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How careful can a cow be about what it eats? If there are bird droppings and molted feathers in a pasture, is it even possible for a cow to graze without eating them too? (I am asking because I really do not know enough about cows to know the answer to that.) I grant that would be a very...

True enough, but at least for livestock the "bottom line" will suffer if the animal dies or is too unhealthy to produce whatever the person wants to sell. So the feed industry does care about animal health up to the point where healthier animals are more productive and thus make more money. That...

Probably "true" in the sense that an egg really can be chemically analyzed and get those results, but wrong in that you can't just mix those things together and get an egg. As a joke, it's fine and maybe even funny (maybe). But as a source of information, I would rather it be labeled "chemical...

I see no reason why the same ingredients would be safer in home-cooked food than in a purchased food. So if I want to buy a spaghetti sauce, it is welcome to have as many different herbs as it likes, along with the tomatoes and such. And that is exactly my point. Simple guidelines tend to miss...

It might be a good starting place, but I can think of a bunch of recipes that should be fairly healthy that would fail that test. For example, if I make a soup or salad that contains a bunch of different vegetables, I go over the "5 ingredients" count very quickly. And if you count spices as...

If the feed has the same percent protein all year long, the hens are getting more total protein (grams per day) in the winter than summer, because they are eating more total feed. As for protein needs when molting: hens usually quit laying eggs while they are molting. So a hen who is molting...

According to any research I can find, that fat limit is based on making pellets that will behave properly in the feeders. The chickens themselves are fine with more. For example, here's a quote from a commercial poultry company: "A crude fat level of at least 5% in layer diets is highly...

That is how you mix them, not how you measure them. A premix just means those things are mixed with each other before they are mixed with other things. To make your own premix, you just mix all the tiny amounts, and some of the other ingredients, until you have a batch of the right size to mix...

Where did you find that? I just tried a google search and found something similar: https://www.hubbardbreeders.com/media/ps-breeder-nutrition-guide-en-20221014-1.pdf "It is important that trace elements and vitamins should be correctly mixed before being added to the raw materials. It is...

I knew about the broilers, which are the ones addressed in that thread. I didn't consider them relevant to the point about commercial layers. I assumed that the breeder stock for layers would be fed pretty much the same diet the production layers are fed-- in each case, you want hens that lay...

They have selected for more eggs per bird *on the diet they provide* In practice, that means they are selecting for birds that do well on whichever diet is being fed at the time. There is no way to select for birds that do well on another diet, except by feeding them that other diet. So the...

I have seen that chickens will eat grass seeds while leaving most of the stem behind. If the grass has seeds, dogs might be doing the same thing. If the grass does not have seeds, then obviously something else is going on.

All of those points would matter if someone wanted to use that supplement. But at first, I was just trying to figure out IF the supplement MIGHT be helpful. I tried to give enough information to figure that out. Once I learned it was the wrong product for this particular poster, I saw no point...

I start with the basic point that if a chicken shows a deficiency without the supplement, and not with the supplement, then the supplement is doing SOME good. I can't say whether it is better than another source, just that it is better than no source. But that was not the question that was...

If the salt is the only thing you think is needed, then that salt will probably work fine. Since you had said "minerals," I thought you were expecting it to provide a large amount of some other minerals too. I don't know if they will prefer the salt mixed with something or separate. You could...

I don't know, but you could offer it in a separate dish and see what they do. That depends on what minerals you want to provide. The pink salt is mostly salt, with only very small amounts of anything else. You might consider something like this: https://www.fertrell.com/poultry-nutribalancer...

I've never tried protein shakes, but I use a glass of milk for the same purpose. Cow's milk is not a perfect food for humans, but last time I checked it could give all my protein with about half my calories and a reasonable selection of other necessary things. (The protein/calorie ratio...

Yes, but: -- a cow does not need as much calcium each day as a laying hen, when you consider it as calcium per body weight. So having enough calcium for a cow does not tell much about whether grass (or any other food) would have enough calcium for a chicken. --Knowing what nutrients are found...

There is a thread discussing chicken diets in other places and times: https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/what-chickens-free-ranging-in-a-traditional-management-system-eat-i-e-how-it-was-done-before-commercial-feeds.1555278/ Starting around post 21 of that thread, there are links to a...

I keep seeing that stated. But when I read works from about a century ago, they were recommending that chickens be given dairy products as a source of protein. They were doing studies to show that milk was almost as good as meat when formulating diets for chickens. They also showed that diets...