting lol

Then, they showed pics of a bird who eats the better food (it was their own birds) (like Purina Layer Feed or Kalmbach Layer Feed, etc) which is twice the price.

Same kind of birds, just backyard birds kept in a coop/run environment -- again, like MOST people keep chickens.

And they had a normal amount of fat deposits on them and the processed chicken carcass looked healthy and normal.

The way I look at it is, feathers cost a lot of energy to make -- egg making costs a lot of energy to make -- running around 6 acres costs a lot of energy. The 20% protein food I offer (which seems to be something my adults eat in the mornings before I open the doors and in the evenings before bed only (and not everyone! some barely eat the food at all)) is better for their needs for my extremely active flock.

If I didn't have babies or roosters I'd still feed them the all-flock 20%

Btw @Perris I have found a local wheat supplier but I just haven't made the decision to ferment yet -- I am still considering it!

 

[MrsNorthie]

"Back OFF, Mister!"

Or is it "Look what you did!"

 

[MrsNorthie]

it also involves heating, sometimes micronizing, sometimes various other processes, some of which destroy nutrients in the grain, rather than make them available to whatever eats it.

Over processing which maximizes quantity over quality, and maximum profit. :-(

 

[MrsNorthie]

I've read plenty on fermenting real foods. It's papers on the effects of fermenting of an already processed feed that I lack.

So much confusion arises from people not distinguishing clearly exactly what feed they are talking about; processed or unprocessed. I think that what you feed would be called 'scratch' by a lot of people on BYC, and regarded as a 'treat', OK for up to 10% of their diet, not more. I think that's nonsense, fwiw.

Ours won't eat anything other than whole grains and the chick starter crumble. I need to get really focused on putting together a list of whole grains and seeds to make our feed from the Ag grain elevator, and also figuring out what I need to add to make it good for growing chicks. I plan on getting an electric grinder for that, once I get it all figured out.

 

[SimpleJenn]

Mine get Kalmbach 20% full plume. Supposed to have a rooster safe level of calcium, whatever that means. When they range there is a ton of long and short grasses, clovers, and wild blackberries that I can identify easily.
Edit to add, they get a lot of scraps and leftovers. Maybe more than 10% of the daily feed, but not everyday so I guess it evens out.
However, our local hawk has himself a wife now, so hopefully my birds will be clever enough to keep safe from them.
As tax, here's the little escapee yesterday. He will go out with the free rangers, he has good instincts regarding cover. It took hours to catch him.

 

[MrsNorthie]

the rest being those random pellets containing the micronutrients that they don’t have a whole-grain source for.

We used the bangcock elite, but they won't touch the pellets in there. They just hate pellets. We have a grain elevator in Anderson, SC where you can by all sorts of grains and seeds, so I am looking at that as an option, but I tend to over-analyze every decision, to the point of inaction. The one thing I DON'T want to do is make a mistake that causes them to suffer in any way. LOL I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about how to make things even better, even though they are thriving. *sigh

The mixed grains (scratch?) the agri-shops sell in the Netherlands are not a complete feed, but are good to give solely if chickens can free range in a lush environment all day.

Ours have whole grains, they have access to range from sun up to sun down, and we supplement with fish a few times a week, and in the summer, they also get watermelon, or blueberries and walnuts frozen in ice blocks in a couple of shallow waterers that one might use for goats.

We also have areas where the ground is kept a little moist and we will leave some wood bits stacked around for a period, to get a good bug population going, then we move the pile to a new area while they feast on not only the bugs but the new sprouting vegetation.

 

[Mother of Chaos]

I like to confuse the feed/scratch bit even more: my version of scratch is actually the feed they eat anyway, when I sometimes toss it on the ground to encourage them to dig up the deep litter, lure them to a new area to explore, etc.

To me, scratch is very different from treats. Scratch implies, well, scratching, so it’s little things: grains and maybe seeds. It can be corn only, some mix with insufficient nutrients to work as feed, or actual feed.

Treats are unrelated to feed and scratch. So they would include fruits and vegetables (still in recognizable forms) and other kitchen goodies.

I suppose since I’m on this categorizing run, I’ll create a fourth category in addition to balanced feed (commercial or made at home), scratch, and treats: supplements. This includes varying sources of animal protein. I think @Perris does this daily on a rotating basis.