The problem with corn?

[Folly's place]

Corn is a perfectly find ingredient in many feeds, and is used carefully with other ingredients to make the total feed balanced. No one ingredient makes a balanced diet, and no one ingredient is 'evil'. At least no common ingredient...
A person or flock keeper who's allergic to corn, wheat, or whatever, would have a good reason to avoid it in the chicken feed, because that dust is everywhere out there, and may certainly cause problems for them.
If it matters, there are feeds available with other ingredients. They cost more too.
What matters most to me is that the feed is balanced and fresh, by mill date.
And, chickens hate change, so it's easier to stick with one feed that's available locally, always fresh.
Mary

 

[Perris]

good question @Rarefiedfare . If it is just empty calories, why is corn grown so extensively in the US - more acres than wheat or soy - specifically as feed for livestock amongst other things?
(I get this info from http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=90 first para of the Description section, which page also lists all the nutrients in fresh corn BTW)

 

[Rarefiedfare]

good question @Rarefiedfare . If it is just empty calories, why is corn grown so extensively in the US - more acres than wheat or soy - specifically as feed for livestock amongst other things?
(I get this info from http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=90 first para of the Description section, which page also lists all the nutrients in fresh corn BTW)

I’m not qualified to say whether or not corn is good for people one way or another but I do know that the reasons for how extensively something is grown in the U.S. (as well as many other countries) are complex and include things like government subsidies and industry familiarity.

By way of example, most farmers rely on herbicides and pesticides to ensure certain average yields year to year. There are laws that govern crop rotation based on how persistent these products are in the soil, and how readily they are picked up by one sort of plant or another. The cost for testing on any one crop are enormous and so most companies just stick to the big three - corn / wheat / soy rather than spend millions to determine the effects on something like lentils, for example.

Thus, most farmers only grow one or more of these crops so that they can plan crop rotations better.

These are just 2 of dozens of moving parts in an agricultural operation.

 

[Folly's place]

So true! Farming is HARD!

 

[ColtHandorf]

why is corn grown so extensively in the US - more acres than wheat or soy

Go to your pantry and look at most of your foods there. Then check your fridge. How many of them have high fructose corn syrup in them? That's why...

Additionally it is in literally almost everything. Because it is cheap to grow and previously stated, a filler. It's in dog food, fish food, livestock feed, our food, etc...

 

[Perris]

does 'corn' mean only maize in the US? Here in UK it is used loosely for a variety of cereal crops, including wheat.

 

[Biddybot]

There's nothing wrong with corn per se. I consider it the animal feed equivalent of pasta, except far less processed, and have fed it in both the cracked and whole forms to a variety of fowl--chickens, guineas, ducks, geese, turkeys and pheasants--since 1985 without any apparent nutrition-based bad side effects. The trick is to combine it with the opportunity for the animals eating it to get PLENTY OF EXERCISE. It is NOT something you want to be feeding a lot of to critters kept in confinement unless you're looking to fatten them up fast and plan to slaughter them soon. So if your flock is out running around all day, I'd say feel free to feed it as part of a daily scratch ration or even as a treat...all my roosters LOVE whole corn! Restrict it or cut it out completely if they're kept in and the weather's warm...that's when it becomes empty/unnecessary calories. It IS a good overnight warming food if you live where the winter nights get very cold and long, though...(like -15C/5F cold and 14+ hours of darkness long)...

Fresh corn on the cob is also a fine way to feed corn to your active birds and is cherished by my current gang as a beloved treat. A good-sized rooster can finish a whole cob all by himself. I can live on the stuff myself, when it's in season, so I know how they feel!

Lastly and still on the plus side IMO, cracked corn is also one of the universally best-liked feeds for wild birds and attracts them. I can always count on my resident sparrows, doves and blue jays to clean up after the chickens on those rare occasions that they don't finish all their scratch grain, so there's that benefit too, if you're a wild-bird lover who likes seeing them and who doesn't mind them hanging about.

Edited to add for Perris: Yes, corn in the USA and Canada refers only to what you know as maize in the UK. The version fed to animals here IS maize and sometimes called feed corn. We also grow lots of corn intended for human use--there are hundreds of varieties--which is typically eaten fresh as corn on the cob. Those are sometimes collectively referred to as sweet corn so as not to confuse it with feed corn, which is very starchy and not very sweet at all by comparison. I really missed eating fresh sweet corn when I lived in Germany for a while years ago. They just didn't grow it there at the time!

 

[GC-Raptor]

does 'corn' mean only maize in the US?

Yes. The most common use in the U.S. is sweet corn served as a vegetable.
Indian corn is another. GC

 

[Lazy J Farms Feed & Hay]

Corn is an economical source of energy for livestock rations. It also provides phosphorus in feeds that contain the Phytase enzyme.

 

[Lazy J Farms Feed & Hay]

Yes. The most common use in the U.S. is sweet corn served as a vegetable.
Indian corn is another. GC

Actually the most common type of corn is Dent Corn with about 90 million acres planted each year. There are less than one million acres of Sweet Corn raised in the US each year.