UltraKibble

[bdfive]

Hey, I may have misunderstood the 1 teaspoon for 8 hours. Seems I read it somewhere. Also something about not to let the peafowl eat to much. I love food....it's hard to think about anything live not getting their fill. Have 2 Miniature Australian Shepherds of which one would eat until he exploded. He gets his ration and then to give him that filled up feeling he gets a good portion of green beans.

 

[Resolution]

This Crested Argus can eat a single frog on Sunday morning and need exactly nothing else
for the rest of the day. He may take another frog, a prawn or just some old banana. But his requirements are met because like other peafowl, the Crested Argus has adapted over many millions of years with a highly efficient digestive system. They can consume materials, small animals for example, and digest nearly every part, even the bones.

Resolution, it is very hard to get used to the idea of not keeping food available to the peas all the time. When you say a teaspoon is all they need for 8 hours then for a full 24 hours in a day would they need 3 teaspoons? I have feed here so am still keeping feed available in the pens with ultra kibble in the pan as well. They always finish up the Ultrakibble so I add more. With Breeding Season coming up we're suppose to change to a Gamebird Breeder Ration. Does UK replace their need for it??


If you're using commercial crumbles or pellets as a sole ration it's in your best interest to keep food in front of your birds at all times. This is particularly true if you intend to butcher them for market or are managing an egg operation. These "soft" feeds are made from pulverized feedstuffs ground into the finest flours. They rapidly disintegrate upon digestion. Soft feeds are designed to move rapidly through the digestive system. The birds eat their fast food, absorb the most readily accessible nutrients and expunge the rest.

In other words, the birds eat and poop all day.

If birds maintained solely on these rations fail to keep a full crop, they'll not thrive in those conditions of intensive farming where commercial feeds are designed, tested and proven.
The material in these rations is of less than optimal nutritional value unless it is consumed for several hours of the day every day. People that have to keep a full hopper of feed out each day are ensuring that their birds consuming enough low quality nutrition to survive and stay in good health.
Smaller portions of high quality nutrition are preferable for any number of reasons. But they're not fed all by themselves. It's important to try and mimic nature as best we can. Birds forage over wide areas and it's not every day that a peahen managed to catch a baby rattlensnake or consume half an ants nest of larvae. She's more likely to fill her crop with low quality food items like leaves and grass stems and small drupes and rootlets, which are largely indigestible but coated in resins containing essential acids and volatile oils that are high in antioxidant and/or chelating properties.

Unprocessed grains, i.e., milo and proso millet, whole oats and brown rice and other sources of vegetable based nutrition like kale and celery are less nutritious in some key components than enriched commercial feed. Nevertheless, the bodies of birds, especially non-domesticated species and non-commercial heritage breeds, are better designed for unprocessed grains and fibrous vegetable matter than they are for soft feeds. These whole feed stuffs require extended periods of time within the digestive system to be processed. Intensive farming has designed commercial feed with the central objective of high yield. There are no long term health benefits of these rations, indeed there is evidence that yield decreases in some egg layers and general health decreases in some turkeys experimentally fed on these rations (solely) for more than two years. The internal organs like the proventriculus and ventriculus of those effected birds became ulcerated and developed systematic infections due to factors related to the PH of these rations in the gut and the consistency (or rather lack of) of the material within the digestive system for a protracted period of the study. In other words, these high yield feeds can eventually burn out even the species they are designed for.

This is one reason commercial poultry houses turn their flocks so rapidly. They feed them to produce and then turn them into other profitable chicken products before they've even begun to decrease their productivity, or developed secondary bacterial infections within their digestive tracts. New egg layers replace the year old birds-new breeder turkeys replace the two year olds. Let me reiterate that these studies were conducted on commercial flocks in controlled situations and the birds were fed solely on various different high yield rations.

It should also be noted that these birds developed ulcerations without exposure to parasites or the common pathogens they might in a barnyard versus a closed in facility. Treating birds for parasites when there are ulcers in the linings of their digestive organs is potentially damaging the health of the bird more than helping. A secondary infection on top of these ulcers may take place and this may be followed by protozoan reinfection.

