new research debunks trad views on nutrition

[saysfaa]

What do you think about this for a whole grain chicken feed?...

I don't have a nutrient calculator set up so this isn't complete or necessarily the most important issues with it but this doesn't have enough salt, methionine, or vitamin D.

 

[Perris]

Evidence, the fact so many chickens eat it and have survived to average age for breed does indicate that poor quality or not, it is good enough to keep the chicken alive and from what I can tell, reasonably healthy.

that some survive or even thrive is not adequate evidence of good nutrition. What about the ones that die? The on-farm mortality rates? It's quite hard to get hold of the numbers of 'spent hens' cleaned out of a shed compared with the number that went in, but therein lies the elephant in the room here. They're normally worse for broilers but I don't think we're talking about them here. But on that consider the huge numbers condemned at slaughter or die in transit (this is not for the feint hearted)
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...d-and-wales-rejected-over-disease-and-defects

 

[Shadrach]

that some survive or even thrive is not adequate evidence of good nutrition.

I didn't write that commercial feed was good nutrition. It isn't, I've written as much often on these forums.
The fact that so many intensively reared and kept hens die from whatever it is they die of (the article isn't very clear on this topic) isn't evidence of the feed on offer being inadequate, that's assuming the poor creatures manage to get enough to eat.
They die from lots of problems. Not getting enough food is common (severly underweight chickns are rejcted by the FSA) Getting injured and then being trampled to death by the rest is one common one I'm told. Respiratory problems ( don't see a lot of one square foot of ventilation per bird in such places. Imagine the dander even with extraction fans) Heat stroke, peck injuries left to bleed and become infected is another. In fact nowhere have I read of any chicken dying from eating commercial feed. A few more die or get injured from being trodden on by those who maintain the factories.
It's the keeping conditions that are killing these birds, not the nutritional profile of the food they're given.
I've seen batch inspections when under sale. It would be impossible in most cases to say what the bird died of without a necropsy, or intensive examination. It works more like this. Grab a bird, check muscle mass by hand, chuck it in the lorry, or the holding pen. These places handle millions of birds a year. Nobody checks to see what diseases they've got, it's just not economically viable and not of much importance given the bird is going to be dead soon. The only exception to this that I've witnessed are the random Salmonela trials.

 

[Perris]

Nobody checks to see what diseases they've got,

but they do. The FSA and the slaughterhouses have monitoring programs in place. Farms that hit 'triggers' for poor performance are targeted for inspections. Mortality rates up to 15% are considered normal.

I am not saying that commercial feed is killing them. I'm saying that it's not obviously producing robust healthy animals. For broilers the deadline is so short (42 days or thereabouts) they can get away with just nutrients to make flesh grow, barely any maintenance required. For layers, spent hens show how inadequate it is, again being focused on pumping out eggs, not whole body well being and maintenance.

I agree that the keeping conditions are the main problem. But you cannot judge the adequacy of a feed by looking only at the birds that survive (live). You must include the dead stock.

 

[homesteading101]

United States has terrible food regulations to assume they do it properly is naive

 

[Perris]

I am referring to the UK.

 

[Shadrach]

When I were a lad..., we ate food. there wasn't the intenet scaring us into eating this or that diet. The first highly processed food I remember coming into our house was margarine. According to the health people this was good stuff and much lower in fat than butter. They didn't mention it tasted awful. We didn't get any more and went back to butter. Further up the thread is a PDF from Kruggerand, a peer reviewed paper no less telling us eating seeds and some whole grains is causing us more harm than sugar. In your BBC series we're being told that seeds, wholegrains, nuts etc are good for us. Enter just about any food topic into a browser and there are pages of telling us such and such may help to prevent this or that. There 's diet for just about every taste: all beneficial to our health and another telling us there may be risks in eating such foodstuffs.

I've got to a senior state eating a sub optimal diet. So have most of my peers.
I know I eat stuff that I probably shouldn't as do most of us. Chickens all over the world have done the same, survived on a sub optimal diet according to what little we know about what is in fact good for us and what isn't.



