What all brands of poultry feed contain animal bi-products?

[MysteriaSdrassa]

I do have to occasionaly chuckle about the fuss some people make about "straight grain" and "no animal product" feeds being the supposed "natural" feed for chickens.
Given enough freedom to eat what they want,, chickens will quite happily show their T-Rex ancestry. And not just by going after bugs and worms,,, oh no,, I have seen my birds happily dig out nests of baby mice and gobble them up and then chase down the momma mouse for more.. frogs are also high on the nom list. I have even witnessed them chase down and kill and feast on garter snakes that have wandered unwisely into the their range.

 

[torilovessmiles]

I do have to occasionaly chuckle about the fuss some people make about "straight grain" and "no animal product" feeds being the supposed "natural" feed for chickens.
Given enough freedom to eat what they want,, chickens will quite happily show their T-Rex ancestry. And not just by going after bugs and worms,,, oh no,, I have seen my birds happily dig out nests of baby mice and gobble them up and then chase down the momma mouse for more.. frogs are also high on the nom list. I have even witnessed them chase down and kill and feast on garter snakes that have wandered unwisely into the their range.

I have to agree, I have no problem with meat by-products. There is no part of an animal that a chicken will not eat naturally. I've seen my chickens strip all of the flesh from a dead rabbit that the cats killed and wouldn't eat, a dead chick that I thought I buried in the bottom of the compost pile (they dug it out). I've seen them swallow frogs and mice whole and eat the most disgusting insects. I've had to chase them away from a dead chicken that I was burying!
They eat mostly plants, but they're still omnivores. Feeding them vegetarian doesn't really benefit them.
By-products are simply tendons, organs, marrow, and other things that people don't like to eat. Basically, the stuff a lot of us feed our animals when we butcher a bird/other livestock ourselves. Animals in the wild eat every last scrap of flesh and often bone, they're not out there eating choice cuts!

 

[Ifish]

Really? Well, consider me schooled. I had no idea feed mills routinely changed a ingredient, such as the source of protein (which I thought was kinds of important) with so little fanfare. And it's just standard operating procedure you say? Wonder when they are going to switch it up again -- and make all the vegetarian feed meat-containing and all the animal by product-containing feed vegetarian. Is it in odd-numbered years? What a curious business practice.

Putting words in other peoples mouths isn't good practice. Simply calling the supply store to ask about animal protein in the feed you were interested in would work much better than your current tantrum.

Not "The" source of protein, but "A" source of protein in the feed. Meat proteins are more costly, but can still be had in custom mixes at a local feed mill, and maybe a couple commercial formulas.

Changing formulas in all types of animal feed happens, you just gotta roll with it.

 

[speckledhen]

Oh, dear God, they'll eat each other when given half a chance.

Mine have gone very well on "porcine protein" feed all their lives. The worst thing to do is feed a penned group of birds with no other source of animal protein a vegetarian feed. Feather picking was one of the developments/complaints when the new trend to "no animal protein" got started. And the protein levels are generally too low overall as well, especially for good heritage breeder stock.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

Pray tell, name one chicken feed with those ingredients listed. We are limited to what is local.

Why do you think that the big feed mills buy so many Thesaurus? There are no longer any small scale feed buyers who earn a living or even a modest profit off of poultry farming. So the small scale vocal feed-buying public drives the market for back-yard chicken feed i.e. feed by the sack.

My family ran (or it ran us) one of the last small commercial chicken farms to buy sacked feed in relatively large amounts. This was almost 60 years ago. We needed a staked bed one-ton truck to haul the feed that we fed. Every 50 lb. sack of chicken feed had to be handled a minimum of 4 or 5 times between the feed mill and the feed trough. That means that by the time that the chickens first see their food that every fifty pound bag, and there are 40 of these bags in one ton of feed, represented 10,000 pounds of lifting, lugging, and toting. Feeding 5,000 chickens X 4oz per day per chicken = 20,000 ounces of chicken feed. 20,000 ounces of chicken feed / by 16 ounces is equal to 1,250 pounds or 5/8 of a ton of chicken feed daily. A weeks worth of chicken groceries then weighs almost 5 tons. This is equal to almost 40,000 pounds of toting and fetching per week. This was before gathering the eggs, candling them, grading them, and putting them in cartons and lugs or cases, not to mention loading them on the truck to carry them to market is figured in. After this who has the energy left over for a spa membership? The cure is automated or automatic feeding systems and egg gathering systems that allowed the farmer to keep more birds and hopefully earn more money, at least it meant that the farmer didn't spend everything that he earned on hernia trusts and chiropractor visits.