Regardless, Turkeys and chickens grow rapidly by nature.-Their wild ancestors are both fully mature in their first year. They need to eat constantly as domestic species because they're bred for greater yield and fed on rations of lower nutritional quality/cost. This is the model of industrial farming.
Big yield first, long-term health last. Those birds are not intended for long productive lives. They are not even intended to reproduce.

Peafowl and heritage breed poultry, gamebirds, rare waterfowl and landfowl, none of these creatures need to be managed like commercial poultry.
This is particularly true for species like peafowl with delayed maturity that takes years to become adult. Why do people rear these birds like high production poultry?
Well-meaning people tend to treat their valuable birds this way because they've become conditioned to maintain poultry with commercial objectives.

Remember, leaving food out all day means there is always food out- for every creature you attract to your feeders and the spillage of that feed is going to contaminate the soil and grow mold and bacteria and so on. The feed companies want you to continue feeding your backyard flocks like commercial farms. This is good for business obviously.

Getting back to the topic of the thread, what I meant to impart about UltraKibble supplement is that as a supplement mixed together with your favorite maintenance feed, very little is required. As it's highly digestible, required consumption of the product is miniscule.

UltraKibble is comprised of essential nutrients, entirely digestible proteins -all the essential amino acids- + macro and micro nutrients, probiotics, volatile oils, essential fatty acids and so on- basically- the kibble is a superfood in of itself. Because UltraKibble is a supplement, it's designed to ameliorate the maintenance diet, whatever that is, be that gamebird crumble or organic lay pellet -whatever your choice is. The kibble is designed to slow down the rate of digestion as it moves through the body. Dietary fibres in the kibble,both soluble and insoluble, swell within the crop. This allows the birds to absorb more nutrients from everything ingested, i.e., whatever else you're feeding.

I generally don't use commercial soft crumbles or pellets but many people that I know through animal husbandry do and they use them in concert with UltraKibble.
Personally, my preference is for a grain mixture that includes milo, millet, corn and so on with a small ratio of UltraKibble. Generous amounts of chard and celery are put out at least a few times a week and cooked brown rice and soaked chick peas, bananas, grated sweet potatoes- on occasion.

As the birds are only fed enough dry food for them to consume in a few hours twice a day and UltraKibble makes up a very small % of the overall ration of that dry food, I can speak toward its efficacy when fed in small portions. The dry ration includes considerably larger proportions of ingredients like milo and millet which are nutritious but deficient in certain nutrients that are met with in the kibble. The bulk of their dry feed is nonetheless grains. There may be one teaspoon of UltraKibble fed out per ten teaspoons of scratch grain and four cups of chard and celery. Some days the birds will have extra food put out and that will generally include something like soaked chickpeas and cooked rice. Kibble proportions are increased exponentially for reproducing and moulting birds with up to five parts kibble to five parts scratch grain.

Some species like Crested Argus and Malay Peacock Pheasants, Congo Peafowl and etc. they are fed on UltraKibble as a maintenance fare with supplementation of ingredients like fruit and milo but these are deep forest specialists with different nutritional requirements than common peafowl and their domestic strains.

Green Peafowl are somewhere in the middle. A green peafowl should have 25-50% of its dry ration be UltraKibble, more so during the nesting season.

Take care to insure that males and growing birds of all species are fed the same as the breeding females during this period of time as this is when in nature the most optimal nutrition is available to the birds of all ages. IF you want your male peafowl to have perfect plumage the following year, you begin to condition him for moult during the first weeks of nesting, that two or three weeks before the first sign of moulting train plumes. Those feathers don't drop until they've been shoved out of the socket by new feather cells. You'll want to insure that the new feather cells are built with the best possible nutrition and this needs to happen before the moult begins not after as the cells are already being regenerated by the time the train has moulted. In short, during nesting cycle/pre-moult period through to the moulting cycle, ultraKibble should be fed at a higher %. It's up to you to decide how much. My personal choice, is ~ 55-65% of the total dry ration be UK during this period of the year for Green Peafowl.
25-35% for Indian Peafowl. So you can see the Indian Peafowl and its domestic mutations are fed even during their nesting/regenerative season only as much as Green Peafowl are fed during their non-breeding season-. That's how different the two peafowl are from one another.





