Your flock can choose between starter, grower and finisher feed options when choosing to feed its poultry.
Finisher feed is a high energy diet designed to increase performance and weight gain at reduced production costs, from week 5 until slaughter.
Contents
Protein
Chicken finisher feed contains high levels of protein to promote weight gain and help them to reach their maximum size, along with other essential vitamins and nutrients to promote overall wellness in chickens. Although some people provide their chickens with scratch grains as treats, this should only ever serve as additional nutrition sources; complete chicken feed should always serve as their main source.
Broiler finisher contains nutritional ingredients designed to maximize weight gains with minimum production costs, typically from week five until slaughtering time. It should be fed to birds from week 5 until slaughtering.
Animal-sourced proteins like milk, fish scraps, meat and meat meal are more effective in encouraging growth and egg production than most plant-based proteins like soybean meal and wheat. Furthermore, animal proteins tend to be cheaper.
Vitamins
Vitamins are organic compounds essential to normal poultry functions, growth and reproduction that must be provided in small amounts to stay healthy and productive. Lacking them may result in diseases or syndromes. Water-soluble vitamins include vitamins C and the B group (biotin, folacin, niacin, pantothenic acid riboflavin and thiamin). Naturally occurring sources include alfalfa meal and distillers dried solubles; sunlight can provide vitamin D production by microorganisms in their digestive tract or produced microorganisms produced in their digestive tract while some microorganisms in their digestive tract while sunlight also produces some forms. A vitamin premix may be added to account for fluctuating levels in feed ingredients as well as ensure an adequate supply.
Minerals are essential to poultry nutrition but tend to be scarce in grain sources. Therefore, commercial feeds typically supplement them with minerals like limestone, oyster shell or dicalcium phosphate which contain calcium and phosphorus; other microminerals are frequently added too like manganese and sulphur.
Minerals
Poultry feed contains an assortment of raw materials that provide essential vitamins and minerals. Vitamin-rich plants typically supply these nutrients, while meat and bone meal or kelp (seaweed) supply minerals as do calcium carbonate, fish meal and dicalcium phosphate; even salt provides some trace elements.
Chicken finisher feed often contains several vitamin supplements, such as choline bitartrate and sodium pyrophosphate. Choline bitartrate supports normal brain function while aiding liver metabolism; additionally it protects against fat degeneration while helping prevent “crazy chick disease”.
Nutritional value of poultry feed depends on its ingredients. Each component is selected to meet the specific requirements of specific poultry species; for instance, alternative protein sources like sunflower meal or dried distillers grains with solubles can replace soybean meal to boost productive performance, litter quality, cecal microbial counts, economic efficiency compared to conventional soybean meals.
Fat
If your chicks aren’t quite ready to move onto layer feed, continue feeding them chick starter for several more weeks until they begin the growth process. At that point, switch them over to grower feed which contains high levels of proteins to encourage maximum size gains.
Chicken finisher feed is a high-protein ration specifically tailored for use during the final stage of poultry production. It helps birds gain weight before slaughter and provides essential nutrition required for life cycle completion and high meat yields.
This study’s objective was to establish whether alternative protein sources (DDGS, CGM and SFM) could serve as partial replacements for SBM in broiler finisher feed diets, potentially improving broiler growth performance, litter content and economic efficiency compared with conventional feed options. These diets could save both money and effort when feeding broilers finishing feed at finishing stations.
