What’s Missing From Your Chicken Feed? Vitamins, Minerals & Energy – Audio Edition

Rip Stalvey 0:00

Tonight we're going to be talking about vitamins, minerals, and metabolizable energy. I've been getting some a lot of a lot of questions about that here of late, so I thought it was time to to bring it up on a show. So Jeff, just to get just to get us started. Okay. What are the purpose of vitamins in poultry diets?

Jeff Mattocks 0:25

Most of them are to support health, right? You know what I mean? Like your vitamin A is really important for your retinol and stuff like that. And keratin for like eye and different internal organs that play a little bit in skin. Vitamin E is going to be your immune system support, as well as it also is going to aid the skin. Both A and E are going to transfer because a hen requires a higher level of vitamin A and E than like a growing or developing bird. A lot of that gets deposited into the egg, you know, for either you to eat or the chick. B vitamins are your calming vitamins. Again, they also have they're going to support healthy liver function. You know, a lot of those get deposited in the egg as well. They just kind of they're drivers, so to speak, body systems. And yeah, you know, vitamin D, you know, that's your sunlight vitamin, but a lot of birds don't really get enough. And they're finding a connection between vitamin D and actually immune system support as well. Before vitamin D was often ignored, and it was felt that you know, 30 minutes of sun exposure would get develop all the vitamin D you actually needed. Well, they're rethinking that, and they're saying that vitamin D, pretty much in all living species, does play a beneficial role. Vitamin D also is key for your calcium absorption, you know, so it's going to be tied into your eggshells. There's your quick rundown.

Carey Blackmon 2:03

So I have a question real quick. In reference to the vitamin D, does when when you're using artificial lighting, does that help or hurt or make a difference?

Jeff Mattocks 2:18

Well, if as long as it's full spectrum, right, and they're getting the right wavelength, then the bird's going to be able to process some vitamin D from that.

Speaker 3 2:29

Okay.

Jeff Mattocks 2:30

And you know, the vitamin D levels like you know that I recommend in the feed at 1500 to 2000, you're still safe. It's not like you're overdosing on the vitamin D. You know, I mean, honestly, I'd like to see vitamin D closer to 3,000, but there's no data to support that, you know, and I don't want to be the only lone lunatic out there doing it. But I could see benefits of vitamin D levels at 3,000, you know, especially when birds are being challenged or you know, really been laying for a long time and haven't had a proper mold, you know, things like that. We don't honestly know the right, the perfect level for vitamin D. You know, the the whole poultry community, what they study is what is the minimum requirement, you know, not what is the optimum requirement. So they're always worried about saving a nickel or saving a dime, right? So they're looking at what is that kind of that least number to not jeopardize production first and health second. So, like I said, we don't really know what an optimum level is. What we know is what the required level is, okay. Right, and those aren't the same thing, right? Like I only require one scoop of ice cream, but I do a whole lot better on three.

Speaker 3 3:59

So yeah, three can be more optimum.

Jeff Mattocks 4:03

No, no, no. Four's the problem. I'm good at three, right?

Rip Stalvey 4:06

So Jeff, you were talking about optimum levels and minimum levels, and I wish more people would realize that what they're seeing published are those minimum levels, and they see those and they think, oh man, I'm good to go. But oftentimes that's just not the case.

