I’m so confused HELP!!!!

[RennaeHanson]

I would be careful making your own feed and no, true layer feed and scratch are not the same. I purchase certified organic chicken layer, scratch, etc., from a local organic co-op and the chicken layer mash / feed is 16% protein and the scratch is 12%. If you want to make your own you must be aware of the protein amounts of your feed so you can make sure your chickens are getting enough of what they need. I thought about making my own as well however I found it was way more expensive, and a lot more work than purchasing from the local certified organic feed co-op. All of the feed I purchase is corn, soy, (and another item I can't think of right now) free and believe it or not, it's cheaper than buying feed from Tractor Supply. The only downfall is I have to order enough to last me 2 months but in reality, this is a small price to pay to make sure my chickens are getting good, healthy feed.

 

[Sic]

Use a commercial layer feed, they spend millions getting it right. These "homemade" feeds are just delusional. Maybe if the chickens were free range in a tropical location with lots of natural food available but for most backyard flocks, it is just foolish.

It's actually delusional to believe that your backyard chickens can thrive on a commercial feed designed for commercial egg layers typically housed in battery cages with limited mobility and a life expectancy of 12-18 months, whose goal is to provide adequate feeds to sustain life for short term using the cost prohibited ingredients such as manufacturing waste products and adding synthetic DL- Methionine and vitamin/mineral premix because the feed does not meet even the minimum requirements to sustain life.

It's not that difficult to make your own feed and have your feed lots tested. You can find min/max poultry dietary requirements online and feed lot testing can be done through most state ag departments, or they can direct you to a local lab. It doesn't cost millions of dollars, but for poultry feed you definitely want to pay a little extra for amino acid profiles which in my case was an add-on test. Total cost for my last lots(5) tested was 215.00. When you're not cost prohibited to using quality animal protein sources it's easy to formulate a good quality feed, it's not rocket science, but does require some effort. I do live in a resource rich area and harvest most of my feed ingredients. The chicken and duck feeds primary protein source comes from locally harvested amphipods(gammarus- aka scuds - small shrimp like crustaceans) and duckweed, however these are both easy to cultivate at home in an aquarium or bucket. I prefer to feed my animals real food that is species appropriate. There is a right way and a wrong way to do homemade food and just throwing together a few ingredients from a recipe you found online assuming it is nutritionally complete is not the right way.

 

[Al Gerhart]

And how many have the time to do all of this? The vast majority of backyard flocks are individuals with limited time and resources. Choosing a commercial layer feed or a grower feed for their meat birds is their best option 99% of the time.

Good lord, advice is general. If you can do better good on you but try not to get your panties in such a twist.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

It's actually delusional to believe that your backyard chickens can thrive on a commercial feed designed for commercial egg layers typically housed in battery cages with limited mobility and a life expectancy of 12-18 months, whose goal is to provide adequate feeds to sustain life for short term using the cost prohibited ingredients such as manufacturing waste products and adding synthetic DL- Methionine and vitamin/mineral premix because the feed does not meet even the minimum requirements to sustain life.

...and its a stawman to pretend that the only commercial feed out there is Production Layer formulations - a formulation, I should note, that the vast majority of those active on BYC do not actually recommend for people's flocks.

Total cost for my last lots(5) tested was 215.00.

Not sure how big your lots were, but $215 will buy more than 800# of commercial feed for my birds, with nutritional numbers WELL above the typical commercial layer formulations. Or it will buy roughly 600# of my locally milled 24% CP Game Bird Grower, which had very fine Met and Lys numbers, last I looked. Hard to justify the expense.

 

[Sic]

...and its a stawman to pretend that the only commercial feed out there is Production Layer formulations - a formulation, I should note, that the vast majority of those active on BYC do not actually recommend for people's flocks.




Not sure how big your lots were, but $215 will buy more than 800# of commercial feed for my birds, with nutritional numbers WELL above the typical commercial layer formulations. Or it will buy roughly 600# of my locally milled 24% CP Game Bird Grower, which had very fine Met and Lys numbers, last I looked. Hard to justify the expense.

