I agree totally...so what brands are you recommending? I don't see anything suggested or structure to feeding it in your post.......The problem in our area is
TSC and one other local feed store carry Purina layer pellets and crumbles as well as thier own brand mix which really inst very good. Chickens are Omnivores they will eat veg and proteins
TSC sells too many chicks then doesn't keep enough supplies on hand for people coming in mad cause there is no starter crumbs for the 25 babies they just sold them...its a mess
Upon switching my feed to Purina layer pellets the rooster went into a strange molt and has not recovered.Thought this would be a good feed with no problems and started feeding it for convenience, But wasn't sure about them eating Marigold additive as they wont touch them when out browsing. so why add it to feed ? and the bag is labeled chicken feed with picture of chicken on it...I'm not real crazy about soybeans being added to feeds either maybe just a sprinkle of corn , I'm sure a chicken left to fend for themselves might eat some of those but wouldn't choose that over anything else. Mine love to stand under the blackcap bush and wind up with purple beaks, they really sample everything. as for soybean and corn ,it is in almost all chicken products avail here and everywhere.look at labels. So then the question is what is the answer? If starving to death chickens might eat Marigolds but its really the only thing they don't really touch when outside, though they do dust bath around them..I suppose if nothing else around they might eat them and Purina crumbles has it added to their chicken feed.They will trip all over themselves to get a little piece of oats. they throw everything out of the way to get them
When I was feeding my own mix which I am going to have to drive way out of my way to get my own mix with a sprinkle of calf manna gamebird formula never caused a problem ....in 25 years no problems. so why with this new Purina feed which had a lot of soybean and Marigold is there now a problem? If this feed is supposed to be designed for chickens as the bag states my roosters feathers look bad .
the foragers.
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A Fat forager, She knows what she likes to eat out there, like turning me loose in a grocery store. thou I might go for the ice cream
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Here's a few of the issues as I understand them at any rate. And I've probably made some gross generalizations. I'll invite you investigate what I've written and correct any mistakes I may have made.
1. The cost of feed commodities
Costs of the feedstuffs that go into your readily available lay pellet and crumble, your chick starter and chick mash are traded on the open market.
They are effected by the costs of petrol, the adoption and subsequent demand corn derivatives such as ethanol and probably most of all, the sudden surge in demand for "cheap and efficient" feeds for poultry.
When the Iraq War began, which not incidentally coincided with a new wave of backyard poultry farming, the cost of petrol went through the roof. Trends in fuel consumption were shifting. Everyone seemed to be driving an SUV back then and even Hummers were a common sight on every other suburban street. The oil industry soaked up every lost drop in the new surge in demand for fuel.
The oil companies
gauged their prices and this left ordinary consumers, for example the regional ma and pa trucking industry, holding the bag.
They could simply not afford to ship the grain and soybean to processing plants at the same cost that they had just two or three years earlier.
Consequently, the cost of unprocessed food commodities increased. Trucking companies delivered the raw materials to their buyers/ processing plants where they were/are pulverized into fine flour and prerequisite anti-caking agents, preservatives etc. in preparation for a second shipping as processed materials for livestock and human nutrition products. They are obliged to maintain or increase their profit margin, so they hike their prices to the appropriate level and pass increase onto the next buyer in the food chain, no pun intended, (sort of). The feed manufacturers mill then buys this processed feed commodity flour for the increased price and go about the process of making either extruded kibble ( generally for fish, cats and dogs) or the more typical steam extrusion of mash, crumbles and pellets.
