This note is for those who want to add some ingredients to their commercial poultry feed to improve the health of their birds and the quality of their eggs.
In this instance I am feeding adult Japanese quail gamebird finisher which is 22% protein and 3% fat, but my additions change those percentages.
Here is the recipe:
N.B., (Protein) [Fat]
1700g Gamebird Finisher (.22)[.03]
55g Flax Seeds (.155)[.422]
25g Hemp Seeds (.30)[.50]
15g Dehydrated Pilchards (.709)[.043]
15g Dehydrated Grass-Fed Beef Liver (.621)[.179]
15g Paprika (.141)[.129]
10g Dehydrated Bull Kelp/Durvillaea potatorum (.1)[0]
Total Protein = 22.6%.
Total Fat = 5.01%.
I have gone into depth about a lot of these ingredients, but the TLDR is:
Flax Seeds: Improve bird health, disease resilience, and fatty acid profile of eggs so they are more anti-inflammatory.
Hemp Seeds: Further increase gastrointestinal enzymatic activity alongside flax seeds.
Pilchards: Improve overall bird health and increase EPA and DHA in yolks (anti-inflammatory). (Gamebird feed might often have fish it it already, but the fats have probably been removed to make fish oil supplements.)
Liver: Micronutrient supplement, especially copper, selenium, vitamin A, vitamin B2, vitamin B3, vitamin B6, vitamin B9, vitamin B12, and choline.
Paprika: Micronutrient supplement, especially iron, copper, manganese, vitamin A, vitamin B2, vitamin B3, vitamin B6, vitamin E, and vitamin K, as well as a pigment additive for darker/oranger yolks.
Bull Kelp: Micronutrient supplement, especially for iodide.
I suspect most poultry would respond well to these additions to their diets, although I only have experience with Japanese quail.
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
#health #homestead #food #flax #eggprogramming #toxins #nutrients
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