Nutritional Benefits of Chicken Feeds: Best Health of Poultry Chicken

30 September, 2022 By:SB Group

As a poultry farmer, whether it is your first flock or one of the many, feeding is the basic fundament of raising chickens. Your chickens’ quality of feeding and nutrition also determines your birds’ performance and products. Hence it is a crucial step that you provide your flock with every ounce of nutrients they need.

To promote good health benefits and improve growth, you should provide your flocks with a balanced pelleted ratio. This applies to any chicken, even if grown indoors or allowed to range outdoors. Furthermore, this diet can also be commercialized or organic.

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All these poultry feeds depend upon the stage of your bird’s growth; hence, different types of rations are used. Additionally, the percentage you provide your chicken also depends on the breed, age, and type of production of your flocks.

Nutritional Benefits Of Chicken Feeds

Indeed, chicken feeds also revolve around the six essential nutrients; water, carbohydrates, fats, proteins, minerals, and vitamins. Any diet that constitutes these needed nutrients in proper proportion is a well-balanced diet for your flocks.

Moving on, the primary factor on why the flocks need this basic food is a simple reason for their well-being and growth. It helps to sustain them for normal breathing, eating, digestion, development, reproduction, and egg production.

Nutritinal Benefits of Chicken Feeds

Chickens in Poultry Farm provided with their feeds

Yes, you can create poultry feeds for your chickens at home or even buy commercial meals in the market. One of the few reasons why most poultry farmers opt for organic feeds is because these feeds are free of any foreign substances.

Not to mention, this feed also is a lot cheaper than the commercial ones.

So, What Health Benefits Do These Have In Your Chicken?

Your chicken’s balanced feeds will result in its healthy development and growth. This will simply state that your flocks will have lesser diet-related health issues.

If you are up with your organic feeds, they are often filled with higher levels of nutrients such as Omega-3. The flocks will have higher support for their normal body functions and productions. Hence, if you have any chickens that show emaciation and weakness, you should check them for vitamin deficiencies.

Homemade / Organic Rations

If you are looking forwards to creating homemade rations for your flocks, there are a few things to understand. A typical poultry feed consists of corn, oats, wheat, barley, sorghum, and milling by-products. In addition to it, the meals also include grains such as dry beans, field peas, and alfalfa.

If you are also feeding the soybeans, roast them before, removing all the oil components. Furthermore, add vitamins to your feeds, and you can use vitamin-rich plant sources such as alfalfa. Not to mention, you can also use fish oil or other plants such as hulls and brans.

Likewise, you can also use sprouting grains which are a great source of nutrients. Altogether, it is always better to opt for a mill if you mix a large portion at once.

Apart from sprouting your feeds, you can also ferment the chicken feeds. Below are some health benefits when you ferment the chicken feeds.

  • Assists in decreasing pathogens in your hens’ digestive systems.
  • It helps to increase beneficial bacteria in their guts.
  • Requires less feed per serving.
  • This feed increases the water consumption in chickens.
  • It helps to increase the digestibility of feed and nutrient absorption.

Essential Poultry Nutrients And Their Health Consequences

As we discussed earlier, the six essential nutrients in your chicken feed promote the development of bone, flesh, feathers, and eggs. Often these basics are overlooked, which results in serious health consequences for poultry.

General Poultry Feeds And Their Required Nutrients

Below are their three must-have nutrients for your flocks.

Water

The essential requirement for your poultry is water; their drinkers must be filled twice a day. If you only fill their drinkers once a day, the chickens might run out of water by midday; hence, clean water must be available at all times.

Here, the role of water is to soften the feed and carry it through the digestive tract. Furthermore, it is also required to carry out its waste products and cool the birds when they are hot.

By any means, if the water requirement is not met, your chickens will have lesser egg production as well.

Carbohydrates

Often your poultry will consume carbohydrates from starch, sugar, cellulose, and other non-starch compounds. Some of the items that hold high carbohydrate values are corn, wheat, barley, and other grains.

Fats

Here, your poultry’s fats can be saturated or unsaturated. The saturated fats are tallow, lard, poultry fat, and so on, while the unsaturated fats are corn oil, soy oil, and canola oil. These fats help your chicken to have cell membrane integrity and hormone synthesis.

These fats are much needed for your flocks to absorb fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K.

Proteins

Often known as amino acids, these are the base that helps to form body tissues such as muscles, nerves, cartilage, skin, feathers, beak, and so on. Additionally, these proteins are primarily found in soybean meal, canola meal, corn gluten meal, and so on.

They are of two types; essential and non-essential. Essential acids are the ones to be supplemented for your chickens, while the non-essential acids are the ones that your chicken produces.

Minerals

These nutrients are required for the formation of bones and red blood cells. Likewise, it also assists in correcting muscle function, blood clotting, energy metabolism, and enzyme activation.

Often the grains on chicken feeds are low in minerals; hence, you can also add mineral supplements to the poultry feeds.

Vitamins

They are needed for everyday use in small quantities. Often, these nutrients support daily body functions, healthy reproduction, and optimal growth rates. A deficiency of one or more vitamins can lead to several diseases or syndromes.

The chickens make their own Vitamin C among all the vitamins, so there is no need to add this to their feeds.

Conclusion

Overall, Vitamins are essential for the healthy growth of chickens. Most of the chicken’s feed is quality. That’s why we recommend buying it from the sb group.