Quote: I don't know if kelp goes well in water. You can always try, I guess. I buy mine at livestock produce shops, feedbarns, etc, haven't bought any online yet.
Regarding this quote, I have a point of view I'd like to offer. It's not a dismissal of what Bear Foot Farm said, which is perfectly acceptable for probably the vast majority of farmers/poultry keepers, but it's not applicable to me and others who need a certain quality of return from their birds, whether pets or livestock (or both), so here's my 2 cents on it. It's a bit off topic, so my apologies for that.
Quote: The issue with that, for those who don't cull a used flock on their second birthday or before, is that they look fine while they're actually going downhill for quite a while, if it's a nutrient insufficiency. By the time an animal is visibly sick from lack of a nutrient, it's already done damage. Temporary insufficiency in an otherwise sufficient diet is one thing, and can be remedied, but a lifetime of insufficiency is something that can be untreatable in any meaningful way.
What is classed as 'necessary' in most "complete feeds" are simply the barest minimum quantities of vitamins and minerals required to keep an animal alive and producing for a very short lifespan. I don't believe any animal produces the best anything (eggs, meat, offspring, etc) when not given the best nutrition. Some birds cope well on plain diets, others need more. The quality of their free ranging environment has a lot to do with their longevity in my experience.
The diseases of malnutrition are many, and most are slow acting on a normal diet. It takes one to two years before any signs start to show on the average cheap fowl diet, but can take up to half a decade. But the writing's on the wall, so to speak, once the signs do show, because you cannot put in later what never went into the animal's diet in the first place. Bad start tends to equal bad finish, and often (but not always, and it's subjective) means a sub par quality of life in between. This isn't an issue for those who are very commercially/financially oriented, because they cull their birds young anyway, whether layers or broilers. But for those like me, who eat their own birds for health reasons, giving them the best nutrition possible directly equates to giving myself the best nutrition possible, and good health pays its own way too. Incomplete health is cheaper in the short term but far more expensive in the long run.
Also, I breed my own birds, so I can't have an animal being spent by the time it reaches its breeding prime, which I consider to be two years old and over, not sooner. They can't go from laying to being ready to cull, because that's no use to me. For true health, they do need more than the simplified layer diet provides. But this isn't necessary for many, who will get what they want from their birds on a much cheaper diet, not that kelp's expensive due to the tiny amounts used per bird.
Unless you do a soil test and it tells you your soil is in correct balance and health, and you know which plants are required to enable them to self-supplement, then you can't be sure they're getting all they actually need just from free ranging, which you saw demonstrated with that person's birds, despite their 40 acres of roaming room; it just doesn't equal complete nutrition.
All the best.