Jeff Mattocks 4:28

Well, a lot of folks aren't even looking at what the requirements are. That's true. Sadly, people make the assumption that the feed company is putting the right level in the feed, okay. And you know, they're going off of like uh there's a there's a it's called National Research Council, NRC values, and you anybody can look these up. You can look up NRC values for laying hands, okay. Well, that's gonna be only for commercial laying hands, right? And what is that, you know, recommended, you know, what is that, what is that required value, right? And that gets updated about every 10 years, so it could be old, could be not, depending on when they updated it last. But that's the NRC values, National Research Council. You know, people are welcome to go out there and dig around. It's really dry, it's hard to actually find what you want, but they it is a published document, and it can be found on the internet, and that's where PhDs around the world, you know, based on research studies and what they've learned, you know, they kind of come to a conclusion and say, we believe that a chick needs this to get his life started, right? And like the 3,000 units of vitamin A, the 1,000 units of vitamin D, you know, 10 units of vitamin E. And those are the bare minimum, those are the numbers that you know they run with. And then there's so much that gets set on those numbers, right? There's so much emphasis being placed on the NRC values. Well, there's again, nobody's publishing optimum values, and nobody really has researched optimum values, particularly in the vitamin world. Not that I've seen, right? I'm not saying it's not out there, I'm saying I haven't found it so far. You know, there's they're starting to have more and more, you know, like they're always doing amino acid work, they're always doing, I mean, there's always something going on out there. But the PhD community and the large poultry community kind of keep it a secret within their small circles. So they don't release it to us until it's you know 10 or 15 years old or older. So we kind of have to learn it the hard way. But that's all right. That's all right. We're we're doing fine. We are doing good.

Carey Blackmon 7:01

Well, I'm sure a lot of people they don't want to take their best bird that's perfectly healthy, looks great, go do a necropisy and pull some blood work and see what its levels are to find out what those you know great levels would be. So that would be about the only way would take some very healthy birds and run those tests.

Jeff Mattocks 7:31

Yeah, and I don't even know if they have standards for the vitamins. Most blood work is done on vitamin or on mineral work. And here's the thing about blood work, right? If you if any of us goes to a lab to get blood work, the majority of the blood that they're gonna pull, we have to do a fasting diet. So they want to know that you haven't eaten in 12 hours. Well, here's the thing, right? So you would have to fast your chicken to get a true number. Because if it ate 10 minutes ago or it ate a half an hour ago, right? So blood values can change really quickly depending on how good the digestive tract is or isn't. Right. So, you know, yeah, uh no again, nobody set this standard. So if you feed your chickens at 8 o'clock in the morning, do we pull blood at 2 o'clock in the afternoon? I don't know. And not all chickens eat exactly at the same time. So, you know, when I had my chickens in the backyard, then, you know, some every time you went to the feeder, you know, 80% of them ran up to the feeder and they ate something, right? But there was always 20% that were more interested in a grasshopper, you know, finding an earthworm or cricket, whatever, right? And they weren't as dependent or or as interested in the feed. But I don't know. You know, getting blood work to have a good number and know if you're even on track or not. Again, when did they eat last? What are they eating? You know, I don't know. It would be great to know. I would love to know what optimum levels are. Now, I don't know. I know they're doing D vi you can do D with your blood, and I know you can do some of the B through blood, but I have not seen I have not seen like A, E, some of the other. I don't know if they can do them or not. So David brought up, you know, there are new NRC tables, but he thinks the latest are from 1994, and they very well may be for poultry. I I don't know when they've been updated last. They don't update each species every time they do an NRC update.

Rip Stalvey 10:01

So let's kind of shift gears here and let's talk about some specific vitamins. You know, basically what do they do, and and what level should we be looking for in our nutrition? Let's talk about vitamin A. Not you've already mentioned it supports vision, immune system function, skin, anything else.

Jeff Mattocks 10:27

Yeah, some in the feather. I mean, some of it's gonna, if there's enough of it, it's gonna support proper follicle and feather growth. You know, it's gonna be there, which is, you know, that's part of the whole skin structure as well. A little bit in the muscle tone sort of thing, you know, muscle growth, development, and tone. Most of it's going for like nervous system, eye, you know, skin, feather is where I see most of it going. You know, that's you know, and it's got a direct connection to things like iron, you know, and and the absorption of iron and and and it's gonna, you know, again, you know, a large portion of it's gonna go into the egg. If there is a large portion, there's a large portion gonna go into the egg and or the development of egg.

