Today I am going to provide a streamlined recipe that deploys 50% commercial gamebird starter feed.
If you have been mad enough to follow my current program, and you have a lot of birds, you may have found yourself spending quite some time preparing peas and thinking "golly, this is a lot of work, I miss the simplicity and yield of commercial feed".
Well, this note is for you. It also features a couple of P.S.A.s regarding B.V.M powder and flax seeds.
This is the recipe:
-- 1.43kg of Your Local Gambird Starter.
Here, I am using Laucke Mills which is 28% protein and 3% fat. The lower the fat the better so you can build-out the feed with the fats you want in your eggs. I have noticed Purina, for example, is even lower fat than Laucke.
-- 385g Yellow Peas*
-- 896.5g White Rice
-- 30g Dehydrated Pilchards
-- 50g Flax Seeds
-- 10g Hemp Seeds
-- 35g Paprika
-- 10g Dehydrated Grass-Fed Beef Liver
-- 14.4g B.V.M Powder
P.S.A.: I am going to stop deploying B.V.M once I run out, and no longer recommend it as the manufacturers will not tell me the strains of the probiotics they use. This is a red flag to me. The strain is as important to the Genus and species as a Dobermann or Chihuahua are to Canis familiaris.
—> Different strains do different things.
-- 4.2g Iodised Salt
-- 25g Grass-Fed Butter
-- 10g Coconut Oil
* = Rinsed then soaked for 3–12 hours. Then drained, and then roasted for 90 minutes at 170°C/338°F, then dehydrated for ~ 5 hours at 70°C/158°F.
This mix will be ~20% protein and ~5% fat.
Since I have slipped a P.S.A. about B.V.M into this note, I will slip another one in regarding my thinking, particularly around flax seeds.
You may have note-iced me rabbiting-on about about balancing linoleic acid with alpha-linolenic acid by deploying flax seeds. And I have gone into detail about certain peculiarities in flax seeds like phytic acid and cyanogenic glycosides. But, I haven't mentioned nor factored into any of my equations that flax seeds, whilst being 20% alpha-linolenic acid, are also ~5.2% linoleic acid . . . So I do feel a little like the ouroboros in my quest for the 1:1 omega 3:6. It also makes me wonder whether the flax seeds are worth the antinutrients, the toxic load, and the linoleic acid . . .
At this stage, I still think they are.
My reasoning for this is detailed in the flax seeds note, but I will extend it here by referencing this paper:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0032579119320462
If you go to Table 6, you will see that hens fed flax seed oil deliver eggs with considerably less arachidonic acid (inflammatory), when compared to the no-added-oil control and the other groups fed sunflower and soybean oil. Further, the eggs of the hens fed flax seed oil are the only ones to contain eicosapentaenoic acid (anti-inflammatory) and they also contain at least twice as much docosahexaenoic acid (anti-inflammatory) than the eggs of the other groups.
These last two fatty acids are the legendary "marine" omega 3s. But, we can sidestep heavy metal concerns in fish and make them the new and improved
—> poultry omega 3s.
You will also notice that the linoleic acid concentration in the yolks increases from 12.18% in the control to 14.83% in the flax seed oil group, compared 18.99% in the sunflower oil group and 19.81% in the soybean oil group . . .
I am currently okay with this increase, considering the aforementioned anti-inflammatory profile and other apparent benefits to the birdies.
The 50g of flax seeds added to this mix have 2.6g of linoleic acid, which constitutes about 0.09% of the total mix, which really isn't too hectic in my eyes.
Anyhoo, happy feeding and eating.
Here's the flax seeds note if you are interested in further reading:
Welcome back to the #eggprogramming note series.
This note is about feeding flax seeds to birds, and humans.
TLDR: Flax seeds are nutritious. They also have anti-nutrients, which are not necessarily bad. They also exhibit toxic activity, as well as medicinal activity. They increase the brain size of chicks. They increase enzyme activity in the digestive tract of poultry. They improve resilience against certain microbes in poultry. They improve certain egg quality parameters.
It goes on . . . So let's get into it.
Flax seeds are very impressive and interesting seeds. They are typically 20% α-linolenic acid—which is the plant omega 3 fatty acid. They are thus also appropriately known as linseeds. This fatty acid profile is the primary reason for including flax seeds in the feed. I have gone into a bit of detail about omega 3s in the fish note which I will put at the end of this note.
So, let's talk about other things regarding flax:
Flax seeds are 18.3% protein, 42.2% fat, and 28.9% carbohydrate (27.3% fibre).
