Poultry feed is food for farm

poultry Poultry () are domesticated birds kept by humans for the purpose of harvesting animal products such as meat, Eggs as food, eggs or feathers. The practice of animal husbandry, raising poultry is known as poultry farming. These birds are most typ ...

, including chickens, ducks, geese and other domestic birds. Before the twentieth century, poultry were mostly kept on general farms, and foraged for much of their feed, eating insects, grain spilled by cattle and horses, and plants around the farm. This was often supplemented by grain, household scraps, calcium supplements such as oyster shell, and garden waste. As farming became more specialized, many farms kept flocks too large to be fed in this way, and nutritionally complete poultry feed was developed. Modern feeds for poultry consists largely of grain, protein supplements such as soybean oil meal, mineral supplements, and vitamin supplements. The quantity of feed, and the nutritional requirements of the feed, depend on the weight and age of the poultry, their rate of growth, their rate of egg production, the weather (cold or wet weather causes higher energy expenditure), and the amount of nutrition the poultry obtain from foraging. This results in a wide variety of feed formulations. The substitution of less expensive local ingredients introduces additional variations. Healthy poultry require a sufficient amount of protein and carbohydrates, along with the necessary

vitamin Vitamins are Organic compound, organic molecules (or a set of closely related molecules called vitamer, vitamers) that are essential to an organism in small quantities for proper metabolism, metabolic function. Nutrient#Essential nutrients, ...

dietary mineral In the context of nutrition, a mineral is a chemical element. Some "minerals" are essential for life, but most are not. ''Minerals'' are one of the four groups of essential nutrients; the others are vitamins, essential fatty acids, and essent ...

s, and an adequate supply of

water Water is an inorganic compound with the chemical formula . It is a transparent, tasteless, odorless, and Color of water, nearly colorless chemical substance. It is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known liv ...

. Lactose-fermentation of feed can aid in supplying vitamins and minerals to poultry.Pitino, Jen
"Fermenting Chicken Feeds the Right Way"
, 26 June 2014. Egg laying hens require 4 grams per day of

calcium Calcium is a chemical element; it has symbol Ca and atomic number 20. As an alkaline earth metal, calcium is a reactive metal that forms a dark oxide-nitride layer when exposed to air. Its physical and chemical properties are most similar to it ...

of which 2 grams are used in the egg.

Oyster Oyster is the common name for a number of different families of salt-water bivalve molluscs that live in marine or brackish habitats. In some species, the valves are highly calcified, and many are somewhat irregular in shape. Many, but no ...

shells are often used as a source of dietary calcium. Certain diets also require the use of ''grit'', tiny rocks such as pieces of granite, in the feed. Grit aids in digestion by grinding food as it passes through the gizzard. Grit is not needed if commercial feed is used. Calcium iodate is used as supplement of

iodine Iodine is a chemical element; it has symbol I and atomic number 53. The heaviest of the stable halogens, it exists at standard conditions as a semi-lustrous, non-metallic solid that melts to form a deep violet liquid at , and boils to a vi ...

. The feed must remain clean and dry; contaminated feed can infect poultry. Damp feed encourages fungal growth.

Mycotoxin A mycotoxin (from the Greek μύκης , "fungus" and τοξικός , "poisonous") is a toxic secondary metabolite produced by fungi and is capable of causing disease and death in both humans and other animals. The term 'mycotoxin' is usually rese ...

poisoning, as an example, is "one of the most common and certainly most under-reported causes of toxicoses in poultry". Diseases can be avoided with proper maintenance of the feed and feeder. A ''feeder'' is the device that supplies the feed to the poultry. For privately raised chickens, or chickens as pets, feed can be delivered through jar, trough or tube feeders. The use of poultry feed can also be supplemented with food found through

foraging Foraging is searching for wild food resources. It affects an animal's fitness because it plays an important role in an animal's ability to survive and reproduce. Foraging theory is a branch of behavioral ecology that studies the foraging behavi ...

. In

industrial agriculture Industrial agriculture is a form of modern farming that refers to the industrialized production of crops and animals and animal products like eggs or milk. The methods of industrial agriculture include innovation in agricultural machinery and ...

, machinery is used to automate the feeding process, reducing the cost and increasing the scale of farming. For commercial

poultry farming Poultry farming is the form of animal husbandry which raises domesticated birds such as chickens, ducks, turkeys and geese to produce meat or eggs for food. Poultry – mostly chickens – are farmed in great numbers. More than 60 billion c ...

, feed serves as the largest cost of the operation.

Poultry feed terms

* ''Mash'' refers to a nutritionally complete poultry in a ground form. This is the earliest complete poultry ration. * ''Pellets'' consist of a mash that has been pelletized; that is, compressed and molded into pellets in a pellet mill. Unlike mash, where the ingredients can separate in shipment and the poultry can pick and choose among the ingredients (many times picking out just the corn and leaving the rest), the ingredients in a single pellet stay together, and the poultry eat the pellets whole. Pellets are often too large for newly hatched poultry. * ''Crumbles'' are pellets that have been sent through rollers to break them into granules. This is often used for chick feed. * ''Scratch grain'' (or ''scratch feed'') consists of one or more varieties of whole, cracked, or rolled grains. Unlike other feeds, which are fed in troughs, hoppers, or tube feeders, scratch grains are often scattered on the ground. Hence, a large particle size is desired. Because they consist only of grains, scratch grains are not a complete ration, and are used to supplement the balanced ration.

References

{{reflist Poultry farming Animal feed

Poultry feed terms

See also

References