
Steps for organic chicken feeds formulation
A good, well-balanced, nutritious feed is essential to raise healthy and weighty chickens. The readily available chicken feeds are easy solutions, but are they sufficient for your fowl?
The readily available chicken feed is well-calculated nutrition. But, one can not rely on packaged goods when it narrows down to the business.
Besides, the concept of the green revolution has inspired people to use all-natural ingredients and make their own feed.
You can make your own chicken feed with all organic ingredients from your own farm. The chicken feeds are basically of four primary forms. These types are crumbles, pellets, whole grains, and mash.
feed
All different types of feed are fed to the poultry on a farm.
Do you want to feed your flocks of chicken with the organic feed? Then, keep on reading the article to learn the steps for organic chicken feed formulation.
Ingredients Required
Similar to humans, chickens also require a balanced nutritional diet with a good proportion of fats, proteins, minerals, vitamins, and carbohydrates. In addition, clean drinking water is also an essential part of the diet in chicken feed.
Actually, chickens drink water exactly double the amount of feed they consume, so you better check the water requirement every other hour.
Besides, vitamins and minerals are other additional nutritional elements that people often miss out in the chicken feed.
Another main factor to consider while making chicken feed is the age of the chicken. Poultry in different stages of development needs different types of feed.
Likewise, mature egg-laying chicken needs a good amount of calcium in their diet.
Some beneficial organic ingredients and the nutrition they provide:
Nutrient Organic Source
Calcium Limestone, Oyster Shell
Protein Alfalfa meal, Field Peas, Crab meal, Duckweed
Carbohydrate Wheat, Corn
Omega-3 Amino acids Flax seed, Fish meal
Vitamins Cultured Yeast
Other minerals Kelp, mineral supplements
Antioxidants Cinnamon
In addition to these ingredients, others like oregano, cayenne, and probiotics are added to enhance the digestion of foods and boost the chicken’s immune system.
Steps Involved In Making Organic Chicken Feed
Organic chicken feed is more nutritious and safer to feed to your chickens. However, you need to closely monitor the micronutrients and macronutrients while making your own mix.
Food texture is another important factor that one must consider while grinding their own organic chicken feed. All different chickens in different age groups need a different texture to be able to swallow and digest.
Textures of Chicken Feed
1. Mash
The newly hatched chicks are like newborn human babies, and their digestive system is just beginning. Additionally, the chicks’ beaks are just developing. Hence, they can not eat the coarse feed.
Thus, for the youngest chickens, the feed starts with a mash, and its consistency is similar to that of potting soil. The feed for young chicks is also called starter feed, and it is rich in protein to meet the dietary requirements.
This feed is fed from birth until the age of eight to twelve weeks.
2. Crumble
Crumbles are a bit larger in size and a bit coarser than mash with the consistency of granola. This is usually fed by the twelfth week of age of the chicken.
The chicken breeders can often use crumbles to shift between mash and pellets as a mediator diet. For the layers, the crumble is fed until it starts laying eggs.
3. Pellets
The pellets are whole grains that one feeds to the much grown-up and mature chicken. This food texture is best for chicken only after the age of at least eighteen weeks old.
growing chicken
The pellet feed for the growing chicken.
These feeds are more challenging to digest and much more significant in shape as well. The pellets have the condition of nice and hence are easy to store and feed as well to backyard chickens.
Process Involved in Making Chicken Feed Organically
The process of making organic chicken feed at home can be a labor-intensive process. It involves the following steps:
- Collect all the ingredients, like corns, fish meal, peas, oatmeal, kelp, and aragonite. The elements must contain all kinds of essential nutrients.
- Find a good source of minerals and vitamins. You can also opt for the mineral and vitamin mix that are readily available on the market.
- Wash all the raw organic ingredients and dry them out. Now grind those ingredients in a clean mixture grinder.
- Mix up the ingredients in a big container in adequate proportion according to the age group. You must feed the growing chicken a higher amount of proteins than carbohydrates.
- Then store the ingredients in a clean and dry container. You can scoop out the readily made feed to feed the chickens.
Organic feed
Organic feed mix that is made at home.
The recipe mentioned above might not be suitable for very young chicks as they have different growth requirements and feeble digestive systems. One can follow the below-mentioned steps to make organic feed for young chicks:
- Use at least 22 percent of protein in the feed mixture.
- Grind the feed to fine powder form so that you can mix and mash it before serving it to the young chicks.
- You can use brewer’s yeast, sunflower oil, and other mineral mixes to feed the chicken.
- Water is an essential part of the diet of young chickens especially.
Although homemade organic chicken feeds are healthy and safer to feed, such feed has certain disadvantages. Some of such penalties are:
- It is challenging to look out and find every single ingredient in smaller amounts.
- The entire process of making the feed is very tedious and tie consuming.
- There is no quality testing for such homemade feeds. Thus, one cannot be assured if the meal provides all the chicken’s essential nutrients.