Is All Your Feed Pelleted?

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.

The animal’s intestinal wall structures (villi) are benefited by the stimulation of the bigger bits, and the act of chewing itself provides both activity and the buffering action of the animal’s saliva. So I like feeding hay, and it’s barely processed at all.

Animals love the peas and chopped pumpkin seeds in the horse and ruminant feeds. They like to crunch and taste them.

Combination feeds like our Natural Environments™ give us the chance to make sure the animals eat their whole dinner, not just dessert.  By putting the less attractive ingredients (vitamins, for example) into a pellet we can disguise them and make sure they are eaten. Believe me, vitamins, minerals and protein meals left loose with whole grains in a chicken feed will end up in the bottom of the feeder and be wasted. Put them in a well-made pellet and they will be eaten — and they are the expensive parts of a feed, too!

We also make combination feeds that we tumble with a little molasses or oil and Redmond trace mineral salt (applied on the outside like a pretzel). Animals love the taste. It depends on what works best for that particular feed.