Because these companies have just had to buy the processed feedstuff flours for more money, they are stuck with a dilemma. How can they make their feed and not lose their customers-their customers being the companies that pay them to make tonnage of special formulations, bag it and glue their respective labels on it. In other words, the feed manufacturer has clients. Those clients are feed companies that pay the feed manufacturers to manufacture their brand name feeds. Several different brand name product lines are generally produced by a single manufacturer. So, getting back to the issue of feed commodities, the feed manufacturer is often obliged to tweak the formulations in just such a way that the guaranteed analysis isn't changed much if at all, but different ingredients that make up the recipe are either increased or reduced depending on their highly individualised market values. For example, the cost of corn went through the roof when ethanol was being made primarily from corn and corn farmers switched their fields out from growing livestock corn to corn for ethanol. The ethanol made gasoline more efficient, thereby helping the consumer use less gasoline to drive further, thereby helping sustain the larger economy. The feed commodity of livestock corn was now so expensive, feed manufacturers were obliged to use more soybean meal to edge up the % of protein in order to reach the guaranteed nutritional analysis sewn onto each bag.
There is simply no incentive for feed manufacturers of livestock feed -=at least poultry feed manufacturers to argue a case for a better balance of nutrition because readily available data taken from industrial breeds in industrial situations supports the notion that productivity of growth in broilers or egg production in layers is not effected
within specific parameters. These feed manufacturers are not making any money on heritage breeds like the Marans or Buckeye much less heirloom stock of those heritage breeds, or heirloom stock of designer breeds like the Seabright or Old English Game. They make their money on tonnage sold to commercial egg production companies and large scale commercial broiler companies. They also sell tonnage in individual 50 lb bags of that same material for sale in farm and supply shops like Agway and Southern States.
Getting back on track here, the feed manufacturers ended up trading out corn for soybean in order to maintain their profit margins at that specific point in time when corn commodities went through the roof, when ethanol was made primarily from corn. A major drought in the cornbelt or flooding in the wheat belt; freezing temperatures late in the season on soybean crops- this all can end up having an effect on the feed manufacturers bottom line.
The cost of gasoline is always the prevailing wind one way or the other irregardless of the amount of food commodities that actually come to the market.
What this means for the end consumer- that is the poultier and her valuable poultry or gamebirds, is that the nutrient ratios effect the long-term health of her flocks.
How? Soybean meal that has not been heated to a certain temperature may have certain negative effects on the reproductive health and hormonal fluctuations in fowl.
This would be true for your pet dog or cat but the soybean meal has been processed in such a way that it is not only more digestible, it is also stripped of some its capacity to produce certain
phytoestrogens. Traditional commercial laypellet and crumbles are of course very high in soybean meal and this material has not been heated to the degree necessary to eliminate some of these issues.
Nevertheless, soybean meal is incredibly reliable and relatively inexpensive way to increase protein levels in feeds. The question is, is the diet appropriate for breeding stock? Is it appropriate for the backyard hobbyist that is working with what will eventually become heirloom stock? Or are these commercial feeds more appropriate for industrial usage for industrial breeds in commercial settings?
Chickens maintained on feeds contrived from these industrial formulations are obliged to eat constantly to maintain their physiological (and psychological) health.
One consequence being that the food passes through them so quickly it has scarcely the time digest. What is more, the vegetable proteins present certain challenges to the digestive process. They are not insurmountable but the rate of digestion needs to be effected in order for more complete digestion of the feed. If the feed manufacturers formulated their feeds to remain in the digestive system longer they would sell less feed. If the birds maintained on these feeds were capable of maintaining the level of production the market for eggs or meat requires of them,
over the long term hens would not need to be culled every two to three years and replaced with new pullets. This would mean fewer older pullets go into making pet food products and campbells soup...You probably get the point.
Moving on...
2. The demand for feed
Obviously, every single person reading this is well aware that the interest in backyard poultry farming is growing exponentially.
Simultaneously, the local food movement is growing leaps and bounds resulting in more sustainable/ethical poultry farming on a sub-commercial level.
This means that feed stores are suddenly selling more poultry feed than they have in
decades. The majority of the new consumers have never known a day when a bag of "quality" feed didn't cost at least $13.00. Organic feed is much more expensive and candidly, the American retail consumer- that is the family that buys food in the market or restaurant is willing to pay more for beef or pork, milk or vegetables but for whatever reason, they are just not willing to pay more for poultry. A possible exception is eggs, which are starting to go up in price with their readily discernible quality.