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[Yashar]

It's hard to get out of the "commercial production" mindset. It can be hard to imagine that you can go outside the box of "conventional" feeding when you are using high quality feed.

 

[teamsunbelt]

I recentley bought one of the Chick blocks. i am not sure of the health benefits, but the 6 chicks that had that as an option devoured it in days. I have since ordered another one for 12 Wyandotte Chicks and 3 Guineas that will be going outside this week. I have also put out two blocks for my two pens and bought a bag of Ultra Kibble and Chick Kibble. I have a breeding pen that I limit their free range time and I am hoping that the ultra kibble will make stronger chicks in the end. My egg layers will get their fair share as well. I hope to see a difference in egg production and overall health. If not, the cost will far out weigh any perceived benefits.

 

[Birdienumnums]

I don't agree with food available all the time for adult birds, I haven't kept peafowl for that many years now, personally, but have watched and helped feed the most experienced breeder in Australia's history, in my opinion, with well over 30 years experience.
He would only feed his adult birds year in, year out, a handful of feed per bird per day or what they would eat in three minutes or in one sitting.
when I fed them I would always give them more and it would be on the floor the next day, unless the rat population had breed up.
Peacocks will eat more than they need, but does it improve breeding production or hinder it?
Birdienumnums down under.

 

[bdfive]

Maybe it's a choice that breeder made and followed through on for years but not necessarily the right choice. I know someone that is only feeding a couple times a day for a short period and there is no doubt in my mind some of the birds are suffering due to the practice. The more dominant peafowl eat feed, the others go hungry. I now see some of them don't even bother to come down from the high roosts and try to eat. He also will have peahens setting on nests that don't know to get off during the humans scheduled feeding time. How healthy is it for them? If you can see that each bird gets their 1 hand full a day maybe I'll agree with it. I actually take veggies and fruit to the birds because I feel really bad for them. I may also loose a friend because I'm fussing at the individual. I've been there and see the urgency of the birds to get to the feed.....they act like they're starving. I've seen the pecking order in motion regarding food and it's heart wrenching. Personally I don't care about how well they produce ..... I care about their health and well being. Mine eat from deep enough pans the food doesn't spill onto the ground. They don't eat a lot ..... it's easy enough to pay attention and only keep what's necessary with a little more in their feeding vessel. When it's rationed it creates competition between the birds. I am concerned about rodents although in 4 years I've not had a problem. I'm considering putting the feed into buckets I have with screw on tops for the night or finding a way to seal the feeding dishes.

One more point. A handful can greatly differ. I'm a woman with a small hand unlike my husband that can probably hold twice as much. Along with any choice of feeding our birds one needs to use common sense. Unlike yourself that sees that each bird gets it's fair ration, not everyone will. The person I'm speaking of is a prime example. I'll let you know when his birds start becoming ill due to malnutrition.

LOL, just read this......don't mean to sound so ugly....I guess I'm just upset about the flock of peas mentioned above.

 

[Birdienumnums]

Maybe I have been Misunderstood?
But if someone out there is measuring food by the teaspoon and not allowing for the weather, health or individuals requirements they are off there heads and no one would be suggesting otherwise I am sure!
Breeding is a good gauge of health though and he bred heaps, these birds i am talking about were penned a trio per cage and none were allow to parent rear, although broodie hens eat less in my experience.
I think I have lossed more birds from old food laying around than he did from starving birds,
They did look hungry for about three minutes as I said and everytime I feed them there was food on the floor the next day and I have small hands, the birds metabolism is set at a X amount. Which was alot less than my expectations.
Rats seem to build over time and if you think you have one, you have a hundred and the last one is the hardest to get ride of in my experience.
Birdienumnums

 

[bdfive]

