organic chick feed & chicken feed
Dear Jill and all,
[see inserts]
Quote:
> > Obviously this is only a solution for backyard flocks.
> Its far from the only solution - it may be one that some people may wish to
> use
> but it is hardly an optimum balanced diet to provide potentially all the
> vitamins and minerals required
I didn't say that it's the only solution but that is 'only a solution
for backyard flocks'. It's one that has worked for us. We had fine hens
and we had buyers from surrounding villages who turned up year after
year to buy our surplus hens. We started out with 'spent' battery hens
and within a few years had birds who went into hiding for weeks only to
turn up with 20+ chicks in trail and we hardly ever lost chicks. So it
can't have been all wrong. As we were a vegetarian household there were
no meat or bones to be had but the hens did get table scraps, grains,
layers mash, and all the spilled grains, fruit and vegetable waste and
out-of-date dairy products from an organic foodhsop in town.
Quote:
> It was okay in the days when grains were really cheap and were also higher
> in background nutition than they are now
> THey were also frequently supplemented with alsorts of things around and
> about - like meat and bones from the table which is ilegal these days
> All the old books are full of amzing recipes and certainly a simple diet of
> a bit of grain was not what many folk used
> > Here in Ireland the only available conventional chickfeed has
> > coccidiostats in it, monensin sodium to be precise, which according to
> > the EU will be banned now.
> > See this press release from the EU cooking.net">food Safety folks dated July 2003.
> http://europa.eu.int/rapid/start/cgi/guesten.ksh?p_action.gettxt=gt&d...
> 3/1058|0|RAPID&lg=EN&display=
> WHICH STATES:
> ""Council and Parliament prohibit antibiotics as growth promoters:
> Commissioner Byrne welcomes adoption of Regulation on feed additives """
> which is very different from using an antibiotic as an anticoccidiostat
> which will be why its allowed in chick crumbs I would imagine
> This is not a regulation that bans its use as a medication
But if the medication is contained in the feedingstuff as a matter of
course than to my mind it is a feed additive.
I contacted a German branch of the European Consumer Association and in
their view the use of Monensin Sodium in feedingstuff was prohibited.
They even urged me to follow this up and to let them know what the
repsonse was from the authoriries here (which is where I was told the
opposite....)
Quote:
> this is yet to be explored
> ""In the case of Coccidiostats - which are feed additives used to treat
> infections caused by a micro-organism in poultry - stricter measures will be
> introduced if they are of antibiotic origin. A new dossier for re-evaluation
> within a four year period will have to be presented and MRLs would be set to
> avoid risks to human or animal health. As is common practice already, feed
> additives would need to be clearly labelled.
> """
> so they are not banned in the EU
I was solely referring to Monensin Sodium, not to coccidiostats in
general.
http://europa.eu.int/rapid/start/cgi/guesten.ksh?p_action.gettxt=gt&d...0|RAPID&lg=EN&display=
states in the table at the bottom:
"Antibiotics authorised in feedingstuffs ... Monensin sodium: Cattle for
fattening"
Not a word about poultry.
Quote:
> It
> > may be that it may not be added as growth promoter, but it may still be
> > added as coccidiostat. Dig that.
> they are completely different uses for different times of the growing period
> and for different veterinary reasons
> There is no conflict at all
I beg to differ - either it may be added to feedingstuff, or it may not.
Quote:
> If using home made rations its very difficult to get the correct balance of
> nutrition
> chickens eat very little in relation to their growth rate and their
> productivity so every thing they eat matters
> Its very easy to get the balance wrong so depriving birds of their optimum
> diet
I totally agree with you on that point. BTW Love your website. Too bad
you can't ship eggs to Ireland. I would be very interested in your Black
Rocks. Please let me know if the situation changes one day.
Sln,
Ute