Rip Stalvey 11:16

You were talking about uh the follicle and and that sort of thing. Uh occasionally I'll see a bird that has sort of retained part of the feather sheath as the feather grows, and you'll see real ratty-looking feathers, but sometimes you can break that off of there and and they'll come out of that. But could that be related to vitamin A?

Jeff Mattocks 11:37

It could be. It is. It it I it it in part, I believe that the vitamin A is driving some of that, you know, that sheathing is not isn't didn't develop right when it was still kind of in the body, you know, and that feather was pushing.

Rip Stalvey 11:54

Yeah, that's exactly what it looks like.

Jeff Mattocks 11:56

Yeah. And you know, so it just didn't the that that sheathing didn't actually fully develop so that it can break away and you know and fall off, or the feather underneath that sheathing wasn't strong enough to do its job and push the sheathing off. So, but yeah, I could see vitamin A being a direct connection to that. And gotcha, whether that that might be more of like the so the retinol is gonna be more your nervous system, and I that's probably more in the carotene family, not carotene, carotene, carotene, C-A-R-O-T-E-N. But I think you know that's gonna be more in that carotene, you know, family of vitamin A's. Vitamin A's are split. There's there's several different sources of vitamin A. You know, there's beta-caroten, caroten, retinols. So they're not all just straight up vitamin A. You know, so you know, diversifying where your vitamins come from, and this is a big reason why I push alfalfa meal in almost all of my feeds, is I'm getting a whole different set of vitamin A's from a green leafy, you know, vegetation. Like alfalfa carries a high vitamin A, and it actually is one of the few plants that retains that vitamin A because it can retain its chlorophyll and its color, you know, after preservation. Whereas a lot of other green leafy, they lose their color and they fade out. So that's why I push alfalfa meal. It helps me get that extra vitamin A that I'm looking for.

Rip Stalvey 13:39

It's it's funny you were talking about that just about the time that Rob Guerin's comment came on, and he said, I had someone tell me that if the feather isn't getting clean of the sheathing to feed more greens, could that be vitamin A?

Jeff Mattocks 13:52

Yep. Yep. That's exactly what it is. But look, most of your most of your off-the-shelf layer feeds are gonna run 3,000 to 353,500 on vitamin A. You know, vitamins are expensive, you know. I mean, vitamin A right now to somebody like me who's a vitamin blender, you know, making products. I have it, I didn't look at the the price list at the beginning of the month, but I think the last time I looked at it, it was like eight dollars and something a pound, right? So it's not it's not cheap, you know. It it's not horrible expensive, but you know, uh, until man, I hate to even say this, but until like combo come out on the market and started pushing higher numbers, the commercial feed industry's been on a race to the bottom, right, to who can make the cheapest feed. And you know, and that's because the consumer goes in there trying to save a dollar on a bag of feed. Well, you know, you can save your dollar, but you're gonna spend it somewhere else. I mean, you're just gonna feed more feed.

Rip Stalvey 15:02

That's like I had somebody contact me today and said he was having a hard time finding a quality feed that was economical. And I said, Well, I hate to break the news to you, but you're not going to.

Jeff Mattocks 15:15

Yeah. Those two don't come together, right? No. No, not at all. Yeah. I, you know, and we see those posts on the on Poultry Keepers 360 or Poultry Breeder Nutrition, or, you know, I want to find a good feed that doesn't break the bank or is economical. Well, yeah, wait, you know, this is kind of what don't they call that an oxymoron? You can't have both you know, one or the other.

Rip Stalvey 15:38

So kind of have your cake and eat it too.

Carey Blackmon 15:42

I mean, you're not gonna go, you're not gonna go to a steakhouse and get a filet mignon for five bucks.

Rip Stalvey 15:48

No. It's probably a good thing. I'd spend a lot of money.

Jeff Mattocks 15:52

You know, I mean, here's the challenge, right? You know, if you it you know, Rip's done it now, Carrie did it before. You know, when you break out of the mold of buying, you know locally available common feed, and you actually step up to the plate and you try something that is properly formulated for breeding fowl, it is night and day. You give it 30 days huge eye opener. When you're feeding 25% less and your birds look better, I mean, it is day and night. And I'm not just trying to sell you something.

Carey Blackmon 16:28

I'm you don't even sell feed.

Jeff Mattocks 16:33

I don't sell feed. But every time I have to recommend all flock or flock grazer or whatever, it still drives me nuts because I know it's not as good as it could be, right? Yeah, it's better than some of the other stuff on the shelf, but that doesn't mean that it's great, right? Exactly.

Carey Blackmon 16:55

Well, like earlier, you were talking about vitamin A levels being in the 3000s. Ideally, they would be over double that. Yeah, or in an ideal world, they would be closer to 7,000 to 7,500 IUs a pound, right?

Jeff Mattocks 17:11

Yeah, yeah. When I'm doing breeder feeds for you or Rip or you know, when I'm doing breeder feeds for people who really, you know, want to do it right, you know, I I'm at minimum sixty, five hundred, right? Bottom my bottom line is sixty, five hundred. And a lot of them I'm cranking out at 7,500 or 8,000, right? Because I know what that's gonna do for the chick vigor. Okay. I I know what what head start that's gonna give the chick the day it comes out of the shell, right? And if we're breeders and we're worried about the next generation, that's where we got to spend the money. So, you know, 30 days prior to harvesting eggs till you know, until you're done, at least feed something, you know, step it up, right?

Rip Stalvey 18:02

It makes a huge difference. A huge difference.

Carey Blackmon 18:06

I had somebody ask that question today, and they were like, hey, we want to start hatching eggs, putting eggs in the incubator around the first of February. How soon should should we be feeding uh you know either your feed or breeder supplement in with our feed? And I said, I mean Christmas time would have been the best. Yeah, exactly. He said, Really? And I said, Well, think about it. I mean, anytime anytime you start taking extra vitamins and minerals and supplements yourself, it takes time for that to get into your system and and make changes. I said, A chicken is no different. It takes time for that stuff to get in their system and do what it's supposed to do. And he said, Well, I guess we're way behind. I said, What you can do is get a really good start on next reading.

Rip Stalvey 19:02

And honestly, I I kind of got started on Jeff's recommendations after I already had a bunch of birds hatched out. Okay. And I I saw a lot of improvement. Don't don't get me wrong, but where I saw the most improvement was the following hatching season.

Jeff Mattocks 19:21

Yeah. Yeah, you can't really do it intermittently. You can, right? Like if you only want to feed for the breeding season, fine. You're gonna see improvements. But if you feed them at that higher level all year, you're gonna go even to another level, right? I mean, you you're just gonna go to a completely different level.

Rip Stalvey 19:43

Exactly right.

Jeff Mattocks 19:45

Because the the the parent stock, both you know, the hen and the rooster, have been fed right all year. So all their tissues, all their body functions, all their glandular work, everything is is optimized, you know, right there and it's peaking, and that's all gonna transfer to that chick. You know, while the rooster has a small contribution, but you know, that hen, that yolk, that quality of the protein in the whites, I guess. A lot of it's there. Yeah, it's yeah, it's there.

Rip Stalvey 20:20

What about uh vitamin E? Now that I know acts as an antioxidant, protects the cells from damage, supports immune function, but what what are some optimum levels that we should be looking for?

Jeff Mattocks 20:36

Again, we don't really know what optimum is. You know, I used to run like everybody else at 15 to 20 IUs per pound. And, you know, when I learned what vitamin E did in combating Merrick's disease and other diseases, I brought up the nutrition level in our poultry nutrient balancer to 50. I honestly think, I honestly think 100 IUs or even 200 IUs per pound would be spot on. So there's this synergy between selenium and vitamin E. They need each other to be to work at a higher efficiency level, right? To get 100% out of your selenium and your vitamin E, you've got to have an ample amount of both. So, you know, I I'd love somebody to start running around 200 IU per pound. And I think you're gonna take the immune system to a completely different level.

Carey Blackmon 21:40

People are always looking for a more efficient fee. So they're not gonna pay $40 for a bag of feed.

Jeff Mattocks 21:48

Yeah, and he asked me how much more it would be, you know, the guy who asked me, and and I, you know, when I say eight dollars a pound, that is for one million IU. Use a vitamin A per gram. Okay. So the the total cost to bump up like a ton of feed would be about 25 bucks. Okay, now you're talking you know, 55, 60 cents, about 65 cents per bag on a 50-pound bag of feed. Right? It is not a big investment. You know, this desire to feed cheap, eat cheap, all this other stuff just drives me crazy. You know, you know, for a few nickels more. You know, when you're talking about you know, 60 cents a pound, no, not even 60 cents a pound. What am I talking about? You know, it's like $25 a ton, right? So you're only looking at like five cents a pound difference. When you break that down to what one chicken's eating, you're only looking at 1.25 cents per chicken per day. Or you know. Yeah. So wow, you know, if we can't afford an extra one and a quarter pennies per bird per day, right, to do it right, then it shouldn't have. Yeah. But you know, chickens are an addiction, and people keep too many. Rip, I saw you laughing. I saw you laughing.

Rip Stalvey 23:20

I'm I'm just snickering over here. I'm just keeping my mind.

Jeff Mattocks 23:23

You've been there a couple of times, right?

Rip Stalvey 23:25

Uh multiple times. Yeah. Let's talk about B vitamins. Okay. And that that's kind of a broad category just to say B vitamins, because there's several B vitamins in there. But I think the thing that really got my attention when I switched over to Pertra's Showbird and Breeder supplement was a difference that the B vitamins made in the attitude and demeanor of my birds. I mean, and that was just two or three days.

Jeff Mattocks 23:59

Yeah, they calm out. They calm right down. You you know, people get worried, right? They just they kind of mellow right out. It's like, wait, are these the same birds? Are they sick? Are they gonna die? Right? Well, you know, when when your bird goes from being really anxious and kind of half hyperacting all the time to, you know, they just calm down and don't really care about anything.

Rip Stalvey 24:24

You know, it's just it was hard for me, at least at first, to wrap my mind around the fact that they were now acting normal. Where previously what I was seeing was abnormal behavior.

Jeff Mattocks 24:39

Yeah. Before you thought it was normal.

Rip Stalvey 24:42

Yeah, yeah.

Jeff Mattocks 24:43

What you what you saw before was normal, and all of a sudden they're just really calm, they're really docile, you know, they're fun to handle, they're not as squirmy, right? None of that, right? And you're like, is this what normal's supposed to be? Right? So exactly right. Now you wish as a judge everybody fed extra B vitamins, right? So when you're judging.

Rip Stalvey 25:06

I would almost be willing to go through and slip them all of B vitamin, you know, before we start judging. Yeah.

Carey Blackmon 25:12

Stick it in the water.

Rip Stalvey 25:16

Vitamin C. I know it it aids in stress, reducing stress and immune support, basically the overall health of the bird. Is that really essential in in poultry diets?

Jeff Mattocks 25:32

Not essential, but it is it is an antioxidant, and it's also excellent for heat stress. So if we had a way to use it when we need it, like in the middle of the summer when they're really under heat stress, here's the thing: it's really hard to add hand at vitamin C to your chicken feed because we're we use a pure form of vitamin C, right? It's 99% vitamin C ascorbic acid, and we are only adding either a half a pound to one pound, at the most two pounds, and a complete ton of feed. So working out that percentage, you're looking at like 0.01%, you know, of the feed. How do you how do you even contemplate adding that? And if you get too much vitamin C, it causes diarrhea, and you end up with really loose manure, and it is still an acid, so you can throw off the digestive tract a little bit. So I don't know how you know, short of feeding apples or oranges to your birds, you know, especially if you wanted to freeze them and let them peck at them in the summertime, that might be your best option. You know, we can try running a little bit through the water, but to make that feed adjustment is pretty tough. But it is it it's been proven time and time again for heat stress, and it is phenomenal, right?

