Sometimes our animals don’t get what they want. Chickens are notorious for resisting change but sometimes it’s inevitable (see our post about peas). In that case, here are a few tips for getting your animals to accept the change. (And yes, we’re channeling our years as parents and throwing in some tough love that works.)

As we’ve spoken with customers about ingredient sourcing issues related to first the pandemic and then the drought, we are often asked how we go about building feeds and choosing ingredients. Here’s a quick run-through of the process, at a high level. - Alice

Drought, labor shortages and transportation challenges have combined to create major ingredient shortages that are affecting our ability to reliably source some of our favorite ‘super star’ nutritional performers. Peas are a particular challenge. Each year we use hundreds of tons of peas in our feeds….

When it comes to food, bugs and fish aren’t picky. Organic? Whatever. But as humans, we like to keep our supply chain in mind, particularly with regard to sustainability. Because of that, we sometimes are asked whether our grub bugs and the fish in our fishmeal are organic. Here’s the deal…

How long do you plan to raise them? It depends on the size you want. Somewhere between 6 and 8 weeks should do it for Cornish. I like big birds, so I do 8 weeks, but they are practically the size of small turkeys by then. By 10 weeks they may have problems from getting too big.

Knowing our place in the larger world is important to Union Point Custom Feeds; Sustainability is more than a buzz word for us. We want to know we’re helping you raise healthy animals with minimum impact on the planet. Our fish meal makes the most of resources, sustainably and naturally.

Knowing our place in the larger world is important to Union Point Custom Feeds; Sustainability is more than a buzz word for us. We want to know we’re helping you raise healthy animals with minimum impact on the planet. Our fish meal makes the most of resources, sustainably and naturally.

Why on earth is it so hard to find oyster shell and chicken grit suddenly? What possible connection do those things have with each other, and why is there a shortage now?

Supply chain issues are even more complex now that we are dealing with the Covid 19 pandemic. One of my favorite suppliers did some detective work and figured it out.

The article covers the features and distinguishing information of a boatload of different breeds. Whether you're new to raising chickens or are just trying to decide which new breed to focus on you'll find a lot of information here. Enjoy!

That’s a question we are often asked.

The answer is yes, you can. The tricky thing is that we have so many kinds of seeds in the feeds and they all sprout at different rates. One type might sprout in four days, and another might not sprout for another week or even two weeks.

I read a lot of journals and industry publications in animal nutrition, in human nutrition, and in food and feeds processing. I frequently run across articles I like to share with nerds like myself, because my family will doze off. I’m going to cite some of them here in case you have trouble getting to sleep at night. Generally there are links within them too, so if you like technical stuff you can spend lots of time clicking around.

Mesnage, R. et al. An integrated multi-omics analysis of the NK603 Roundup-tolerant GM maize reveals metabolism disturbances caused by the transformation process. Sci. Rep. 6, 37855; doi: 10.1038/srep37855 (2016).

First, the authors established background and history, materials and methods, like in any good study. The entire study is available at this Nature citation:

Acid detergent fiber (ADF): Fiber measurement extracted with acidic detergent in a technique employed to help appraise the quality of forages. Includes cellulose, lignin, ADIN, and acid-insoluble ash. ADF is highly correlated with cell wall digestibility. The higher the ADF, the lower the digestibility or available energy. Because ADF percentage is forages negatively relates to digestibility, ADF is used to calculate energy values. Low ADF forages are usually preferred, because it means higher net energy. As the plant matures, ADF increases.

Q: Back in the day, a lot of people made their own feed and there were a million recipes for it that worked. Why is it any harder now?

It’s a figure of speech, but it works pretty well.

Egg-onomics 101 – Banking for Chickens

We probably don’t think of it as a paycheck, but that is how our hens regard that feed we set out for them every day.

Q: Is “minimally processed feed” better than feed made at Union Point Custom Feeds? Is the feed’s nutrition damaged by the equipment?

Q:  Is fermented or sprouted feed better than pelleted feed?

No, some of the feeds contain whole unbroken ingredients like peas or chopped seeds like pumpkin seeds. Sometimes a feed’s form is so attractive to the animal we may choose to give it to them in that form. Or maybe an animal’s digestion is so efficient further processing is unnecessary or detrimental. Hay is one example. Cattle, horses, small ruminants and other herbivores actually benefit by the “scratch factor” of long hay blades. Chopping the blades speeds up their digestion, but they are going to be digested efficiently anyway.

Q: What is the shelf life on your feed?

A: It’s going to depend on several things. The feed industry standard is that feed is good from 6 months of the date it is bought, since you can’t generally read the date on the tag or bag. We like to be more conservative here at Union Point and that may be one reason our feed performs as well as it does. We like to see it used in 3 months, which is an arbitrary half of the industry standard, but I’m not saying that it will explode into flames in four months, either. It’s just that fresher is better, and we’re committed to building the best.

A new customer commented on this, and I thought it was so useful I wanted to share it. Birds don’t like pellets as much as they like scratch grains, and that is a fact of life. I don’t like any foods as much as I like chocolate and coffee, but that doesn’t mean I get to live on a diet of chocolate and coffee, as cool as that sounds. Same for the birds. Here’s what he said, in part: