Thoughts on organic chicken feed. What is your opinion?

[arazla]

Thanks. I'm not quite understanding. Please don't make my own feed or remove the hull?

 

[3KillerBs]

Thanks. I'm not quite understanding. Please don't make my own feed or remove the hull?

It's incredibly difficult to make a homemade chicken feed with adequate nutrition -- it takes advanced knowledge of animal nutrition and access to a lot of ingredients that aren't necessarily easy to obtain.

It's also a good deal more expensive than buying quality feed.

 

[arazla]

That's my concern as well. But both feeds we tried, first the medicated chick starter and then the organic grower/starter, are ultimately just corn according to the ingredients. I don't understand how that can be good in the long run. We are not raising them as broilers. Although chicken feed may be heavily researched, all the science articles I've read so far are geared toward the meat and dairy industry. Any studies specifically focusing on small flocks for homesteaders out there that others can point to? We've been supplementing with flax seeds, herbs, oats, eggs, grass, etc along with a little extra chick grit. They seem pretty happy so far. One was near death when we got her at 3.5 weeks and another flopping over, so we spoon fed them and did the splinting thing. Now they're flying around, vivacious and the one I didn't think had a chance is even a little alpha. Don't know how they'll be in the long run, but want to get my ducks in a row so to speak for options.

 

[AidKD]

That's my concern as well. But both feeds we tried, first the medicated chick starter and then the organic grower/starter, are ultimately just corn according to the ingredients. I don't understand how that can be good in the long run. We are not raising them as broilers. Although chicken feed may be heavily researched, all the science articles I've read so far are geared toward the meat and dairy industry. Any studies specifically focusing on small flocks for homesteaders out there that others can point to? We've been supplementing with flax seeds, herbs, oats, eggs, grass, etc along with a little extra chick grit. They seem pretty happy so far. One was near death when we got her at 3.5 weeks and another flopping over, so we spoon fed them and did the splinting thing. Now they're flying around, vivacious and the one I didn't think had a chance is even a little alpha. Don't know how they'll be in the long run, but want to get my ducks in a row so to speak for options.

https://thefewellhomestead.com/make-homemade-chicken-feed/

 

[U_Stormcrow]

https://thefewellhomestead.com/make-homemade-chicken-feed/

The recipe is dependent on Fertrell's Premix (or similar products) to make up for the deficiencies elsewhere, plus free choice concentrated protein - to the extent its a "recipe" at all, mostly its a laundry list of buzz words.

If you start 20 wheat, 20 winter peas, 20 corn, you are around 14% protein after correcting for moisture content, around 0.2% Methionine (about 2/3 the minimum), a little shy threonine, and actually low tryptophan. Add 10 oats and its even worse. Add 5 sunflower and 1 flax, you are still sub 14% protein, still almost exactly as deficient in Met, Thr, Tryp, but are now 6% fiber (tolerable) and 6% fat (high), with a MJ/kg at the high end of the scale. Its a recipe for fat chickens who are none the less nutritionally deficient.

In other words, the poster knows more about making a pretty web site than a nutritious feed for chickens. They are hoping and praying the feed will be fixed by offering free choice yeast (near 50% protein) and /or free choice fish meal (generally greater than 50% protein, plus calcium and non-phytate phosphorus), together with the Nutribooster to cover everything else they disregarded.

With all due respect, if you are going to free choice dried yeast ($6/lb bulk, more than $16/lb grocery store) or fish meal ($2.50/lb) together with nutribalancer ($1.50lb), you can basically feed "scratch" and get away with it. I just wasted 3 min of my life scrolling through that, and another 12 minutes (not wasted) hopefully saving others who don't immediately recognize the numerous problems with that "recipe" from linking that page again.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Why Angry @AidKD ??? That not your web page, is it? If so, hang out here more, and you will learn enough to start fixing the problems on that page. We all had to start somewhere.

