Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Mother of Chaos]

…The one amino acid that the commercial manufacturers have problems with is Methionine; the chicken can't make its own and it is difficult/too expensive or prohibited by law to source from a natural product.
I believe the vast majority of commercially produced feeds have synthetic Methionine added.
This wasn't a problem when animal products, usually fish-meal, could be a feed constituent…

Yes, lab-created methionine is one of the rare synthetic ingredients allowed by USDA and OMRI in the certified-organic programs.

 

[Mother of Chaos]

I have been experimenting with fermented feed. I make a mash by adding that to dry high protein crumble. The only thing I’ve noticed is that my birds seem to prefer that to foraging for their own food so I have started feeding them later in the day. I am cutting them some slack because they aren’t flighty breeds that are inclined to forage. That and they’re growing. But they should be able to forage all day without going hungry and have a top-off for dinner. I never thought I would have to train chickens to range.

I think that my three have already mown through much of the available forage in their areas. Today I bought various seasonal cover crop blends to plant for this fall onward, but I’ve got three piteous ladies out there! (ignoring their overflowing feeder, btw)

 

[Molpet]

The one amino acid that the commercial manufacturers have problems with is Methionine; the chicken can't make its own and it is difficult/too expensive or prohibited by law to source from a natural product.
I believe the vast majority of commercially produced feeds have synthetic Methionine added.
This wasn't a problem when animal products, usually fish-meal, could be a feed constituent,

I was getting turkey starter that was made with fish meal along with flax. From a tiny organic mill that was owned by a small conventional feed and seed co op. I fed it to everyone and the chicken eggs tasted fishy.

 

[Mother of Chaos]

I was getting turkey starter that was made with fish meal along with flax. From a tiny organic mill that was owned by a small conventional feed and seed co op. I fed it to everyone and the chicken eggs tasted fishy.

I always forget about this unfortunate side effect!

 

[Shadrach]

I never thought I would have to train chickens to range.

I found this to be a problem with some if not most of the Ex Battery hens.
Fortunately they had others hens and Henry to show them. It was the same with dust bathing.

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

Fortunately they had others hens and Henry to show them.

I have two older hens but the pullets have taken a while to copy anything from them-including roosting. I assume because they weren’t raised by them and they were all thrown together in a new place. The older ones range just fine but there’s only two so hopefully the pullets catch on soon. After only a few days they’re doing better

 

[Mother of Chaos]

I found this to be a problem with some if not most of the Ex Battery hens.
Fortunately they had others hens and Henry to show them. It was the same with dust bathing.

Our three never had any issues with roosting, foraging, or dust bathing. I need to ask the breeder if there were broody hens around when they were little.

I do know that they’d already been outside.

 

[SimpleJenn]

My father and husband both worked all evening to get the building over here. Unfortunately it suffered quite a bit of damage, and will need new baseboards/skirting, a wall repair, and the door needs trim before I can even consider adding hardware cloth.
Still! It's here, and the birds are going to love it!!!
A bonus, some domestic bagpipes (guinea keets) I acquired today

 

[fuzzi]

View attachment 4178450
View attachment 4178451
My father and husband both worked all evening to get the building over here. Unfortunately it suffered quite a bit of damage, and will need new baseboards/skirting, a wall repair, and the door needs trim before I can even consider adding hardware cloth.
Still! It's here, and the birds are going to love it!!!
A bonus, some domestic bagpipes (guinea keets) I acquired today
View attachment 4178456

That must be exciting!

 

[Perris]

I’ve noticed is that my birds seem to prefer that to foraging for their own food so I have started feeding them later in the day.

one of the main findings to come out of that PhD was that the birds on concentrate, i.e. those who got all they needed at the time from their supplied feed, didn't need to and consequently didn't bother to range much if at all. The birds on wheat only (what the author of the thesis called 'a restricted diet') had to range in order to find the missing nutrients (all of which were apparently available in the pasture and forage they had access to, at least as could be judged by hen condition and egg laying performance, once the birds had learned themselves how and where to forage).

So if you study that table 6 I posted in https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...rescued-chickens-thread.1502267/post-28718114 , you will see that the wheat-diet birds foraged a lot more of all types of other food (the stuff measured in mg rather than g) than did the concentrate-diet birds. That is where the wheat-diet birds were getting their plant-inadequate amino acids like lysine and methionine (insects, earthworms), and their minerals (soil consumption).

Another key result was confirmation of something already known (by some, not widely), that birds on whole grains and forage develop a better GIT so they can extract more nutrients from the same food; their digestive systems physically grow to work more efficiently.

And of course foraging requires exercise, so restricting the diet forces the birds to adopt a healthier lifestyle than just plonking by the feeders all day long like a couch potato.

So it appears you have independently confirmed some of the findings @BlindLemonChicken