Rip Stalvey 27:11

So let's talk a little bit about I guess the best way to put it is feed storage to prohibit excessive vitamin loss. What's your recommendations there?

Jeff Mattocks 27:29

Well, I mean, most of your vitamins are somewhat shelf stable. Your fat-soluble vitamins like your A and your E, I don't worry about them. Vitamin D is also really stable. The vitamins I'm worried about are gonna be your B class of vitamins. You know, they are the ones, you know, your thiamine, your niacin, your riboflavin. And riboflavin goes in at such a small amount that to have those oxidize off, you know, before you get to feed your bird, you know, I worry about that a little bit. You know, the birds are gonna be, are you gonna see the difference? No, I I mean it's a it's a problem for me only because of how I think about things, you know, a little bit too much of a perfectionist at times, but you know, you're paying for those B vitamins. And like you said, you know, when you started feeding show and breeder, is the B vitamins make a big difference, right? And they calm way down. So, you know, keeping it away from air and keeping it away from heat is gonna be your key factors. So, you know, we've talked about you can package it up. If you're gonna keep have to keep feed for more than a month, you know, you can pack it up, you can put it in the freezer, make it airtight, you know, that'll it that doubles your shelf life.

Carey Blackmon 28:47

But then not a whole lot. What I was doing is I I liked a wide-mouth mason jar, and I would take a tablespoon out of the kitchen, and I would keep that inside the mason jar, and I would keep that with my feed along with my oil, but I only had that little bit, you know, I'd I'd get like a quart-sized jar and fill it halfway up, so and I would use that, and then I would get more out of my bag from the deep freeze so I I could make sure that those vitamins did not lose their stability and make it all the way.

Jeff Mattocks 29:30

Yeah, and you're talking about the show and breeder, right? And just feed in general that you buy, you know, trying to keep those B vitamins going, you know, for an extended period of time. You know, uh fortunately, you know, I'm reading posts from folks, they're starting to read, they're starting to read the lot numbers and figure out when the feed was made. So people are, you know, they're they're now looking at how old is that feed, right? And you know, they're talking to their tractor supply person or their feed mill person or whoever and say, look, this is old, you know, you got anything fresh, right? And so, you know, our our education is working here, Rip. I can tell. You know, I'm seeing I'm seeing the post, but it's um yeah, it's just tough. I mean, air is gonna be your heat and air is gonna be your killer of vitamins, you know. And like I said, you know, the ones that cost you the most, which are the B vitamins, right? They're gonna be the first ones to go, right? They have the least amount of stability for oxygen and and heat.

Rip Stalvey 30:38

Jeff, do you have any, I guess, sort of general tips and advice for excuse me, preventing vitamin deficiencies or maybe identifying vitamin deficiency in our bird?

Jeff Mattocks 30:52

I'm not sure. Referring that by me a different way. I'm not sure I know what you're asking a hundred percent.

Rip Stalvey 30:58

Okay. How would somebody go about preventing vitamin deficiencies in their birds?

Jeff Mattocks 31:05

Well, I mean, you know, be a tag reader, you know, see what's in the ingredient list, make sure that the vitamins are there. I mean, you know, seeing the deficiencies five years ago or four years ago when you know Show and Breeder came out, that's the reason I invented it or created it. Because, you know, I could tell that what's being offered on the open market was not enough to give you the best bird, right? And that's so you know, honestly, I wish I didn't have to sell a supplement. I wish people would just make feed that's made the right way, right? And and do it right from the beginning. But you know, look, I take vitamins and supplements for myself because the food that I eat is not properly balanced. But, you know, I don't eat a that's my fault, right? I don't eat a good diet. But yeah, it's you know, sadly, these supplements have a have a place in our lives, whether it's for us or our chickens.

unknown 32:08

Yeah.

