Backyard Poultry Forum

Good to see you have bracing through the middle of yours, Arliev. A chooky friend of mine just had mesh stretched across the frame and her flock worked out that if they all stood on it at the same time it would sag in the middle and there was more tucker for everyone! Who says chooks can't think for themselves?

Thought I'd bump this thread back to the top.

We have 4 no grain, no soy chooks that have been laying pretty much continually since March.

Because the eggs are for use as food medicine it is important that the chooks are as healthy as possible.
I grow a whole host of greens & veg for them. But in reading through this thread I have now got some more ideas for different plants for them.

Their favourite green is young broccoli leaves, followed by mustard greens leaves, then tree lettuce.
So I grow 'groves' of those that they can reach through the fence.
I also grow:- deer tongue lettuce, beetroot (for leaves & chopped stems), lucerne is coming on now that it is warming up, kan kong, chicory, carrots to grate (they don't eat the leaves), parsnip leaves, spinach mostly for the white stems which I dice into grain sized pieces, black tomatoes which I dice, chia & amaranth for the seeds, the fruit trees are beginning to bear for the year also. There is also a host of other 'weeds' & wild garden herbs too numerous to mention.

Soon I'll have new season pumpkin & sweet potato to give them.

Protein comes from a few sources including certified organic free range beef & mutton/goat mince & I also finely chop the pressure cooked bones of mutton, goat & soft beef bones.

It's a big job to replace a bit of GMO grain & soy!

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ClissaT

going through the process of getting organic certification for my property but horse & chook worming throwing a big spanner in the works

Favourite saying: Madness is doing the same thing over & over, but expecting a different result! -Einstein

Hey there's no GMO grain or soy grown in Australia!! Surely it would be easier just to use Australian-grown grain. That's what I do.

There is GMO grain! I know they grow GMO canola in WA. not sure what else though.

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NellyG ........................

Canola is not grain. If seeking a double assurance of GMO freedom, one can purchase organic feed as its all identity preserved and certified.

The person who eats the eggs our hens produce has IBS really bad & can't eat anything that was fed grain.
Eggs form a large part of her protein intake & she eats around 10 per week.
Soy promotes oestrogen production in the human & many other animals causing fatty deposits & also adversely affects the reproductive system. So a person who has such health issues should not eat anything that contains any soy product like lecithin, soy oil or meal or eat any animal product that was fed soy products because it travels through the food chain.

Then there is the problem that Australia is now exporting all it's first class organic grain. The only organic grain possibly available for retail sale on the east coast comes mostly from Lauke mills & they have none this year because they can't keep up with the sales of organic bulk stock feeds plus bread flours & cake mixes etc into supermarkets. All Aussie grown organic grain passes across the desk of the one & only organic grain trader in Australia & he makes sure the best goes OS then the majority of the remainder goes to make bulk commercial organic stock feeds for the producers of organic milk, poultry products & meat. Lauke gets the rest for retail sales.
There is just no bagged organic grain available for retail sales other than one brand of premixed organic chook feed.

I'm not even going into the GMO issue because there is so much grown in Australia now I don't know where to start to explain about it. Apart from that, a lot of whole grain, premixed poultry feed & other stock feeds are partly comprised of imported grain products mostly of dubious origins.

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ClissaT

going through the process of getting organic certification for my property but horse & chook worming throwing a big spanner in the works

Favourite saying: Madness is doing the same thing over & over, but expecting a different result! -Einstein

Obviously you are choosing to cherry pick the 'facts' that fit your world view, but some are plain wrong. For example consumption of soy has been very widely shown in many studies to reduce oestrogen.

Still if it's actually working for this difficult dietary problem, that's a good thing.

Isn't it? I thought you could buy canola seed. The GM seeds definitely blow from one farm to another (big court case in WA recently where this happened).

I'm a bit confused! Maybe you mean the GM canola seed isn't sold as seed? I'm just curious as I really have no idea.

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NellyG ........................

We grew a couple of paddocks of canola for a few seasons. The oil is extracted from seeds, the grain looks like the rapeseed thats in canary mix and requires specialised machinery to harvest. Our silos etc were fine for wheat/barley/sorghum but we lost so much canola on the ground we never grew it again.
You are better off to grow linseed for your birds, its an oily seed.

Not wanting to buy into the GMO debate but by most definitions "grain' is the seed of cereal grasses such as wheat, maize, oats etc. so does not include canola which is in the same broad family as turnips, cabbage etc.
A large quantity of canola is grown in Australia including GMO canola. Canola is pressed for oil and the left over high protein meal is used in a lot of stock feed including poultry feed.

I understand that canola IS rapeseed with a nicer name (it was renamed maybe 20 years ago in Australia, not elsewhere in the world tho)

Interesting about it not being a turnip family - i never knew that!

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NellyG ........................

Canola is rapeseed with high oleic fatty acids. The name is Canadian 'Can - ola' short for Canadian oleic.

Oleic fatty acids are monounsaturated & thought to be healthier like olive oil for example. It's more oxidatively stable than the polyunsaturated fatty acids (doesn't go rancid so easily) and not bad for health like the saturated fatty acids.

The big crops like wheat and soy are easy targets for the alternative foods people because they have been very extensively studied. That means we know lots of good and some bad things about them. In contrast we don't know much about chia and quinoa, that doesn't mean they don't have allergens, irritants, anti nutritive factors or other things, it just means we don't know!

The advantage of knowledge is that the bad factors can be managed or removed. For example we know soy needs to be cooked & all stock feed uses a simple cooking process.

Is this the one you are referring to?

https://www.pethorsefarm.com.au/chook/o ... -20kg.html

Yes they are available down south, Victoria mostly, being supplied from the farms of Country Heritage Feeds.
Victoria is lucky to have that family growing organic grains & seeds for the organic poultry market.

We aren't so lucky up here in Qld.
This shortage of certified organic grains is a new thing since the drought has bitten so bad here in Qld & NSW.
Many farmers who have been growing organic grains, are not in a financial position to rest their fields as per the organic principles of good management.
So they are giving up their organic status in droves so they can get any sort of crop in the ground & hopefully make at least a few bucks in these bad years.
The certified organic market suffers as a consequence.

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ClissaT

going through the process of getting organic certification for my property but horse & chook worming throwing a big spanner in the works

Favourite saying: Madness is doing the same thing over & over, but expecting a different result! -Einstein