Getting back to the demand for feed, the costs of the imperfect feed are in direct comparison to pet food very inexpensive. Compared with large livestock, birds consume very little. The market supports high prices, irregardless of the fact that the long-term health of the poultry has been compromised. While the feedstores are obliged to carry fifteen and twenty different brands of pet food for companion animals, up until nowadays, they only needed to carry three or four brands of poultry feed. Supply is up but now we have to work as a collective to force the stores to provide higher quality food. It seems counter-intuitive to me that inferior products that compromise the health of the bird are status quo when there is no other product than the egg ( before milk) that goes through so little sanitation before consumption.
As my grampa used to say, "Eggs are a straight from the butt of a chicken into the mouth of the public's sort of business!" This generally came before a serious reprimand because a farm hand ( read Us kids) failed to keep the nest boxes regularly cleaned and filled with new straw- failed to keep perches clean of manure- failed to keep poop from collecting beneath perches. He also made this announcement at breakfast and if memory serves me correctly, also at a wedding for Aunt Sharon over the o'dourves tray prominently featuring deviled eggs ( not his own but store bought much to his consternation)...
Anyway- the demand for feed is not going anywhere. Consequently, the feed manufacture has no qualms feeding your hens a diet high enough in soy to sterilize a high-school football team.
3. Naïveté of the consumer
There hasn't been any real effort for poultry "experts" to break out of the box since the industrial revolution at any case. Every book or article you read regurgitates the same tired information in some familiar if slightly reworded drivel. There is an allergy to discussing the natural history of the fowl and a general avoidance to highlight real poultry science so as to not alienate readership. These poultry books are so dumbed down a caveman can't make use of them...
The naïveté of the consumer is so pronounced the vast majority of new chicken aficionados actually go into feed stores asking what is the best food for their pet chicken or backyard flock. They've probably not been keeping chickens at home and most of their customer base is likely either garden or large livestock based.
So- store clerks generally point to what sells best not what is best for the bird. An additional issue is that the horse owner or dog or cat lover, they are making decisions based on intuitive knowledge. They live eat and breath with their companion animal. People seem a bit embarrassed talking about chickens. People that don't know anything about chickens but that they order it on the menu and only like white meat- ( most people out there) sort of giggle and the inanity of it-chicken lovers!
So to get the point, the feed manufacturer is dependent upon the feed companies to keep their customer base stupid. Feed stores are the conduit of that dum dum down dribble. If they were a bit more ethical they might tell you that you are wasting money on feed that is inefficient, messy, and extremely expensive for what's in it.
They would also tell you that they haven't put much thought into the nutritional value of the egg that comes out of a bird fed on this stuff.
4. Deconstruction of breeds
This is one of my favorite soapbox topics. It begins with an adage a mentor of mine in the animal nutrition business likes to repeat with fervor:
"We've spent literally hundreds if not thousands of years to select breed for a chicken that can live entirely indoors and now we are in a race to get those exact same breeds onto the pasture as if they've suddenly been transformed into hoofstock!"
Ok- admittedly that's more about the new generation of "me!me!me!" farmer growing up underfoot everywhere you look. These are the guys wearing birkenstock sandals talking about organic food and raising only grass fed beef
. They keep generic chicken breeds, literally by the hundreds, in tiny mobile outhouses( called for some inane reason " chicken Tractors"), which they pull about from one square in a flat, grass covered paddock to the next, as if ignorant of the fact that chickens are actually forest birds...The objective of course is to suck the greatest yield out of the bird in the shortest time frame in an artificial dichotomy of the cruel boxed in egg layer. At the end of the day its all about "Me! Me! Me!" all about what he'll get for selling the egg and not at all about the chicken that lays it...
yeah that's a digression. But plod away- we must
Pick up any reputable hatchery catalog. My favorite of course is Cackle because they drop ship for just about everyone else and they have an incredible ethic.
You can study the Sandhill Preservation hatchery as well.
