How much fat is too much?

[SapphireFeather]

I want to formulate my own chicken feed. I've been looking into and reading about chicken nutrition, mainly the publication "Nutrient Requirements of Poultry: Ninth Revised Edition, 1994", chapter 2: Nutrient Requirements of Chickens. This seems to be the most easily available to the public source on poultry nutrition, if anyone knows of others that are more up to date, please let me know. I saw there has been work on the 10th edition since 2017, but I haven't yet seen it available anywhere online, if it's even been published yet.

the thing that seems to be missing in this publication is information on the fat content of a chicken's diet. I've read a couple of articles and threads here where some claim that overly fatty diets can lead to fatty liver disease, but can't find any information on the actual amount of fat that should be in a well balanced chicken feed. Does anyone have information or sources about that?

Any comments or suggestions are welcome! Thanks!

 

[GC-Raptor]

All of the many brands and types I've bought in 4 years contain 2.5, 3, 3.5, or 4% fat.
All feeds were crumble or pellets and were Starter-Grower, Layers and All-flock.
So I would say between 2.5 to 4% fat is a safe bet. GC

 

[SapphireFeather]

That makes sense! I just found this article that indicated a diet with a maximum of 3.5% fat content should prevent occurrences of fatty liver syndrome. Thanks for the confirmation!

 

[GC-Raptor]

Thanks for the confirmation!

Welcome. GC