This is the reason that there is today a two tiered chicken food industry. One bulk feed system for those chickens (actually today it's Tyson's, Perdue's, ConAgra's or ADM's who own the chickens) who eat a more appropriate diet than some (but not all) back yard chickens eat. There are some un-natural chicken foods touted as healthy and complete by the milling companies who grow off single celled organisms in large vats of chemicals. Science is unsure if these microbes are single cell plants or single celled animals. These microbes were first discovered in the volcanic hot springs in Yellow Stone National Park. Some feed companies advertise these microbes or maybe it is bacterium as a suitable substitute for animal protein. But these feeds can not be sold or advertised as "organic" or even "natural" because they contain a "manufactured" or un-natural ingredient that not even science is sure about what it is. This is why they sometimes sell it as "Vegetarian" feed.

This is part of the reason that today not all chicken feed is appropriate chicken feed, little less healthy chicken feed.

 

[speckledhen]

Why do you think that the big feed mills buy so many Thesaurus? There are no longer any small scale feed buyers who earn a living or even a modest profit off of poultry farming. So the small scale vocal feed-buying public drives the market for back-yard chicken feed i.e. feed by the sack.

My family ran (or it ran us) one of the last small commercial chicken farms to buy sacked feed in relatively large amounts. This was almost 60 years ago. We needed a staked bed one-ton truck to haul the feed that we fed. Every 50 lb. sack of chicken feed had to be handled a minimum of 4 or 5 times between the feed mill and the feed trough. That means that by the time that the chickens first see their food that every fifty pound bag, and there are 40 of these bags in one ton of feed, represented 10,000 pounds of lifting, lugging, and toting. Feeding 5,000 chickens X 4oz per day per chicken = 20,000 ounces of chicken feed. 20,000 ounces of chicken feed / by 16 ounces is equal to 1,250 pounds or 5/8 of a ton of chicken feed daily. A weeks worth of chicken groceries then weighs almost 5 tons. This is equal to almost 40,000 pounds of toting and fetching per week. This was before gathering the eggs, candling them, grading them, and putting them in cartons and lugs or cases, not to mention loading them on the truck to carry them to market is figured in. After this who has the energy left over for a spa membership? The cure is automated or automatic feeding systems and egg gathering systems that allowed the farmer to keep more birds and hopefully earn more money, at least it meant that the farmer didn't spend everything that he earned on hernia trusts and chiropractor visits.

This is the reason that there is today a two tiered chicken food industry. One bulk feed system for those chickens (actually today it's Tyson's, Perdue's, ConAgra's or ADM's who own the chickens) who eat a more appropriate diet than some (but not all) back yard chickens eat. There are some un-natural chicken foods touted as healthy and complete by the milling companies who grow off single celled organisms in large vats of chemicals. Science is unsure if these microbes are single cell plants or single celled animals. These microbes were first discovered in the volcanic hot springs in Yellow Stone National Park. Some feed companies advertise these microbes or maybe it is bacterium as a suitable substitute for animal protein. But these feeds can not be sold or advertised as "organic" or even "natural" because they contain a "manufactured" or un-natural ingredient that not even science is sure about what it is. This is why they sometimes sell it as "Vegetarian" feed.

This is part of the reason that today not all chicken feed is appropriate chicken feed, little less healthy chicken feed.