What do they all have in common? They sell day old chicks naturally. They also have in common that they can barely keep up with the orders for new chicks and there is no day is long enough to deal with every phone call and letter demanding explanation for what is wrong with their order. For you see, one out of ever five customers is a newbie and their questions and concerns are as long as the day. One in ten customers is a chronic complainer. And sadly, of late, a whole bunch of loyal customers are ending up with chicks that are dead in the box or die shortly after; all roosters appear in a straight run- or orders have to be returned because no eggs or fertility- poor hatch rate is the rule with some of the more intrinsically versus commercially valuable breeds.
Let me rewind a moment to affirm what we all know already. There are more
big production egg and broiler chicks being sold in an afternoon than those intrinsically valuable Lakenvelders and Campines - more than those truly rare and endangered breeds like the Saipan and Yokohama- are sold in four or five months. That doesn't mean much these days when people are picking out breeds like candy in a movie theatre. But those breeds are for the backyard hobbyist by and large. The bigger money is going to be sales to sub-commercial and commercial farms those big production breeds are a no brainer. Its going to lay one egg every day for two or three years and then get replaced with another just like it. The impetus is for the hatchery to maintain very healthy stocks of the big production breeds like those linked above. But what I wanted to get at is this. There is a complete deconstruction of breeds taking place.
One rooster is put on a dozen or more hens. All the offspring end up being out of this one rooster. The feed that the hatcheries are obliged to use without breaking the bank are making it difficult for very many of the birds to even reproduce successfully. Embryos cannot develop in an eggyolk whose nutrients are built almost entirely on amino acids and micronutrients designed for adult industrial applications in commercial settings.
This is creepy because what is in all intensive purposes happening is the gradual extirpation of lineages of birds that can actually self-select for mates, set on their own eggs, rear their own chicks successfully without human intervention --
The birds that are being produced by the hatcheries, and this is no fault of their own, are being inadvertently selected to exist on these new counter-productive feedstuffs. Like peaches and watermelons back in the 5o's there is still some glimmer of hope that these lines can be bred from but give them another twenty generations at this and who knows...we could be stuck with the equivalent of a Cornish Rock cross every time we select a breed from a hatchery-
The birds you buy today are going to be able to subsist on these diets much better than a Red Junglefowl naturally. But the way that most are designed -is to eat so much food ( low nutritional value food) that shifting them onto a new diet regime is going to seem counter-intuitive to people. They think that chickens really aught to eat as much as a dog every single day. Its not that current generations of these breeds are incapable of surviving on optimal feed, its that we cannot afford to feed them this way- or at least this is what one might think based upon the outdated concepts of poultry husbandry that one reads about -thought through during the industrialization of food movement all those decades ago...
The deconstruction of the breed is underway. Just as the Labrador dogs of your grandmother's generation actually had a brain, and the Persian kitty of the 1950's could actually exercise off the couch and even catch the occasional rodent- (In those day a
hairless cat had a very bad case of mange and or ringworm...) Yes- all these breeds became very popular and people with no particular use for a hunting dog bought one and dog kennels that specialized in one breed that used just one sire and one grump that were just perfect soon made a pretty coin out of selling carbon copies of the same dog. Those carbon copies bred together and made more carbon copies. After a few hundred generations we ended up with
useless if cuddly jello dogs . The point being that the breed's best characteristics were lost while their appearance was ever refined to a no diversity phase.
Aside from the quintessential Plymouth Barred Rock, there is probably no more an American breed than the Rhode Island Red. Its been a fixture for so long on the American farm it's difficult to imagine chickens without congering up one in the mind. But this breed began to suffer a very serious decline because of the deterioration of the breed and the sense of responsibility of its stewards. Strains were bred for industrial and commercial purposes and there were very few poultiers concerned with the heirloom lineages of old heritage stock. The industrial strains were bred to live indoors their whole lives consuming an never-ending supply of lay mash and living in very crowded conditions. These birds became readily available to the novice chicken raising public during one of the last great phases in backyard chickendom back in the 1950's (if memory serves me correctly) and these industrial strains soon became the only strain available to the general population of small farmers and backyard hobbyists. The industrial strain was a very poor mother. Its roosters were terrible rapists, resulting in lots of scalped hens and poor fertility- and they were often known to attack people. What is more, they were really poor mothers. Those that went broody often failed to get off the nest once the chicks hatched and those that did more often than not lost a large % of their chicks in a few days or weeks. Additionally, the industrial strain Rhode Island Red was not much a free ranger. It absolutely tore up a garden eating everything that grew under its feet ( because they were/are constantly famished) and due to their ridiculous shape and weight they simply could not escape a fox or hawk without operating their own can of mace or a tazer. The Rhode Island Red went from being the self-sufficient farm fowl of American history to
the big fat stupid chicken that had to be replaced every eight or ten months but laid a nice big brown egg. The hatcheries had to actually artificially inseminate some of the "better and more improved" strains...
