whole grain diet - how supplement vits and minerals???

[Cadeau]

So - after a lot of reading, I think I want to mix my own feed:
Some will be fed dry and some will be sprouted

I understand about free-choice calcium.
BUT how do they balance their calcium-phosphorus levels?

I also understand a lot of people add in kelp for the nutritional benefits.

BUT - what about a vit/min mix??
I saw some people add in Red Cell (equine)
some do A,D, B Complex (human pills) in the water once or twice a month.
Some do a chicken drench in the water 1xmth.

What works for you??
Are there any vitamins/min to be SURE chickens have (other than the calcium)

My flock is all young, but will have BCM and BlCM, as well as BLRW for breeding and a bunch of ladies for eggs. Hoping to also do a couple shows, if things go well.

 

[Erica]

Hi Cadeau,

A few thoughts on this, hope they help — but not Gospel! (Just a combo of what I've read and what I've done...)

Grain feeding can't replace an entire ration... Sprouted grain isn't as high in protein as some websites suggest. In fact early sprouts are lower in protein percentage because they've swelled up with water (as they dry out/grow they improve). I've had to supplement sprouts with a full range of protein to get good results in growers, so that's why I believe the protein increases are probably at the lower end of the scale.

One more cautionary principle about grains: make sure you provide a variety. Some vitamins are low in some grains, higher in others. For instance I sprout and feed wheat, corn, peas (I know they're a legume) and sunflowers. This seems to provide a good basic balance of particular (but not all) vitamins. Ratios in my grain mix are, roughly speaking, about 75% wheat, 10% corn, 10% peas, 5% black sunflower seeds. Sometimes I might give the birds millet or other grains, but I don't tend to sprout them (sprouted millet can be toxic). I never bother with barley but I do sometimes feed oatmeal with mincemeat or butcher's bandsaw dust and kefir as a treat.

Now to some things that may be deficient in a grain diet:

1. Vitamin A. Green feed is the main source of this, so regular access to pasture and weeds are a must if you're doing a sprout/grain diet.
2. Protein. I'll say again, sprouting doesn't produce miraculous increases in protein (though it may make amino acids more available, and may increase some). I'm just going by experience here — chicks in particular don't do well on sprouts without good sources of additional protein. Especially animal protein (whether meat or insects) is good to balance the amino acids the birds are eating. Useful plant protein is found in legumes like lucerne meal (which is especially good in grain/sprout diets and helps balance some of the vitamin shortages), peas and sweet lupins. Note that commercial feed gets around the shortage of methionine (an amino acid) in a soy-wheat based diet by adding artificial methionine... Things like that scare me, knowing dementia is on the rise, but you can make your own mind up if you read around.
3. B vitamins may be low in a grain/sprout diet. B12 in particular is only made by microbes. Thus good sources of this (if you feel you need extra — you may not, depending on what else the birds eat) are things like yeast powder, yoghurt, kefir, etc. B12 incidentally seems to help birds combat worms — at least I've found far less need to worm since feeding a diet richer in B12. (When I bred sheep, the ones without access to a copper-cobalt lick always had to be drenched and redrenched — cobalt is used to make B12 which is then used to make the gut lining...)
4. Vitamin D — no need to add it if your birds have access to sunlight. If you do need to add it, natural sources include cod liver oil.
5. Minerals. Seaweed meal is quite good but can be extremely high in iodine, so always keep it to a minimum if adding it to the feed. Calcium-phosphorus ratio is tricky if you rely on meat meal or bone dust; too much phosphorus stops absorption of calcium and you get thin shelled eggs and egg yolk peritonitis as offshoots. Incidentally, high calcium fed too early to pullets (say before 14-15 weeks) also disrupts eggshell production later on... Similar results come from feeding dolomitic limestone for calcium as high manganese (from memory... I think it was manganese) also disrupts calcium and therefore produces soft eggshells... I use oyster shell in my feeds to make 3-4% calcium for layers against 1% phosphorus (though this varies), and that seems to work well, but I've heard that shell grit may be high in unwanted toxins like lead, so I'm in the process of looking into other calcium sources. Heavens it gets tricky!
6. Salt. Chickens have a need for small amounts of salt or they may develop feather picking and cannibalism problems.


There now, that's rattled my brain around a bit... I'm not a nutritionist and can't exactly prove what I say, but my various feeding experiments have supported a lot of my reading... My blog is probably a bit more lucid on all this.

Hope I haven't confused you terribly.

Regards
Erica