COINCIDENCE??

Having just wrote a little about my "secret feed mixture",  it was time to go to the feed store and get my monthly feed for the poultry. While my mix is a custom one I developed for our birds, I did contact all the independent feed mills in west Texas, to see if anyone had a suitable mix already.

When we started our poultry farm in north Florida, the people I worked for actually had MOST of the components in the mix the provided to the commercial flock and for sale to individuals. Since the company added their antibiotics, hormones, steroids and other crap through the water, the actual mix was a good start AND it contained the premix already, which saved money.

One big problem I have with the checkerboard people and most others, is that they use bentonite clay or other things as a "cold binder" in their mix, so that they can extrude pellets. This can be up to 15% of the total mix! This means when you pay the premium for the checkerboard "crapolina" brand feed, you have to add an ADDITIONAL 15% to your cost, to equalize the nutritional benefit with a custom blend!

I called around here to see if I could find a caring independent and did! Independent feed mills either do not have the resources to "modernize" their equipment, or as in the case of the mill I found, care enough about the poultry & the farmer, to strive to provide the very best! These mills, the one I found as well, heat, NOT COOK, heat the grains so that the corn gluten becomes "gluey", then extrude it into pellets. Heating is of course, more expensive, so  the checkerboard people found a way, bentonite, to eliminate that cost, trim costs (bentonite is cheaper than corn) and still have a 50 pound bag of chicken feed MIX to sell without running into "truth" issues. By the way, they also crack out much of the corn germ for use elsewhere, lowering their cost more, keeping the "CRUDE protein" level the same (crude protein is the total amount of protein in the bag, whether it is digestible as the grains are, or indigestible, as feathers, hair, stalks and so on are), but the actual nutrition the birds has to utilize, is not..... yet they still charge several dollars MORE for the feed and present a "good" reputation to the public!

My local feed dealer is a "checkerboard contract store", which means they have a contract to sell and push checkerboard products about all else. This is reinforced by the many little free giveaways, trips, electronics and so on, as well as cash back for hitting set sales goals. This results in store owners whose eyes are more on a trip to Hawaii, or a condo in a resort area, rather than the health of the Nation's food supply. It does however, eliminate or marginalize the competition, which is why I personally have seen a many-fold increase in the number of feed stores "flying the checkerboard" in recent years....... and why finding a feed mill who creates a healthy poultry feed took me 400 miles from home!

ANYWAY........ my local guy was sold out of the feed mill mix yesterday. That happens! He was also sold out of milo as well. Seriously, that happens too and we have to be ready to adapt!

I had to step aside and recalculate my custom mix to what was available THAT DAY, rather than do what the checkerboard folks want and say, "just give me ten bags of crapolina". You need to do the same! NEVER, NEVER, reward bad behavior! Now my local guy did not run out on purpose, it just happened..... but to buy the crapolina instead, rewards the checkerboard people for removing the corn germ, adding bentonite and bribing store owners with "gifts" & contests that have zero benefit to our livestock! DON'T DO IT! Buy anything else! Voting with your dollars is the most effective way to win an "election"!

So and this is the whole point of this post,  I went back to my base mix: corn, ground soy, wheat, milo and millet. He had two bags of my mix, which I did buy, but save for our young chicks because the premix is already in it, I just have to add some ground soy and grit for "starter mix".

Millet was a bit lower priced than usual, so the mix became: 3 corn, 3 ground soy, 2 millet and 2 wheat, for 18.9% protein. My normal mix with the milo would have been 19.33%, so it was close enough. I could have added rolled oats and hit or exceeded 20%, but at $27 a bag, we only use that for the mealworms.

Poultry are very adaptable and the change in grains, taste, or texture does not bother them. In fact I think they see a different taste as "candy" and eat it more eagerly!

My feed store will have my feed mill feed in a week or so, so I bought just enough to hold us for two weeks. Living on the border like we do, rice was also an option to substitute, as was any type of dried beans. These need grinding for chicks though.

As a final challenge, the young guys who load the feed made an error in my order, despite my asking the to double check it (to save me the 140 mile round trip back). They grabbed WHOLE roasted soy instead of GROUND soy! Again, to adapt, I mixed it with the other grains for the adult birds who can grind it in their gizzards and will grind the beans myself if I need to make more starter for our chicks.

The key to raising any livestock is OUR ability to adapt. For millennia, Man has fed His herds according to what Nature provided. There was no "checkerboard store" 50 years ago, let alone 5000 years ago. Americans have been quite efficiently "trained" to buy prepared feed and when that feed is unavailable, we "crash" and don't know what to do. The feed store will always have a MORE EXPENSIVE alternative for sale, checkerboard makes sure of that! But by understanding your animals' needs and creating a custom mix, you both provide better nutrition to your livestock and get closer to them!