Chicken feed pellets are hard, compact cylinders of mash that contain grains, protein meal and nutritional supplements for chickens. Unlike their liquid counterpart, however, pellets don’t crumble away easily when feeding a flock.
Chicken feed pellets are easier to transport and store, especially if your chickens tend to be selective when it comes to their food texture preferences. Pellets could also help if your flock isn’t eating enough or is kicking the mash around too often.
Contents
Raw Materials
Chicken pellets are convenient cylinders of complete feed for laying hens that meet all their nutritional needs. Pelleted feed provides all the protein and minerals in an easier-to-digest format while helping prevent chickens from kicking their feeder, creating an unsightly mess.
Pellets are created from mash, an amalgamation of crushed grains, proteins (usually ground mealworms) and vitamin and mineral supplements that is easy for chicks to digest. Pellets have become an increasingly popular option as a starter food option.
Raw materials used to craft pellet feed include ground corn, soybean meal, wheat bran, molasses, oyster shell flour, linseed meal flax seed fish meal cultured yeast and kelp meal. All these materials can be found at reasonable prices during harvest season, while their binding properties reduce the need for artificial binder products.
Premixes
Premixes are nutritionally complete chicken feed rations made up of all necessary ingredients that can be purchased or made at a poultry feed factory. High quality premixes must contain a range of vitamins and trace minerals that ensure your chicken receives all they require for healthy development.
A good premix should include antioxidants to combat vitamin oxidation. Moisture content and particle size must also be optimal, while planning the sequence of mixer loading for preparation must avoid oil balls, chemical interactions and demixing of ingredients.
Premixes come in all sorts of different varieties to meet specific age, purpose and nutritional requirements for various age categories of poultry including laying hens, broilers, week old chicks and meat breeds.
Grind/Whole Portion
Chicken feed pellets are made of ground, mixed and heated mash that has been processed into compact cylinders that are easier for chickens to digest than their liquid equivalents, and may prevent their movement around and create a mess when feeding time comes around.
Pellets are tailored specifically for each species of chicken being fed; baby chicks require smaller pellets due to their tiny beaks not being able to manage larger items. A middle size serves as an interim between mash and pellets that is designed to transition young birds over to using pellets rather than consuming mash for nutrition.
Laying hens require higher protein intake for optimal health; their survival requires only 17%, yet optimal growth requires 20-25% of their diet to meet this standard. Large pellets designed specifically for this species.
Cooling & Screening
Once pellet mill granules have been discharged, they must be cooled to below room temperature and dried down to less than 12% moisture content to protect from oxidation and maintain original nutrients. This step must take place for proper nutrition of feed products.
This process also reduces fines generated during pelleting, thus decreasing dust and waste in the finished product. Furthermore, using binder material increases durability of pellets produced and makes them more palatable to chickens. Studies have revealed that laying hens thrive when provided a diet containing 20-22% protein as this will produce bigger eggs over time – but this can be difficult with traditional layer pellets which only contain around 16%.
Packing
Once a formula and equipment have been assembled, pellet production begins. First the raw materials are crushed using a crusher machine before being combined with cultured yeast, fish meal, kelp meal, flax seed meal and crab meal in accordance with your specifications.
This mixture is then screened to remove any lumps of powder before being sent through the pelleting machine to be formed into pellets and then cooled and screened once more before packing for shipping.
Pellets offer numerous advantages over mash feeding for chickens, such as reduced separation during shipment and wind loss, greater digestibility and concentrated nutrition for their birds.