They exhibit decent concentrations of vitamins B1, B3, B5, B6, B9, and folate, as well as calcium, iron, magnesium, zinc, phosphorus, potassium, copper, manganese, and selenium.
The following article by Kajla et al. (2014) called "Flaxseed—a potential functional food source" gets into some nitty gritty about flax seeds. They also present excellent discussion about omega 3:6 and inflammation.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4375225/
These authors get into great detail about secoisolariciresinol diglycoside, which is the major lignan in flax seeds. It is a phytooestrogen. I produced a note that touches on phytochemicals and links to an article that gets into some nuance about phytooestrogens. I will leave that note at the end of this note, after the fish note.
Essentially, secoisolariciresinol diglycoside is a therapeutic compound that is disease preventative (neurological, lung, cardiovascular, diabetes, etc.) as well as anti-cancer. These effects are all probably downstream of its capacity to scavenge free radicals.
As was touched on in the phytochemical note and the article it links, and the above article, phytic acid is an interesting compound in flax seeds. It is one of the compounds we discussed as an anti-nutrient in the lentils and peas note, which is also linked at the bottom of this note. Phytic acid forms metal complexes, which from an anti-nutrient perspective sequester copper, zinc, iron, and magnesium away from utilisation . . . However, it is not necessarily that simple. There are many factors involved, and phytic acid might instead be thought of as a regulator of these metals, although this is also a simplification.
Here is an article that goes into depth about this:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7539747/
Evidently, it is not all great stuff with flax seeds. There are other weird things like linatine which pertains to B6 deficiency in higher doses, and cyanogenic glycosides, which can produce thiocyanates which relate to iodine deficincy . . .
Further, a TLDR of a portion of the below article which is citing other articles relating to cyanogenic glycosides:
100g flax seeds = 21mg hydrogen cyanide.
The tolerable toxic level for humans = 30–100mg per day.
Recommended daily allowance for humans = 1–2 tablespoons of flax seeds.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/361997742_A_comprehensive_review_of_flaxseed_Linum_usitatissimum_L_health-affecting_compounds_mechanism_of_toxicity_detoxification_anticancer_and_potential_risk
Perhaps (. . .) whole flax seeds are not worth the trouble and deploying flax seed oil instead might be prudent—for humans, and for birds. Oil extraction here might be thought of as similarly utile processing to decorticating lentils and peas to avoid large concentrations of phytic acid . . .
So, how do flax seeds perform on the ground/in the feeder? Let us squiz some papers:
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/12/9/1402
—> In conclusion, up to 12% of soaked flax seed meal in Rhode Islad Red hens’ diets had no adverse effects on the productive and reproductive performances; at the same time, they improved the yolk color, plasma lipid profiles, yolk lipid profiles, and immune parameters.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physiology/articles/10.3389/fphys.2024.1400611/full
—> "We showed that feeding flaxseed to mothers increased the brain size in broiler offspring and altered brain FA composition in layer offspring."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751731123000617
—> A combination of flax seed and hemp seed resulted in highest enzyme activity in the digestive tract of chickens, and their growth performance corroborated this enzymatic activity.
This is exciting to me as I have been slipping (closed source until now) 10g of hemp seeds into the feed and cutting the coconut oil by 5g as I have a tub of hemp seeds that need to be eaten!
Before getting completely carried away, let us finish this pseudowayward note by extending the nuance on the whole flax seeds vs. flax oil/nutrient vs. anti-nutrient stuff.
Below is an article that discusses the deployment of defatted flaxseed meal (the stuff we might throw away if we were to just use flax seed oil) in chickens: "Research indicates that whole flaxseed increases adaptive immune capacity by augmenting cecal Bacteroides and short-chain fatty acids while also attenuating the heterophil to lymphocyte ratio in chickens. Moreover, flaxseed accelerates chicken recovery from infection with Salmonella Enteritidis or Eimeria tenella; however, future work is needed to better understand (i) defatted flaxseed’s superior performance against Eimeria species and (ii) Eimeria maxima’s resilience against whole flaxseed. In the context of vitamin B6 antagonism, we propose that 15% whole flaxseed overcomes S. enterica’s insult to estrogen synthesis by sustaining the activity of phosphatidylethanolamine methyltransferase (PEMT) in liver. We also propose that 10% defatted flaxseed (as a metformin homologue) strengthens chicken immunity by safeguarding gonadal physiology and by increasing plasma thymidine bioavailability."
Hilarious.
https://www.mdpi.com/1467-3045/46/11/732
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