There are countless feed terms nowadays and so varied choices. What is a solution for backyard chicken keepers? For starters, they should certainly take a look at this article.

Organic Vs Conventional

At many farm stores, you can often choose between organic chicken feed and nonorganic conventional feed. What’s the difference? And what does it matter?

To start there are strict rules for manufacturing and supplying organic chicken feed. Organic feeds must be contain organically produced ingredients with no chemicals or pesticides and not grown from genetically altered or modified seeds. Only a small percentage of the mix is allowed to be non organic ingredients, such as minerals, vitamins, the amino acid methionine and salt.

Organic food must never contain any antibiotics or drugs and must be produced from protein sources and grains that are organically grown. All ingredients need to be approved by the official organic feed certification organizations.

Conventional or non organic chicken feed is made entirely from conventionally grown grain and protein sources, and may contain amino acids, approved drugs and antibiotics.

Another difference we can’t fail to notice, is the price. Organic products are considerably more expensive than non organic feeds.

If you are planning on growing organic eggs and meat, you will need to feed your hens organic chicken feed. If you’re just after keeping chickens and eggs clean, you will fine with regular and typical commercial chicken feed.
You can easily supplement your chickens diet with a selection of treats such as garden refuse and old food scraps. Chickens renown for loving corn cobs, cantaloupe rinds, apple cores and peelings. However, be aware to avoid spicy or acidic treats, such as garlic, onions, citrus and peppers.

Why Organic?

Many organic products are finally no longer a fad favoured only select farmers, breeders and enthusiasts. But has now become a modern way of ensuring the use of traceable, sustainable and healthy ingredients are in your chickens feed. Many choose to opt for organic for many varied reasons ranging from the environment to health concerns.

Free Range Alternative

If you decide to allow your chickens forage naturally on grass and insects, they will certainly still eat their commercial rations, but just in lower amounts, depending on the time of year.

This natural foraging provides tasty diversity to your chickens diets. Free range chickens, are more than likely to pick up food like insects and weed seeds. This means your chickens will eat less of your prepared feeds, because remember, they only have so much capacity for food. It’s always good to remember that if your chickens decide to eat greens it can often change the yolk color, but don’t worry. Xanthophylls in green plants can also cause the egg yolks turn a very deep yellow in color.

The greatest impact that a free range diet can have on chickens about to lay is their calcium intake. The greater a layer feed is diluted with other food, the more supplemental calcium will be needed to maintain your hens eggshell quality. Keep in mind, insects are an exceptional source of high quality protein, plus some plants are high in omega 3 acids. As you can see, there can be nutritional benefits, including additional environmental enrichment, in providing free range to your flock.

Organic Tastes Great!

Many people opt for organic food because they believe it tastes incredibly better than non organic. A significant amount of people are adamant that their meat or eggs taste better since using organic feeds. Due to there being no artificial growth promoters in any true organic feed, your chickens will grow at a slower rate than normal which is considerably believed to make their meat and eggs richer in flavor.