Chicken feed, part 2

I thought I'd share my ideas about modifying our bird feed recipe.  Necessity is the mother of invention, right?  Since we can't readily access local fishmeal part of the year, it's time to think again.

This time I'm thinking peas.  It looks like peas are 24-28% protein.  They'll have to be cooked to reduce the trypsin-caused intestinal damage that comes with all raw legumes.

What I'm thinking is that fishmeal is still part of the equation, but that I'll attempt to reduce it's quantity by a factor of 3.  Instead of feeding fishmeal as the primary protein source, I'm going to head towards 2 parts peas, 1 part fishmeal (65% protein) and 1 part brewer's yeast (39% protein). 

The sum of those parts makes a 38% protein supplement.  Now put it into Pearson's square along with barley (12% protein) and you come up with 22 parts grain:4 parts protein.

This should diversify our protein sources, make more amino acids readily available, and cut costs.  We'll see.

Comments

[Shana]

Interesting!