Commercial feed formulation is dependent upon the NRC Nutrient Requirement of Poultry which is derived from experimental data from commercial production i.e leghorn/broiler. I'll quote a sentence, hopefully doesn't get me a copyright infringement, however it does provide the priority of the information.
"Criteria used in establishing nutrient requirements included growth, reproduction, and feed efficiency and, where possible, poultry health and quality of poultry products." The health of poultry is really of least concern. We all use the same nutritional requirements, commercial feed formulations are designed to meet minimum requirements for the least cost of feed production based on production animals with minimal metabolic energy requirements, and economics. Making your own feed you are only constrained by your own time, available ingredient resources and your wallet. My feed lot tests are done once I establish a recipe and tested again if changes are made. The last tests I had done were 5 years ago. It's not a recurring cost. Everyone is free to choose how they feed themselves and their animals. You can eat highly processed food and you can feed your animals highly processed food, it may be cheaper, but you'd be kidding yourself to believe it's healthier than real food and as they say "You are what you eat."
To each their own.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Commercial feed formulation is dependent upon the NRC Nutrient Requirement of Poultry which is derived from experimental data from commercial production i.e leghorn/broiler. I'll quote a sentence, hopefully doesn't get me a copyright infringement, however it does provide the priority of the information.
"Criteria used in establishing nutrient requirements included growth, reproduction, and feed efficiency and, where possible, poultry health and quality of poultry products." The health of poultry is really of least concern. We all use the same nutritional requirements, commercial feed formulations are designed to meet minimum requirements for the least cost of feed production based on production animals with minimal metabolic energy requirements, and economics. Making your own feed you are only constrained by your own time, available ingredient resources and your wallet. My feed lot tests are done once I establish a recipe and tested again if changes are made. The last tests I had done were 5 years ago. It's not a recurring cost. Everyone is free to choose how they feed themselves and their animals. You can eat highly processed food and you can feed your animals highly processed food, it may be cheaper, but you'd be kidding yourself to believe it's healthier than real food and as they say "You are what you eat."
To each their own.

Having established an NRC "floor" we are not obligated to provide solely that minimum. and most of us recommend that we don't feed solely to that minimum. You will find I'm not a fan of layer formulations, but that doesn't mean the research doesn't have value - when used properly.

If you are providing agricultural products and animal byproducts (dried gammarus, whatever) and you have most recently assayed your ingredients 5 years ago, you really have no reason of confidence in the current nutritional assay - agricultural products vary from season to season, year to year, consequence of innumerable variables. You have a "best guess".

But while you are in a sharing mood, why don't you post that last assay, we'll see what your nutrition tag has to offer and compare it to some popular feeds here on BYC.

 

[saysfaa]

... locally harvested amphipods(gammarus- aka scuds - small shrimp like crustaceans) and duckweed, however these are both easy to cultivate at home in an aquarium or bucket.

I'm interested.

Have you actually seen either grown long term in an aquarium or a bucket at home?

Since I haven't found anyone who has actually done it in a way I could possibly do - I tried to find a way harvesting algea/duckweed from my pond would work for me. Perhaps I did the math wrong but I found the protein content on dry matter basis, determined how much I would need to feed 3 -5 hens through the winter, and the moisture content, and concluded there is no way I can physically move that much weight from the pond (with rakes and buckets or tarps and a stone boat on the back of the tractor) to a sunny place (assuming the weather cooperated and I had a sunny place, not a given around here), rake it enough for it to dry before it rotted, load it, and unload it. Even if I did harvests several times through the summer.

Please advice. I would very much like to find a way it would work for me.

Could you describe where you get the duckweed, how you harvest it, store it, how you feed it, how much to how many chickens, anything g else that might help me figure out how to do it?

 

[RennaeHanson]

I'm interested.

Have you actually seen either grown long term in an aquarium or a bucket at home?

Since I haven't found anyone who has actually done it in a way I could possibly do - I tried to find a way harvesting algea/duckweed from my pond would work for me. Perhaps I did the math wrong but I found the protein content on dry matter basis, determined how much I would need to feed 3 -5 hens through the winter, and the moisture content, and concluded there is no way I can physically move that much weight from the pond (with rakes and buckets or tarps and a stone boat on the back of the tractor) to a sunny place (assuming the weather cooperated and I had a sunny place, not a given around here), rake it enough for it to dry before it rotted, load it, and unload it. Even if I did harvests several times through the summer.

Please advice. I would very much like to find a way it would work for me.

