Wait, there's a spell check???
TY for the reminder of why I never go to FB for information, excepting what books my friends are reading, and what movies they may be watching. Sometimes, funny memes.
The FB poster is woefully misinformed.
1. 16% (typically, "Layer" formulations) were designed to provide the minimally necessary nutrition for commercial laying hens under commercial management conditions, and commercially expected lifespans (that is, until first adult molt) below which losses in egg production, quality and hen mortality exceeded savings in feed costs. While the benefits reported in studies of higher protein feeds are generally pretty small (slight increases in frequency of lay, egg size, egg nutrition, feed efficiency, growth rate, chicken mortality, average duration of molt), the ONLY downside is cost. Unless you are at commercial scale, and need to deal with the potential of excess nitrogen in waste - in which case, you are concerned with "ideal" protein, meaning a discussion of amino acids, potential chemical supplimentation with synthetic aminos, and similar. If you are prepared to have that conversation, we can talk about how the EU's layer formulation is synthetic supplimented 14 or 15% total crude protein, but with a differing AA profile.
2. Poster has already demonstrated his ignorance of poultry feed science. It is very easy to formulate a low cost poultry feed with corn as the first ingredient, because the cost savings associated with use of large quantities of corn can then be used to purchase small amounts of more nutrient dense ingredients of higher cost (like soy). Yes, corn is a low value ingredient nutritionally, but its of average lows, easily compensated for, not grossly deficient, as some ingredients. Can you make a high quality feed starting with wheat? ABSOLUTELY. Sorghum? Its not done here, but plenty of countries produce adequate sorghum based feeds. Even rice. Making feed is a balancing act - how you balance (including mKe or metabolizable Kintic Energy or Calories, or however you want to count it) is not as important as that you balance.
I poke at corn all the time. Routinely refer to it as "filler" - but in a well balanced feed, its filler that serves an important purpose. Mostly I poke at corn when people feeding a bare minimum (nutritionally) feed who clearly know nothing then decide to practice feed science by throwing a bunch more corn at their birds in the form of "scratch".
3. Its complicated. A feed CAN be balanced for high fat, low carb - much like a human diet from certian geographic and ethnic groups, like the Inuit. HOWEVER, to know if a feed has been balanced for that purpose, you need to know its mKe/kg or a similar measure of total useful energy content - and that isn't printed on most feed labels. Without that guidance, the recommend is to seek a feed with fat levels of about 3.5%+/-. 1% higher for waterfowl (ducks, etc). Cx (Cornish Cross, Supermarket birds, "frankenchicken" are briefly feed feeds at 7-8% typically to fatten for market weight, and we all know both what their insides look like AND that they aren't intended for long life.)
Hope that provides some useful guidance. Thank you for coming here and asking.
Feel free to link my comment above in response to the FB post so others might benefit.