 

[arazla]

Thanks for the link AidKD and thanks for a thoughtful analysis Stormcrow. I've seen a lot of recipes now and am still trying to figure this out. It seems like many can roughly estimate protein content, but not the mineral/vitamin content. So then, what commercial options do you recommend that include a better variety of ingredients besides corn? @StormCrow and others, do you supplement the feed with anything? If this is correct, the ancestors eat a wide variety of food including berries, small reptiles, seeds, worms, leaves and EGGS. Kind of what chickens eat when they're outside foraging, minus berries and reptiles unless you happen to have those in your garden. We've been adding eggs to our chick's feed since they had a rough start, but perhaps that's worth considering to some degree into the future.

 

[AidKD]

The recipe is dependent on Fertrell's Premix (or similar products) to make up for the deficiencies elsewhere, plus free choice concentrated protein - to the extent its a "recipe" at all, mostly its a laundry list of buzz words.

If you start 20 wheat, 20 winter peas, 20 corn, you are around 14% protein after correcting for moisture content, around 0.2% Methionine (about 2/3 the minimum), a little shy threonine, and actually low tryptophan. Add 10 oats and its even worse. Add 5 sunflower and 1 flax, you are still sub 14% protein, still almost exactly as deficient in Met, Thr, Tryp, but are now 6% fiber (tolerable) and 6% fat (high), with a MJ/kg at the high end of the scale. Its a recipe for fat chickens who are none the less nutritionally deficient.

In other words, the poster knows more about making a pretty web site than a nutritious feed for chickens. They are hoping and praying the feed will be fixed by offering free choice yeast (near 50% protein) and /or free choice fish meal (generally greater than 50% protein, plus calcium and non-phytate phosphorus), together with the Nutribooster to cover everything else they disregarded.

With all due respect, if you are going to free choice dried yeast ($6/lb bulk, more than $16/lb grocery store) or fish meal ($2.50/lb) together with nutribalancer ($1.50lb), you can basically feed "scratch" and get away with it. I just wasted 3 min of my life scrolling through that, and another 12 minutes (not wasted) hopefully saving the ignorant from linking that page again.

Well, for your information, I'd hardly say that Amy Fewell is only concerned with making a pretty website. She just so happens to be the founder of the Homesteaders of America, alongside publishing 3 books, one being titled The Homesteader's Natural Chicken Keeping Handbook. She is an herbalist and has published a book alongside Joel Salatin titled The Homesteader's Herbal Companion. She and her husband also own their own farm. I think she may know a think or two about chickens and running a farm. I'd encourage you to check her out, especially before making your own ignorant comments.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Problem 1) is assuming all protein is alike. It isn't. Partricularly when dealing with plant proteins, they are almost universally "incomplete" meaning lacking one or more critical amino acids to make a complete protein. Sadly, the plant world has few good sources of Methionine, and its probably the most critical amino acide for chicken development and long term health, followed by Lysine. chickens need roughly twice as much Lysine as Methionine, but its much easier to find in the planbt world.

Problem 2) is assuming modern birds do well on acient diets. They don't. It takes much higher levels of nutrition, consistently, to allow a modern bird to produce the size of the eggs they do at the frequency they do, when compared to their ancient (or even turn of last century) counterparts.

Problem 3) is assuming birds that free range will find enough insects, lizards, etc to make up for deficiencies (usually total crude protein, and protein quality - that is, Amino Acid profile) in their feed. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. Depends upon where they are free ranging and the season, and the "load" - how many chickens to how many acres of how much useful bug weight.

And yes, one egg to 5 chickens - we did the math.

 

[arazla]

Thanks, good points. Although many schools of thought believe knowing what one's ancestors ate is something to consider, and YES, of course species evolve and diets change too. To clarify, Tractor Supply already talked me into buying a huge bag of organic chick starter/grower for $45 or something so to be honest I'd like to use it up first. But as I mentioned, it's just corn with supplemental vitamins. Kellog's can add a full spectrum of vitamins and minerals to your cereal and no matter what they told us for 50 years, at the end of the day it's still cereal and you're not going to get much out of it. We had Manna medicated starter before that which was also just corn. I haven't explored a lot of other brands and maybe there are some great ones. I'd love to know what commercially available food you do recommend. What do you feed your chickens? Do you supplement their primary feed with anything?