URGENT! Chicken layer feed has "dead animal bodies" in it?

[ranchhand]

Quote:
Don't fall for scare tactics, go back to layer feed.

 

[ChickensAreSweet]

I wouldn't be worried about the layer feed for that...but if you do want to mix your own feed, there are some of us who do (like me

) and you can do a search for recipes on BYC and look at my BYC page (Organics North is another) for my recipe.

They also sell organic layer pellets and crumbles if you are wanting more purity in the food.

 

[Chikndinner]

I love to eat dead animal bodies. In fact I do so every day. The best is when I turn one of my pet chickens into an dead animal body and eat it too.

 

[speckledhen]

I think the OP meant animals like cats and dogs, which is what I took it to mean by "from the pound".

I was on the public bus with my mom the other day, and i saw an advertisement on top of the seats, and it read that you should stop purchasing chicken layer feed cause they put a bunch of crap in it like dead animals bodies from the animal pound!

Of course, the pigs they use in the porcine meal are deceased, LOL.​

 

[Neil Grassbaugh]

This is one of the standard scare tactics of the animal rights industry. They roll out this tried and true method to decrease the value of animals utilized by humans.

What suprises me is that they didn't use the "flea collars ground into the slurry of rotting puppies and little kitty carcases" tactic as well.

FYI AT NO POINT WHATSOEVER DOES THE RENDERING INDUSTRY ACCEPT WHAT THEY CALL "DOMESTICS" FOR PROCESSING.

 

[redfeather]

It is true that low quality feeds of both chicken feed, cat feed and dog feed can contain questionable ingredients.

Most pounds send the euthanized carcasses of dogs and cats to the rendering plant. Usually they are rendered down into a fat and then processed into "animal tallow" or "yellow grease" or "animal fat" or any other moniker it has as a proteen source for the feeds. This is absolutely horrible for dogs and cats (mad cow disease came from feeding dead cows to living cows-- cannibalism is a BAD THING), and while it might not sound horrible at first for chickens, you have to understand something about the way the dogs and cats are euthanized.
They are injected with a drug called sodium pentobarbitol... this drug is NOT destroyed in rendering plants heat, and so is effectively passed down, in however low concentrations, through the rendered products and eventually the products they are added to.

Purina has a soy based layer hen feed, and I use that. I only feed my dogs high quality dog foods where the "meat" sources are named and not quetionable (I also don't feed them grains either, since wolves don't plow, harvest or cook grains in the wild, but that's another story).

It's up to you to decide what you want to feed, but for me, I strongly prefer that my chickens not be eating sodium pentobarbitol tainted food.


ETA: I am not with AR groups by any means, and am actually vehemantly opposed to them... but this is something I have done extensive research on and I have found nothing to disprove it.

 

[KellyHM]

The animals from the pound that are euthanized are generally incinerated. The drug they're euthanized with could kill other animals if their tissues were eaten, so nobody would be that stupid. There are actually laws that say euthanized animals of any type have to be buried deep enough not to be dug up, or incinerated.

 

[fargosmom]

Quote:
. . . . and then you do some research into what Monsanto has done to soy, affecting both the environment and those small farmers who would prefer not to deal with an agri-giant, and have to question whether soy is really a better alternative.

I've been using a feed called Cascade (purchased through Azure Standard) which is corn- and soy-free, organic and uses crab and fish meal for the protein. It's pretty expensive, but I feel good about all the ingredients, and you should have seen how excited the hens were when I first offered it to them instead of their regular pellets.

So it is possible to satisfy your higher sensibilities while keeping your animals happy (I used the same evaluation to find a dog food that isn't full of gross stuff), but it is more expensive. That said, the cheap foods that use these other objectionable ingredients have a much higher, hidden cost in the form of ingredients that are things like dead pets or chemically-tainted GMO grains.

. . . Just my two cents

I find what we all eat and how we get it to be of vital interest - it's why I started keeping my own hens in the first place. But I truly do realize that we all have to do whatever we can afford, and times are tough, and cheap chicken feed is still probably better for chickens than table scraps.

 

[Kaneke]

as they said, read the label !

Ingredient Lists:
****
****
this is the Purina I have:

ground corn, dehulled soybean meal, corn distillers dried grains, wheat middlings, molasses, (then a list of clearly identifiable minerals and vitamins) ... then it specifically says "Animal fat- and protein-free"
****
****
this from the local feed store:

grain products, plant protein products, processed grain by-products, (then a similar list of minerals and vitamins)

doesn't specifically say no animal products, but NONE of the ingredients listed are commonly derived from animals

------

so if I want my chicks to have animal protein, I have to go catch some worms or bugs for them

some of this is hard-wired into them -- they had never seen a worm, I am sure, but they POUNCED on the one I offered yesterday. what a kerfluffle !

 

[KellyHM]

Pretty much ALL layer feed is free of animal protein. This is why the big companies get away with selling "vegetarian" eggs that are EXACTLY the same as the regular eggs...just more expensive.