Question for chicken-farming RPDers

[TylerDurden]

One of the claims made by the UK farmers I talked to was that they HAD to feed their fowl on grains to a large etxnet or they would not get enough protein etc. necessary in order to lay eggs regularly. Those of you who do not feed their chickens/ducks/geese etc. on grains, do you find that they produce far fewer eggs every year as a result, or not?

[Iguana]

We do feed some grain to our fowls: they need it because birds are grain eater, unlike mammals. But no hot dried grain and no wheat; I used to give a bit of soaked organic millet and oat to mine. A limited amount of unprocessed, unheated corn or other cereals such as sorgo are ok. 

But most of all, they need a large area to forage, get worms and other insects. Maggots from rotten wild fish or meat and a bit of fish (especially for ducks) are also a good food for them.

[TylerDurden]

So, what portion of  unheated grain in a chicken's diet is OK for best results re egg-laying? Thanks,!

[Iguana]

Well, I feel there's a trade-of between the amount of grain given and eggs quality/taste vs number produced. An "instincto" friend raising poultry and who, in the past, used to produce eggs for Orkos told me to give daily about 200 g of grain per hen. I gave about half of that and my eggs tasted better than his.

I also gave them leftovers from my food such as melons' skins and seeds, more or less rotten fruits, fish offal-heads-skins-bones and there was about 6000 square meters of fenced orchard for about 15 fowls. 

I just started to buy eggs from a trust-able fruit and veggies seller who assures me she gives to her hens nothing else than the raw leftover fruits and veggies unsold from he stall and a bit of corn. These eggs are delicious and give me no troubles at all. We also have eggs from the friends camping in a caravan on my land, but not enough at the moment. They take unsold fish from a fishmonger and let them rot under some earth to grow maggots for their hens and young ducks.   

[TylerDurden]

So, say, a  minimum of 30% unheated corn in the diet for chickens is needed for an optimum number of eggs laid per week, perhaps? Funny, I had read about the diet of wild jungle fowl, the ancestors of chickens, and the impression  I got was that their grains-intake was no more than c.3 % of their diet.

[Iguana]

So, say, a  minimum of 30% unheated corn in the diet for chickens

I don't think so much is needed if they have a big enough space. It all depend on the density of birds per unit of surface and what else they have access to. In the jungle, there was certainly a lot more to eat for them than in our relatively bare and densely populated poultry farms!   

[TylerDurden]

I don't think so much is needed if they have a big enough space. It all depend on the density of birds per unit of surface and what else they have access to. In the jungle, there was certainly a lot more to eat for them than in our relatively bare and densely populated poultry farms!   

I had in mind a microfarm/permaculture-farm with an absolute  minmum of 10 acres+, of which 25%+ might be woodland. I had kind of hoped of feeding my chickens on nothing more than my leftovers(banana-peels,orange-peels,avocado-peels etc.) plus the worms and insects/grubs  from my worm-farms/insect-/grub-farms on the farm. But perhaps a 10-20% unheated grains portion may have to do....

[Iguana]

10 acres, that means 4 ha, that's huge! The trick would be to have small hens (called bantams I think) which can fly and thus can escape predators: otherwise it would be a hell to built and maintain a fence around such an area. That's the kind my friends have here on my land, but they are infected with the marek virus which seems to be general in Europe since a few years, imported from US. They are trying to select a resistant strain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marek%27s_disease

[dariorpl]

That's ridiculous, you feed them grain for carbs, not protein. For protein you feed them worms from your worm farm or you let them pick up bugs from the ground.

Really domestic chickens were bred as table scrap eaters, much like pigs. Feeding them lots of grain was too expensive, so what they got was raw vegetable peels, raw spoiled animal parts and the worms that grow on it, raw skim milk from making butter and cream, raw whey from making cheese and the like. And whatever bugs they could pick up.

Wild fowl do eat raw grain, so domestic fowl do alright on a raw grain based diet, but that's not what they've been bred for. The main problem is feeding them cooked grain, and soy in particular, which can't be fed to animals raw and unfermented as far as I understand it.

