ALL natural feed for chickens and quails?

[Steinagarden]

Sounds good. If they have a variety of foods available and there's enough that they can afford to be choosy, they will each select what they need in the quantities they need, so that's a sound method to follow.

It appears you have this, and just a little reassurance is all that's really needed Remember that wild birds get all the vitamins and minerals they need from their natural diet, i.e. what they find in their environment. (To forestall the usual response to that from die-hard fans of the commercial sector, indeed wild birds are not laying hundreds of eggs a year, but then neither apparently are most backyard chickens I read about on BYC. Fwiw, most people posting about this on BYC seem to get less eggs than they would like from their chickens rather than more, despite feeding the widely recommended pellets supposedly designed to deliver them.)

Yes, I also thought alot about that. Wild birds do NOT lay hundreds of eggs, and birds lay eggs to hatch chicks - not to produce food for us humans... But chickens has been selectively bred to produce eggs in a whole different way than wild birds will lay eggs.

Even though chickens are bred by our choosing their digestive system still prefer most natural feed I recon. But if they can't search and find their food, we have to offer them food so they at least thrive and have what they need, in their closed invironment. I think I underestimated this part of importance.

I found it really interesting that you had more egg laying that less on feeding natural. But again; your chickens can free range a whole lot more than what I can offer mine...

I also reflected alot about that we have maybe bred chickens that need "stronger" food than the natural, I don't know if this is the case. Doesn't mean it's good or healthy. I.e. a man that takes steroids will be very much stronger that a man that doesnt, even though it's not healthy.

I.e. my lohmann brown lays a whole lot more eggs than my icelandic chikens does, and I think this kind of breed would have bigger problems that the icelandic ones food wise. Because the lohmann brown needs a whole lot more to be able to keep the egg laying amount on top compared to the icelandic ones, that are more close to a wild chicken. I want to breed chickens that are mobile and closer to a wild chicken than these heavy ones producing alot of eggs, unatural amount of eggs. So I use my lohmann brown in combination with healthier breeds, like the Icelandic chicken.

 

[Perris]

Yes, I also thought alot about that. Wild birds do NOT lay hundreds of eggs, and birds lay eggs to hatch chicks - not to produce food for us humans... But chickens has been selectively bred to produce eggs in a whole different way than wild birds will lay eggs.

Even though chickens are bred by our choosing their digestive system still prefer most natural feed I recon. But if they can't search and find their food, we have to offer them food so they at least thrive and have what they need, in their closed invironment. I think I underestimated this part of importance.

I found it really interesting that you had more egg laying that less on feeding natural. But again; your chickens can free range a whole lot more than what I can offer mine...

I also reflected alot about that we have maybe bred chickens that need "stronger" food than the natural, I don't know if this is the case. Doesn't mean it's good or healthy. I.e. a man that takes steroids will be very much stronger that a man that doesnt, even though it's not healthy.

I.e. my lohmann brown lays a whole lot more eggs than my icelandic chikens does, and I think this kind of breed would have bigger problems that the icelandic ones food wise. Because the lohmann brown needs a whole lot more to be able to keep the egg laying amount on top compared to the icelandic ones, that are more close to a wild chicken. I want to breed chickens that are mobile and closer to a wild chicken than these heavy ones producing alot of eggs, unatural amount of eggs. So I use my lohmann brown in combination with healthier breeds, like the Icelandic chicken.

that's a really thoughtful reflection on these matters. One in particular I would like to focus on:

But if they can't search and find their food, we have to offer them food so they at least thrive and have what they need, in their closed invironment. I think I underestimated this part of importance.

I agree wholeheartedly with this. But there is more that is easily overlooked; we all really know very little about what they need to thrive. Most poultry nutrition papers are methodologically very poor (but who reads the papers, never mind the methods section of the papers? so it goes unnoticed). They are based on completely artificial environments (indoor, lab, sterile), experimental (highly selective) feeds, abnormal birds (very young, very highly inbred, with surgically altered digestive tracts and such like), etc., and on *that* basis people claim to know what is a good diet for a mature, normal, chicken, living outdoors.

Only by watching closely have I learned that chickens eat flowers (some, sometimes, as goes for everything else in this list), pollen, earth, funga, moss and a host of other plants that are completely ignored in the scientific literature on poultry nutrition. Not to mention all the little wiggly things that get consumed before I have even a chance to identify them. And if I could identify them, I am pretty sure that nowhere will I find a nutritional profile for them, so I have absolutely no idea what nutrients my chicks consume when they are foraging. What I can see, and I do know, is that they are healthy doing it - MUCH healthier than they ever were on any commercial feed. And they lay more eggs. For longer. So I conclude that commercial feed does not contain everything they need to thrive.