Through intensive nutritional research, advanced breeding, and strategic management practices have resulted in an estimated 400 chicken breeds. A modern meat chick can reach market weight in weeks while each hen produces 300 eggs per year.
Quality feed is essential to the health and flavor of a chicken, so farmers take great care in considering its composition and nutrients.
Contents
Starter
Young chicks require a diet rich in proteins, specific vitamins and a carefully balanced mineral content. Two pounds of chick starter dry mash should feed one chick up until six weeks old; after this point a cheaper ration with increasing amounts of whole grain may be used in raising birds until slaughter time comes along.
A medicated chick starter can protect baby chickens against coccidiosis, an infectious disease which can kill them. The product contains coccidiostat which works best when kept indoors away from dirt and other chickens.
Farmer often opt to mix their own feed to reduce costs, by grinding wheat chops and mixing in some molasses and fish oil. They may also ferment it to enrich it further and make digesting easier for their chicks. Chicks cannot easily digest grasses and legume hays so a commercial feed that contains high amounts of protein should be mixed in along with some form of digestive aid like grit – also provided once laying eggs begins!
Grower
There are various kinds of feed available, some medicated to prevent disease while others aren’t. Usually, non-medicated feeds tend to be healthier for your chickens as well as being cheaper; sprouted grains provide probiotics while tannins increase bitter taste causing discomfort for some chickens.
Extremes can often occur in all aspects of life; farming is no exception. When this occurs in intensive chicken farms, they overcrowd filthy conditions with chickens fed low-grade feed to make them fatter faster, then transport, slaughtering, and processing all take place before their deaths are concluded.
Higher welfare systems allow chickens more space to roam, live in greener environments and are bred at half the rate as industrial chickens. Furthermore, one third of their lives can be spent outdoors.
Layer
Poultry feed must contain high nutritional values to ensure its poultry stay healthy. Without enough vitamins and minerals, they could experience conditions like dermatitis, paralysis, chicken rackets or liver syndrome – vitamin examples include Niacin B6, B6 A E while minerals include Calcium Magnesium Phosphorus Chlorine Sodium Iron Copper
Dependent upon the type of chickens you raise, different feed options will be required. Feed options could range from crumble, pellet and mash forms; fermented feed may even provide probiotics and additional nutrition to your flock. Furthermore, protein content varies by species; for instance laying hens require more protein for egg production thus layer feed often has higher protein levels than starter and grower feed.
Eggs
Chicken eggs are an impressive little package: complete with shell, membranes, albumen (white) and yolk containing everything needed to turn one cell into an entire chicken and full of essential vitamins and minerals that keep our bodies working their best.
Chickens are fantastic opportunists; they will peck at anything that comes their way, including table scraps (particularly avocado), green potatoes or their skins, chocolate, dried bean peelings or other non-edible items as well as moldy foods that could lead to botulism if fed too frequently. It is also essential that highly processed or moldy table scraps not be fed because these may lead to decrease egg production.
Chickens are intelligent animals with conscious awareness. Yet factory farms provide inhumane conditions where these birds suffer extreme cruelty. Hens confined in these facilities are denied maternal instinct and treated like egg-producing machines; eventually their bodies wear out.