So how did it all come to this? Well, for one thing it was never of much interest to the novice poultier to learn about the cultural significance of their egg layer. I'm speaking about a different generation than this one- the generation that started the chase of these important breeds that is driving them across that busy road to ruin.
So that all American chicken breed the Rhode Island Red, did you know where it started?
The
Rhode Island Red was created at the turn of the 19th century from crossing
Malay Game roosters to
Brown Leghorn and
Cochin hens.It wasn't until the early 30's that the breed had reached its zenith. But it bred true and its egg production was unparalleled in a dual purpose breed that is. Its yellow skinned carcass made it to the Sunday dinner table ( and likely prevented many mean roosters from becoming genetically overrepresented if you get my drift)...
But the breed was practically doomed if for the march of "progress" and "utility". People didn't expect anything else from a utility breed. It could be tame, a bit on the daft side but sweet-natured generally-and it laid lots of nice eggs. Roosters tasted great. It didn't matter that it was degenerating from overbreeding of exhausted bloodlines or that the strains were less and less appropriate for free ranging. This new model of the constantly cooped dual purpose chicken paved the way ( in poop copious amounts of hard-pack poo no doubt) to the industrial chicken farming model of today. It led to the development of these substandard feeds and the adoption of feed hoppers and inclined perch racks, the myth that hens needed to butchered at two years- I think you catch my drift.
It is these big dual purpose breeds that have been "improved" for commercial use that have transformed the poultry feed industry. Everytime you go to purchase feed for your heirloom lineage stock -your heritage breed flocks- you are feeding them the feed designed to fulfill the needs of ethic free farmer.
5. Degeneration of the captive environment as a consequence of # 1-4
Lastly, what ends up happening is that due to all the above factors, the domestic chicken absolutely destroys its captive habitat- the pen, the coop, the cote- whatever you call it. They are bored out of their minds and dig up everything- their manure is so high in phosphate and ammonia it drives flies away and makes your neighbors complain. Mites and lice are breeding in the cracks between boards. Sooner than later you'll have to burn the darn thing and start over and that's after some yucky disease breaks out because you inadvertently perpetuated that good old cycle of disease and infection by following the rules of the livestock feed industry that has you addicted to their piss poor lay pellet- that you need to replace every two to three weeks and don't have the time to scrape and shovel off the floor of your coops before you refill the hoppers...
I'm projecting there because that's what I see a whole lot of in my line of work.
So this is why your feed is substandard at some point in the life of your stock that actually lives longer than a year. It begins to have an negative effect on their hormonal followed by physiological functioning and disables their immune function to the extent that all sorts of things begin to go wrong.
For example, the most important thing about birds for their own health like the rest of us animals is their skin- bird skin is awfully fragile and so they've evolved feathers. When you think about how much energy and protein go into the creation of a single feather and how critical this is to a bird's health- you can appreciate how distressing it is for the bird to go without them and why I've typed about four thousand and some words to describe how this can't stand.
Ok marigold- there's a bunch of good things to say about its beneficial uses and Im all for using it.
Marigolds Even if the birds avoid it in the garden it isn't going to hurt their internal workings to ingest more bitters...
Tend to flush certain glands that help to boost bile and increase circulation etc. The chemicals naturally occurring in marigold are also toxic to parasites.