Ooookay, and after being crosseyed reading your post, what good does all that do me? I must buy chicken feed at a co-op or local feed store. There are no feed mills around to cut out any middlemen for me. I don't even get your point. I have to go by a label's ingredients, as we all do with our food and I am stuck with whatever I can buy locally, no matter what it is. I choose feeds that smell fresh and still contain some form of animal protein in them. If there isn't truth in labeling, not much I can do since I don't have a lab to test the feed I buy. I don't give a flying fig about "organic". Means nothing to me except higher cost.

I have to go by how my chickens respond to a feed, how it smells to me (not like chemicals like most Purina feeds do to me, whether medicated or not), etc. My chickens all free range on a rotating basis so they are not stuck with the commercial feed alone. It's the best I can do and they seem to do fine. Whatever is in the Tucker Milling feed, it gives them good feather quality and plenty of energy and they are not feather pickers.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

.... If there isn't truth in labeling, not much I can do since I don't have a lab to test the feed I buy. I don't give a flying fig about "organic". Means nothing to me except higher cost.

I have to go by how my chickens respond to a feed, how it smells to me (not like chemicals like most Purina feeds do to me, whether medicated or not), etc. My chickens all free range on a rotating basis so they are not stuck with the commercial feed alone. It's the best I can do and they seem to do fine. Whatever is in the Tucker Milling feed, it gives them good feather quality and plenty of energy and they are not feather pickers.

I agree with you about "Organic" chicken feed. However the old activist in me says that you can kick and scream until the feed mills hear us and do a better job of formulating and labeling their feed. All too often the mill is oiling the vocal squeaking wheel, because they are no longer paying attention to small scale poultry keepers, just the PC crowd. That is our fault by not standing up for our birds and making our 'druthers' in a chicken feed known.

I seem to do OK on my morning pork protein and I an sure chickens will to. The point is that the milling companies are always finding new ways to call a spade a club by kowtowing to a segment of the feed buying public who wield influence way out of proportion to their numbers. If enough of us speak up I suspect that it won't be long before we see a so called "Heritage" Chicken feed or at least one with a more logical or easy to understand list of ingredients.

 

[speckledhen]

I agree with you about "Organic" chicken feed. However the old activist in me says that you can kick and scream until the feed mills hear us and do a better job of formulating and labeling their feed. All too often the mill is oiling the vocal squeaking wheel, because they are no longer paying attention to small scale poultry keepers, just the PC crowd. That is our fault by not standing up for our birds and making our 'druthers' in a chicken feed known.

I seem to do OK on my morning pork protein and I an sure chickens will to. The point is that the milling companies are always finding new ways to call a spade a club by kowtowing to a segment of the feed buying public who wield influence way out of proportion to their numbers. If enough of us speak up I suspect that it won't be long before we see a so called "Heritage" Chicken feed or at least one with a more logical or easy to understand list of ingredients.

Well, we can hope, can't we? Until then, we just have to do the best we can with what commercial feeds are on the market and maybe call the companies and ask some questions.

 

[dfalchek]

For the record, Australian research showed that BSE prions DO NOT transfer "mad cow" to poultry, its eggs or meat, when included in feed. As a result, that country reversed its ban on animal protein in chicken feed. But since when does science matter to Americans? Thanks, "all natural" chicken keepers -- for demanding a quite unnatural vegetarian feed to the exclusion of appropriate feed options.

 

[dfalchek]

Putting words in other peoples mouths isn't good practice. Simply calling the supply store to ask about animal protein in the feed you were interested in would work much better than your current tantrum.

Not "The" source of protein, but "A" source of protein in the feed. Meat proteins are more costly, but can still be had in custom mixes at a local feed mill, and maybe a couple commercial formulas.

Changing formulas in all types of animal feed happens, you just gotta roll with it.

Ignorant people spreading misinformation should be a concern. Some of the folks on these threads, I have learned, intentionally mislead people. So I won't roll with that, thank you. I can not begin to imagine why people would try to mislead others knowingly.. but some are at BYC. Maybe they are connected to certain feed companies -- I don't know. They forget, the internet remembers everything, and they more they post, the more likely they are found out and called out.