Still I would rather eat a chicken fed cooked or semi-cooked dry organic grain than one fed GMO cooked grain.

[dariorpl]

10 acres, that means 40 ha, that's huge!

10 acres = 4 hectares

[Iguana]

10 acres = 4 hectares

Exact, it was a typo. Corrected.

[TylerDurden]

Well, it is obvious  that I need to be given hard facts as regard exact figures, especially regarding winter....

[ciervo-chaman]

If you want to push egg production it is best to feed them grain, they have been genetically selected and feeded to do that.

If you dont give any seed but they have all free space to forage on wild native land, you will have best eggs ever. Maybe not too much, but the denser, yes.

I'm actually raising chickens and feeding corn and sorghum soaked on whey. Crushed bones and meat and fat leftovers. I can tell they are the best eggs i have tried. And they have all free space to forage. Native and growed land

[svrn]

Aajonus said that he got his amish farmers to stop feeding the chickens grain at all. They took all their leftovers from butchering and left them outside to rot and grow maggots so the chickens would eat them along with the rotten meat. He said the chickens stopped pecking each other and behaved completely differently. He said that they would act more like cats  and they would actually calmly sit on your lap like a cat as you pet them.

[Iguana]

Wheat makes animals, humans included, abnormally aggressive. Other grains not so much: for example oats, barley, millet are ok for fowls.

[goodsamaritan]

Wheat makes animals, humans included, abnormally aggressive. Other grains not so much: for example oats, barley, millet are ok for fowls.

any link to a study?

your personal observation?

[Iguana]

Experiments and observations of GCB and his friends with hundreds of mice in several cages, each cage with different foods, as well as with other animals. Unfortunately, the meticulous reports of the mice experiments have been lost after he moved to Mexico, as I've already related.

See also http://www.nutramed.com/eatingdisorders/addictivefoods.htm

Trigger Foods and Opioids

Pieces of milk and wheat proteins (peptides) can act like the body's own narcotics, the endorphins, and were described by Zioudro, Streaty and Klee as "exorphins" in 1979. Other food proteins, such as gluten, results in the production of substances having opiate- (narcotic) like activity. These substances have been termed "exorphins." Hydrolyzed wheat gluten, for example, was found to prolong intestinal transit time and this effect was reversed by concomitant administration of naloxone, a narcotic-blocking drug. Digests of milk proteins also are opioid peptides. The brain effects of exorphins may contribute to the mental disturbances and appetite disorders which routinely accompany food-related illness. The possibility that exorphins are addictive in some people is a fascinating lead which needs further exploration.

http://www.ranprieur.com/readings/origins.html

The origins of agriculture:
a biological perspective and a new hypothesis
by Greg Wadley and Angus Martin

Exorphins: opioid substances in food

Prompted by a possible link between diet and mental illness, several researchers in the late 1970s began investigating the occurrence of drug-like substances in some common foodstuffs.

Dohan (1966, 1984) and Dohan et al. (1973, 1983) found that symptoms of schizophrenia were relieved somewhat when patients were fed a diet free of cereals and milk. He also found that people with coeliac disease -- those who are unable to eat wheat gluten because of higher than normal permeability of the gut -- were statistically likely to suffer also from schizophrenia. Research in some Pacific communities showed that schizophrenia became prevalent in these populations only after they became 'partially westernised and consumed wheat, barley beer, and rice' (Dohan 1984).

Groups led by Zioudrou (1979) and Brantl (1979) found opioid activity in wheat, maize and barley (exorphins), and bovine and human milk (casomorphin), as well as stimulatory activity in these proteins, and in oats, rye and soy. Cereal exorphin is much stronger than bovine casomorphin, which in turn is stronger than human casomorphin. Mycroft et al. (1982, 1987) found an analogue of MIF-1, a naturally occurring dopaminergic peptide, in wheat and milk. It occurs in no other exogenous protein. (In subsequent sections we use the term exorphin to cover exorphins, casomorphin, and the MIF-1 analogue. Though opioid and dopaminergic substances work in different ways, they are both 'rewarding', and thus more or less equivalent for our purposes.)