Just to make my own position absolutely clear, or rather the chickens position, I feed them this:
https://www.reallywildbirdfood.co.uk/seed-mixes/original-farm-gold-/ofgold
about 40%
with this,
https://hodmedods.co.uk/products/spelt-grain-organic-wholegrain?_pos=3&_sid=9c4364c3a&_ss=r
about 30%
and this,
https://hodmedods.co.uk/collections/peas/products/split-green-peas
about 30%
plus 100 grams of fish or lean meat between 5 chickens every other day and they get an allotment which has a wide variety of crops and wild plants and grasses and they're in the compost heaps around the place almost daily.

I'm at the extreme end of attempting to provide good quality nutrition and I wouldn't expect any sane person to adopt my feeding practices.

I don't usually reply to the what should I feed my chicken questions. People like U-Stormcrow and others have from what I've read give very good advice to such questions and that is basically, if you don't know what you are doing then feed your chickens a commercial feed suitable for the breed, age, and sex of the chicken. I can't fault such advice. It's not what I do and I know it isn't what U-Stormcrow and others do, but it's the right advice.

On threads like this the debate is interesting and there is a lot of good information in it but most of it isn't really suitable content for the average BYC'er looking for an economical way of ensuring their chickens get the basic nutrition required that will keep them resonably health and productive.

It's likely that in the not to distant future we will be eating some version of a pelleted processed meal replacement product. It will I expect be touted as providing an optimal diet. They'll be one for babies (Oh there already is), another for sports people, one for the gluten free eaters etc, etc. I expect we'll survive.

For those of us who are more interested in what we can do for the chicken rather than what the chicken can do for us, our efforts should be directed at getting the commercial sector to impove it's conditions In my opinion. The back yard chicken craze caters for a minute percentage of the chickens in the food production system. Yes it's great that a small percentage of chickens get to live a better life but it is a very small percentage and largely irrelevant to the plight of the chicken species.
The feed debate for backyard chickens falls into that largely irrelevant catagory, considering the above.
So, it's not that I don't support higher quality, more choice feeding, it's just not a practical option for the majority.

One further point. There has been some discussion on the effects of inadequate nutrition seemingly centered around diseases and deformaties.
When I were a lad...what indicated poor nutrition was fret barring. Fret barring occurs when a chicken can't supply sufficient nutrients to provide uniform feather growth. Bad years for free rangers produced odd bands of miss coloured or missing plumes.
Search for stress/fret bars on chickens for those who are interested.

 

[homesteading101]

I am referring to the UK.

Makes sense now

 

[U_Stormcrow]

but they do. The FSA and the slaughterhouses have monitoring programs in place. Farms that hit 'triggers' for poor performance are targeted for inspections. Mortality rates up to 15% are considered normal.

I am not saying that commercial feed is killing them. I'm saying that it's not obviously producing robust healthy animals. For broilers the deadline is so short (42 days or thereabouts) they can get away with just nutrients to make flesh grow, barely any maintenance required. For layers, spent hens show how inadequate it is, again being focused on pumping out eggs, not whole body well being and maintenance.

I agree that the keeping conditions are the main problem. But you cannot judge the adequacy of a feed by looking only at the birds that survive (live). You must include the dead stock.

However - if you can get published numbers on what those places consider "adequate" feed, and your homebrew recipe doesn't reach even that low bar, its a safe bet that your feed recipe is inadequate.

15% mortality isnt acceptable, hasn't been for a long time. 3-7% is. Example another example more links as required. "Cage Free" remains higher mortality, though not by as much as some might assume.

Feather picking behaviors remain high on the list of of pathways to mortality, up to including canabalim of the picked on bird by the rest of the flock, also FLHS, broken keelbones, and ascites for layers. Broilers have their own issues, most associated with their accelerated growth rates. Saldy, beak alteration still seems to be the "go to" means of addressing feather picking, rather than addressing the other conditions that tend to drive those behaviors - except where it is banneed.

 

[Perris]

The first example is very interesting, but a sample size of 2 (yes, 2) farms would be condemned by you if anyone else used it ("For this study, flocks from two farms in Germany were analyzed"). By 'acceptable', I meant mortality rates up to 15% are accepted as valid (possible) numbers and not written off as bad data; obviously no-one wants losses of that order. But cumulative mortality is like compound interest; it might look like a little, but it adds up to surprisingly large numbers over time.

The second example is better and is an encouragement to all those afraid to free range to let their birds out.