A GREAT FEED QUESTION!

 On my YOUTUBE channel (http://youtube.com/ecoranchusa) someone asked a really great question today and I wanted to share my response with everyone, so it is below. By the way, if you like this blog, please send everyone you think may be interested the link! I don't get ANY money from more views....... but that is why the information I provide is fair, honest and accurate. Everyone needs access to it!

"When will you be doing a video on feeding chicken fodder? I'm seeing a lot of videos where people are feeding their chickens wheat or barley fodder almost exclusively along with providing the Oyster shells. Many of these chickens are only eating 10%-20% of grain mixtures, if any at all. Is this safe for chickens since there is little or no premix vitamins and minerals in their diet?"


Here in Terlingua, our main store sold "chicken scratch" as "chicken food". The employees did not even know they were not selling a proper diet! Only recently did the store finally begin to sell a more balanced, if cheaply made, "layer feed". Area flocks survived, but several people marveled at the fact that our birds laid eggs all winter with no appreciable decline.

So poultry can be "starved" and still produce eggs and marginal meat. However, the lack of premix, or vitamins & minerals will catch up to the flock owner in reduced egg production, poorer quality eggs, bone development issues, lack of fertility and chick mortality.

There are vitamins & minerals in fodder. However, if the ground the flock lives on has minerals, or the birds range outdoors, they will in most cases get enough vitamins & minerals to be healthy. Problems arise with coop-bound birds, or birds in areas like this desert, where there may well be a shortage of minerals in the soil AND little greenery with vitamins. Grains should always be available, as this provides a balanced, varied diet! Look at pre-mix as an inexpensive insurance policy for healthy development!

I would say that if a flock owner raises live chicks to maturity with less than a 5% mortality rate, the diet is safe. Anything over 5%, even 6% is too much and there is a problem. Poor leg development will be one indicator, but also, healthy chicks dying for no apparent reason is a HUGE indicator. Rather than wait for expensive, cute chicks to die or have to crawl around, it is best to add a premix. It is NOT very expensive at all! One bag of ABC pre-mix cost about $50 with the shipping and will treat 1000 pounds of feed.

I won't do a fodder video until I have a facility to grow fodder in: our greenhouse. However, I am a HUGE believer in fodder and/or pasturing chickens! This is how they evolved and this is what they need!

As I have repeatedly said as well, maggot traps, mealworm farms and soldier fly larvae farms are excellent and should be part of EVERY flock owner's feeding regime! We had some of the healthiest poultry I have ever seen, when we lived in north Florida. But our birds free-ranged and ate HUGE amounts of insects ( we lived in a hardwood swamp) and had over 15 acres of Pensacola Bahia grass to graze on, in addition to my grain feed mix.

In addition to oyster shell or other calcium carbonate, a real grit like granite or ground limestone (which is calcium carbonate, but yours may not be what poultry needs) MUST be available to the birds. The better they can grind up their food, the less PURCHASED food they require. In fact, we fed a 100% ground diet to the birds in the commercial houses, mainly because the finer the grind, the less energy is required to process the feed. Same goes for every flock of every size, the finer you can grind the feed the better it is digested! Investing in a grist mill ($400 and up) is one of the best investments you can make for your flock!

I hope this helps!!!!