Back to the Basics
By Jeff Mattocks
As an animal nutritionist for the Fertrell company in Bainbridge, PA for 29 years. I have been working with smaller farms, backyard enthusiasts and pet owners.
Much of my work has focused on poultry. Our team works with poultry owners ranging from a single pet chicken to thousands of commercially raised poultry in niche management styles. We never focus on large integrated poultry growers. Their goals are to produce more at the lowest cost possible. Our focus has always been and will always be on small family farm production. We enjoy the diversity and challenges of working with poultry keepers around the world. Each environment has its own challenges from climate, feed ingredients, breed variances and management styles. We always learn something new about raising poultry. In the past 10 years poultry breeders, show poultry enthusiasts and endangered poultry breed keepers have discovered our services of poultry nutrition at a higher level than what you buy at the farm supply stores. Poultry keepers are finding less and less satisfaction from commercially available poultry feeds. They are looking for better. This desire from premium poultry managers has reached from around the world. Our team is assisting with feed formulas or feed supplementation in many countries including United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Jordan, Philippines, India, and many more. Poultry keepers are just tired of less than perfect in their birds. I do not blame them.
I used to think there was only small regions where high quality feeds were not available. I was wrong! I am finding that 90% of the world is a quality feed desert. I am also finding that part of the problem is the people who are buying the feed. Poultry keepers, like most people, are very cost conscious. They tend to buy on price and not on quality. This in turn forces or enables the feed manufacturers to keep watering down and reducing the nutritional value of the feeds they offer for sale. Whose fault, is it? Both! The consumer wants a better price despite the side effects. The manufacturers want to use cheaper ingredients, byproducts, and lower nutritional levels to bring the prices down.
When consumers quit reading labels and ingredients to purchase based on price is the beginning of our demise. Folks, I want to encourage you to read labels, ask questions, seek knowledgeable advice, and gain understanding. Then make your decision to continue with the status quo or improve the nutrition levels for your birds. If you are tired of dull looking birds, low fertility rates, low hatch rates and lower productivity keep doing what you are doing. If you know and want more from your birds make the sacrifice to do better. Like our human food we are being inundated with byproducts, preservatives, artificial flavoring, and over processing. The same has happened to our pet and animal foods. “Let’s fill it with crap and add flavorings the animal can’t resist”
Let us get back to the basics with real nutrition. Let us make feeds with whole grains, proper protein sources, fortified with the correct vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and probiotics. As an avid label or tag reader, I see most poultry feeds are bare minimum levels of fats, fiber, vitamins, and amino acids. If you are keeping high end, pure breed, show quality birds you will be looking for a feed that has the following:
Poultry Breeder diet
Protein, 18% - Fat, 5%, Fiber, 5%, Calcium, 3.3%, Phosphorus, .70%, Vitamin A 13,000 iu/kg, Vitamin D4,400 iu/kg, Vitamin E 110 iu/kg, Lysine 1.1%, Methionine, .50%, Threonine .75%, Cysteine .40%.
Just the basics. Nutrition goes a whole lot deeper than this.
If you are looking for a place to learn more about nutrition, breeding, and management I would invite you to join us at the following Facebook groups-
Poultry Keepers 360 – or videos and podcast at - www.youtube.com/@poultrykeepers360
Please start reading labels, asking questions, and doing better with your birds.
I hope to see you join the groups and watch the videos.
All the best,
Jeff Mattocks