[eveheart]

If you google "wheat aggression" there are about 2,500,000 hits. I've been reading studies about the indigestibility of wheat and the damage done throughout the body, including the brain, by the large, undigested molecules that rip through the colon wall since the 1960s. Nothing new here, just more articles saying the same thing that J. I. Rodale had been saying since the 1920s: "Don't Eat Wheat!" (He wrote a series of articles by that name.)

[dariorpl]

You've been reading those since the 1960's? wow

[goodsamaritan]

Holy cow!  Wheat aggression... is new to me.

Must be good from the point of view of raising an ARMY.

Thank you elders!

[eveheart]

Holy cow!  Wheat aggression... is new to me.

Must be good from the point of view of raising an ARMY.

Thank you elders!

You don't want soldiers to be aggressive! A good soldier controls all his emotions (aggression, sadness, physical discomfort, etc.) in order to be able to follow orders.

But, beyond that, what did you think were the problems with eating wheat? All those toxins have an effect somewhere, whether it's leaky gut, psoriasis, heart disease, mucus conditions, seizures, Crohns, celiac, arthritis, and so on - all the diseases that appeared at the dawn of agriculture. One person may experience one effect, another person might have different symptoms. The symptoms mean nothing, really; it's the cause that must be eliminated. I've seen children whose personality changes from wild to pleasant as soon as wheat is eliminated from the diet.

[Iguana]

Thanks Eve, very interesting. I didn't know about J. I. Rodale and it seems GCB doesn't know about him or any previous findings about wheat's harmfulness neither. There was no Internet and information about previous researches were not so easily found in the 60's when he unexpectedly observed these effects of wheat on animals. On top of those you mentioned, comes schizophrenia. 

[dariorpl]

I've noticed that vegetarians and vegans tend to be pretty aggressive people. I've always assumed it was a way for their bodies to let them know it's time to go out and hunt something, because they need meat. But because they can't allow themselves to direct that aggression towards it's proper target (prey), they end up directing it towards other people around them or themselves.

But maybe it was just the wheat.

[Iguana]

If you google "wheat aggression" there are about 2,500,000 hits.

I get 144 results and most, if not all, aren't related to what we're looking for. 

[eveheart]

Thanks Eve, very interesting. I didn't know about J. I. Rodale and it seems GCB doesn't know about him or any previous findings about wheat's harmfulness neither. There was no Internet and information about previous researches were not so easily found in the 60's when he unexpectedly observed these effects of wheat on animals. On top of those you mentioned, comes schizophrenia. 

In the late 19th century, there was a surge of so-called new-age thinking about many subjects as many branches of "science" distinguished themselves from "religion." Mind and body were explained by science, and we saw the rise of everything from mesmerism to homeopathy, and there were many branches of science that dealt with nutrition. There was a flourishing interest in nutrition, spurred by discoveries in anatomical science (x-rays, cadaver studies). Even the casualty-ridden US Civil War gave rise to battlefield doctors who poked around in the ruptured bodies of severely wounded soldiers.

That was the era of the Cereal Kings - men like John Harvey Kellogg and Charles Post - who promoted their cereals as cure-alls for ailments. (Good book also made into a movie: The Road to Wellville gives a hilarious portrayal of a Kellogg-like sanitarium). The premise was that murdered  animal flesh was bad for the body and mind, and gentler effects could be had from living on grains. Even wild animals like the tiger were raised in captivity on cereal, supposedly proving that vegetarian eating made ferocious animals docile. (In fact, the animal's docility was due to its meat-deprived, weakened constitution.) This was also the time when Indian ascetics ventured into the west, bringing their karmic blessings to vegetarianism.

Then, as now, great healing could be achieved by a change of diet from indulgent to moderate. You could go "for the cure" and get results if you were formerly nibbling on pastries all day long. Even shredded wheat cereal will heal something if you have been eating your wheat in breads and cakes.

I guess there's nothing new under the sun.