It's manageable to ration for a few birds but I believe the individual I'm speaking of hasn't realized his method doesn't work for the amount he has in his aviary. Someone told him it's only necessary to feed them a couple times a day and he isn't taking into consideration they all aren't making it to the food. The person that gave him the advice should have pointed out in this case to make sure each bird eats. Like I say, some people lack common sense. My peafowl have food available at all times. They don't eat a lot so I don't feel like I'm over feeding them. Giving them greens, bananas, sweet potatoes, etc; is another story. I could see them gorging themselves.....they love veggies and fruit. I don't give them to much fruit because of the sugar. My peahens lay anywhere from 5 to 9 eggs and they all hatch when they incubate them. My skills at hatching aren't perfected yet.

You say you believe you've lost more birds because of old food laying around then he did from starving birds. I've lost no birds due to old food. Please explain. Could it have become moldy or perhaps spoiled? Was the feed thrown on the ground where it mixed with feces then was consumed by the birds so maybe a internal parasite problem? I don't keep enough in the pans for mine to become old or bad. They eat fresh feed and I remove any human food they don't eat especially in this hot weather. I clean my pens using a dustpan and paint scraper a couple times a day putting the large droppings into pail and emptying it under our old growth Live Oak trees. Needless to say I can do this because I only have 4 pens that are 10 by 30 feet. LOL, I can sure tell if there are 7 birds in one instead of only 4. Just sold 3 Emerald Spalding yearlings leaving my initial breeders, 3 Java and 1 - 50% Green. I'm cleaning up so much less. Unfortunately in the adjoining pen I have 4 breeders but with 5 chicks maturing I want to keep for a while to see how they grow out. LOL, I better get the shovel, hahaha!!! Regarding that......I've seen a lot less when they eat more Ultrakibble and less gamebird feed and the cat kibble I give them for protein a couple times a week.

Thanks for reminding me about the rats and mice....I really need to do something with the feed nights. I have 3 feral cats that practically live around the pen but have the feeling I'm feeding them to much for them to want to hunt down rodents during the dark hours.

Love my hobby, love my birds but to be honest I'm plum wore out taking care of them. Seems breeding season takes up all my time. I keep joking with family and friends about getting my peafowl spayed and neutered, LOL!!!!

 

[Birdienumnums]

My birds are in 6 by 20 meter pens and are all grass/planted and open, I only keep green peacocks now,
I have lost a couple birds in the last four years in wet weather, and I think it was from them eating wet older food, which I tried to avoid.
I am going to go back to feeding them less per setting, but they will be able to eat additional feed if they are hungry, that will be all under cover, not there preferred type (filler)
The weather is not extreme where I am.
I have been moving them out of there pens in the off season to give the ground a spell and help break any worm cycle.
I would like to try the UK on my birds but it is not here in Aus yet?
I do feed cat food, the pilchard variety, sunflower, sweet potato, beetroot, peanuts, fresh green peas, coarse grain mix with molasses and turkey grower pellets and Resolution has got me and the birds onto Shrimp known as prawns here.
I started with two breeding pairs and bred 26 young the second season from those four birds.
I obtained more adults eight in total and bred 32 young in four years, I culled back to three adults and only they're young, after advice from overseas of the purest birds?
I am currently sowing out there pens to try and parent rear them, which was Resolution's idea,
All my baby greens have been reared under turkeys and are very quiet and I think they will make great parents, some of the older birds, I have that were chicken raised are crazy.
I read somewhere that turkeys don't carry worms so I tried them and they did a great job and there is a massive difference in there temperament.
Birdienumnums

 

[bdfive]

I think of getting a few turkey often and should do it. Sold some peafowl to a lady that has some that are so friendly. I'd love their temperament passing on to green peachicks. Mine are like wild Indians, LOL!!! I have a yearling that will eat from my hand but he's pacing all day...so hyper. He also cries for an India Blue hen he was partial raised with but had to separate them when he started plucking her. She is free ranging now and he fusses when she gets to far from the pen which is now all the time. Sometimes I want to let him out so bad but fear he'll take off. I'll have to start a thread asking how many successfully free range 100% Green Peafowl.