What is the best commercial layer feed with the least amount of corn?

[Ariannah]

I second Green Mountain Feed for organic. If available in your area. I priced them out and seemed very reasonable. Keep in mind that freshness/mill date also go into being "the best" you can get.

Thank you, I agree that freshness is indeed important. But they all have corn as first ingredient. I did add them to my top 3 list because they are organic and Non-GMO.

 

[Ariannah]

I am not aware of commercial chicken feeds that do not contain corn or corn products. Corn is used because of cost. It is possible to have a local feed miller that makes smaller batches of feed that are custom for a premium price. My local feed supplier is able to make batches I formulate of 500 lbs or greater.

If I were to use alternatives to corn, they would include wheat (only seasonally available here owing to storage issues), millet (hard to get now as most producers here use it directly on farm as part of animals feeds they make), or oats which can cause poopy problems when used at too high a level.

Are able to find someone that can formulate a custom chicken feed for you?

Thank so much for the good points. In the past we were able to find wheat based feed but that has all changed. Thanks to the BYC members Melky and Shamo Hybrid I was happy to learn that there is chicken feed available that does not contain corn and if they do contain corn at least it is non GMO. I just ordered corn free Scratch and Peck Feeds Naturally Free Organic Layer Chicken on line. If they don't cause poopy problems and if they like it I will continue ordering that.

No, unfortunately our local feed supplier only sells commercial feed with corn. My parents and grand parents always had their own poultry and fresh eggs. They never fed corn to their free range chickens. They made their own feed and gave them only a little bit of corn in the winter or as scratch. Their chickens were always so healthy and the eggs delicious.

 

[centrarchid]

We have always used corn for the table-egg (eating egg) chickens and got good eggs. For the other chickens we avoided use of corn except during winter. That is past tense. I am not certain logic used to avoid use of corn was sound even when it was before development of GMO's.

 

[Ariannah]

We have always used corn for the table-egg (eating egg) chickens and got good eggs. For the other chickens we avoided use of corn except during winter. That is past tense. I am not certain logic used to avoid use of corn was sound even when it was before development of GMO's.

I did notice the difference of the quality and taste of the eggs. When the hens were able to forage and find their own food they hunted and caught bugs, mice and small snakes and their eggs were delicious. We only started feeding commercial food past 2 months, because of the lack of bugs, grass and other healthy greens due to the colder weather. I was not the only one in the family who noticed the difference. So that is why I started looking at the ingredients of the feed. Then I looked at other commercial brands and most have corn as main ingredient and all sorts of supplements/unnatural ingredients. I would think that if corn is that nutritious and balanced by itself, it wouldn’t need all that unnatural added stuff. That is why I am going to trying feed with a different first ingredient and see how that goes until they can forage again in a couple of months.

 

[centrarchid]

I did notice the difference of the quality and taste of the eggs. When the hens were able to forage and find their own food they hunted and caught bugs, mice and small snakes and their eggs were delicious. We only started feeding commercial food past 2 months, because of the lack of bugs, grass and other healthy greens due to the colder weather. I was not the only one in the family who noticed the difference. So that is why I started looking at the ingredients of the feed. Then I looked at other commercial brands and most have corn as main ingredient and all sorts of supplements/unnatural ingredients. I would think that if corn is that nutritious and balanced by itself, it wouldn’t need all that unnatural added stuff. That is why I am going to trying feed with a different first ingredient and see how that goes until they can forage again in a couple of months.

Tomorrow.

 

[MissChick@dee]

Just wanted to comment on your photo
You should enter that in next years calendar contest!

 

[Fishkeeper]

A lot of times, supplements and unnatural-looking ingredients are the same stuff that's in natural ingredients like plants, just concentrated or made in a lab instead of being in the plant. The list of chemical ingredients of an apple, for example, contains a lot of long and scary-sounding words.
Corn doesn't contain all the needed substances to keep chickens healthy, so, if a food contains a lot of corn, you have to also add those substances. Sometimes it's easier to add the pure substance instead of things that contain the substance. Doesn't mean the substance is bad for you.

 

[Melky]

Thank so much for the good points. In the past we were able to find wheat based feed but that has all changed. Thanks to the BYC members Melky and Shamo Hybrid I was happy to learn that there is chicken feed available that does not contain corn and if they do contain corn at least it is non GMO. I just ordered corn free Scratch and Peck Feeds Naturally Free Organic Layer Chicken on line. If they don't cause poopy problems and if they like it I will continue ordering that.

No, unfortunately our local feed supplier only sells commercial feed with corn. My parents and grand parents always had their own poultry and fresh eggs. They never fed corn to their free range chickens. They made their own feed and gave them only a little bit of corn in the winter or as scratch. Their chickens were always so healthy and the eggs delicious.

I can attest. My birds are healthy and their eggs are delicious. They get better sources of protein so that means you do as well.

 

[centrarchid]

I did notice the difference of the quality and taste of the eggs. When the hens were able to forage and find their own food they hunted and caught bugs, mice and small snakes and their eggs were delicious. We only started feeding commercial food past 2 months, because of the lack of bugs, grass and other healthy greens due to the colder weather. I was not the only one in the family who noticed the difference. So that is why I started looking at the ingredients of the feed. Then I looked at other commercial brands and most have corn as main ingredient and all sorts of supplements/unnatural ingredients. I would think that if corn is that nutritious and balanced by itself, it wouldn’t need all that unnatural added stuff. That is why I am going to trying feed with a different first ingredient and see how that goes until they can forage again in a couple of months.

I can relate to the differences in flavor between free-range meat and eggs versus those produced in confinement. Even with free-range, you have a spectrum of how the products taste with some hard to differentiate from confined. The free-range I grew up with had the birds getting most of their nutrition by consuming forages with only small amounts coming from any sort of feed. The areas foraged where more along the lines of pastures and hay fields with a little barnyard action that provided the processed grain component. Even though the birds then and now prefer insect fair over just about anything else, little pieces of vegetative greens dominate by volume what the birds actually consume. Most the time seeds and sometimes fruits come in second. The consistent exception to that pattern is chicks where insects and the like are most important. The impacts on flavor come mostly from the changes in the fat that be related to diet. The forages have a lot more unsaturated fatty acids and less energy coming from carbohydrates. When I pack my birds up on a grain based diet like when they are confined, the types and amounts of the fatty acids in the eggs and meat tends to reflect that of the diet provided. Things get real fun with the dietary carbohydrates which tend to be converted saturated fats for storage in tissues. Those saturated fats are what give the different taste and mouthfeel. The chickens, like most animals, cannot make much in the way of the unsaturated fatty acids that many consumers prefer with respect to taste and health interest. Some do cheat by using unsaturated fat source in the feed formulations. I use things like safflower and BOSS to get closer to the unsaturated fatty acids. With fish I use fish oil and canola oil.

A big part of the corn, at least as I use it, is that it can make the birds fat because the its inclusion can sometimes make so the diet has too much energy. I try to manage shelled corn inclusion rate as a function of the weather. The birds get a fixed rate of the nutritionally balance / complete formulation and I start adding things like shelled corn, millet, BOSS and soaked oats when it get cold. The colder it gets the more of the intact grains the birds get. The problem is the weather changes a lot during the winter and some birds need more or less energy depending upon sex, whether or not in lay, and state of feathering. Birds in the hard part of molt eat more when it is cold. Wind really aggravates things. I try to feed to meet the needs of the neediest which means some are being overfed.

 

[Cindy in PA]

I thought it was stated somewhere on here that feed tags do not list ingredients from the most-least like human food. Just because you see corn listed first, it doesn't mean corn is the largest ingredient.