Could you describe where you get the duckweed, how you harvest it, store it, how you feed it, how much to how many chickens, anything g else that might help me figure out how to do it?

I'm curious myself considering they live in Alaska.

 

[Sic]

Having established an NRC "floor" we are not obligated to provide solely that minimum. and most of us recommend that we don't feed solely to that minimum. You will find I'm not a fan of layer formulations, but that doesn't mean the research doesn't have value - when used properly.

If you are providing agricultural products and animal byproducts (dried gammarus, whatever) and you have most recently assayed your ingredients 5 years ago, you really have no reason of confidence in the current nutritional assay - agricultural products vary from season to season, year to year, consequence of innumerable variables. You have a "best guess".

But while you are in a sharing mood, why don't you post that last assay, we'll see what your nutrition tag has to offer and compare it to some popular feeds here on BYC.

I have no confidence that the salmon i ate today has the exact nutritional profile of the salmon I ate on Friday, I'm not convinced I should be concerned. I wouldn't expect identical assay, neither were any of my feed lots identical because it's not supplemented with synthetics or pelleted, all nutrients are derived from the food itself. The difference between using whole foods vs supplements is that whole foods are slightly variable, however when your whole food formulas are well above minimum dietary requirements and are more bioavailable, there's no stress or worrying about miniscule variations of nutritional assay. I don't eat the exact same thing everyday with the exact nutritional assay, neither do my animals. I'm also not selling a product.
As far as sharing my tests results, I'd love to, however, my organizational skills regarding paperwork are slim to none. I have no idea where they are, filed away in the attic possibly, honestly don't know. If I do another test, I'll be happy to share it. Do understand though that it would be literally impossible for someone to replicate my recipe since most of (~85% or more) the food ingredients are wild harvested here in the Alexander Archipelago, so what I feed is irrelevant to you. My sole point is that if people have the time and the inclination to make their own feed, it can be done responsibly and if so inclined one could grow and harvest their own protein sources, such as gammarus or duckweed which takes little expense and effort to start and offers a continuous supply of readily available high quality protein. There's no reason to be hostile to people because they make their own food choices, I'm not denigrating people that buy commercial feed for their animals, just asking for respect for those of us that choose differently than you. I have been formulating my own animal feed for over 30 years. I currently have one 13 year old Cayuga duck still laying about 3-4 eggs per week and my 13 year old Newfoundland dog just had a vet check recently that has never been sick and whose blood work came back perfect, the vet being surprised. I'm doing something right, but I know that there may well come a time when I may choose the convenience of commercial food, that time for me is not now.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I'm not hostile to Make at Home feed. I've helped people in unique circumstances craft them. I've recommended a couple recipes. I stongly suspect there is more variation in your products than you think there is - but accept that "a good guess" is still a good guess. The average assays found in my feed calculator are just that - a good guess based on average values.

I am hostile to people doing "make at home" "all natural" feed or feed management from a state of utter ignorance, as is overwhelmingly commonly the case, because they saw something on Facebook or Youtube or a slick website, and simply didn't know any better. I am similarly hostile to the idea of letting toddlers touch hot stoves in hopes they learn from the experience.

I find the "all natural" movement to have largely divorced itself from the underlying science. All Natural isn't better if its formulated wrong - and again, it is my overwhelming experience that it is, in fact, formulated wrong. It seems to have been overtaken by some of the same popular trends that work thru other subjects (including human health, and human nutrition) - buzz words, super foods, and foods to be avoided at all costs - as if reality was a democracy to be altered by the loudest camp, the most re-tweeted claim.

Finally, I was actually quite interested in what you were able to put together yourself from Alaskan local ingredients. A bit saddened you could not find the results. My understanding, from some of your other posts, is that you rely on a significant amount of non-plant protein. Sincerely wish more feeds would do so - but "Vegan" is one of those words getting a lot of traction in the "All Natural" movement right now...

/edit "Hostile" here meaning "opposed to". At the end of the day, they are other people's birds, they can feed them however they want. If they want to spend more money than they need to in order to produce an inferior (and less certain) feed for reasons of their own satisfaction, the only thing that suffers for it is their birds. But if they choose to do so - like the toddler touching the hot stove after being told not to - they do not do so in ignorance.