Rip Stalvey 32:09

Hey, before we go any further, I've got a little thanks to our sponsor thing I'd like to run here, so let's pay attention. We would like to take a short break to express our appreciation to the Petrell Company for their sponsorship of the Poultry Keepers 360 Live programming. Their commitment to providing high-quality, natural products align perfectly with the values we hold dear in our poultry community. Thank you, Petrell, for partnering with us to empower poultry keepers everywhere. We're truly grateful for your dedication and support. Okay, let's shift gears a little bit, and we've been talking about vitamins for a good bit in the show. Let's switch over to minerals. They are to me, they're just equally as important as vitamins, and uh, correct me if I'm wrong there, but I mean minerals are important for bone and egg cell strength, enzyme function, immune health, nerves, and muscle function, just just so many other. And honestly, I didn't know this until I heard you say it one time that it can also have an impact on the intensity of colors in our bird's plumage.

Jeff Mattocks 33:28

You know, like your iron is gonna give you more deeper reds, and your manganese is gonna give you, you know, ultimate in black, you know, each one of them, you know, each one of the trace minerals in the right proportion. I don't want anybody going out and buying manganese tomorrow, right, and start just kind of free willy-nilly in it into their feed. Don't do that. So, look, there's this unique relationship. Like you need this much calcium, but you got to have this much phosphorus and this much magnesium and this much potassium, right? So they are all kind of hinging off of what the other one's doing. And too much of one can interfere with the uptake of another, right? So you can create a nightmare by overdosing just as bad as you know not having enough. So just don't don't go out there and and think I want my bird to be blacker, I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna give it some manganese, or I I need more red in my bird, and I'm gonna up the iron, right? So just don't it don't work that way. And for folks that are interested, they after the show, they can go out, and there's this thing called Malders M-U-L-D-E-R mineral wheel, mineral interaction wheel. And it's really interesting where it talks about okay, so you know, zinc is gonna kind of control how phosphorus moves, and it kind of gives you a snapshot of mineral interaction, whether they work with each other or against each other. It's pretty cool. And it's worth taking a look at, you know. I I think it'll be an eye-opener for a lot of folks. And so mineral interaction, you know, it's the right levels of each one of those at the right time, right? And and that's that's the key. Okay, and a lot of them help each other, you know, go into the system, you know, like boron actually is the driver of calcium, and calcium actually is the vehicle where many other minerals are absorbed, right? But too much. Okay, so you know, like your optimum calcium level is around three and a half percent, 3.25 to 3.75, right? Going over 3.75 is not gonna give you a better eggshell. It's not gonna, you know, it's not gonna help the bird. It's not, right? So you're just kind of wasting money and you're spending money on something that's really a cheap ingredient. So, you know, like manganese, you know, 100 parts per million, you know, between 100 and 120 parts per million. You know, you start going over 200 parts per million, you're running a risk of overshadowing another mineral. So each one of these, you know, it's pretty well known what level they should be at. And, you know, we can be slightly higher. Let's just not get crazy about it.

Rip Stalvey 36:28

Well, just saw a comment earlier, and I wanted to see if I could find it here. While we're on the subject of minerals, Elizabeth Humeyer posted she adds if I add copper to my water to prevent algae, could I overdose my birds on copper?

Jeff Mattocks 36:50

Uh you could. I mean, I don't think you're going to. And I mean, you know, copper, so most of us formulate copper at about 10 to 15 parts per million in the feed. And copper toxicity is up over 100 parts per million in the total diet. I don't think you're going to get there. I don't know how much you're using, Elizabeth, but you know, like a one-eighth of a teaspoon per gallon is plenty, right? So if you're using copper sulfate, you know, it's it doesn't take much, right? It really doesn't. That's I mean, so the folks that are using like a penny or a piece of copper pipe or something like that, the amount of copper that's coming off of that into the water is so small, right? And it works.

Rip Stalvey 37:44

And Sue Dobson makes a good point here. Yep, many of the vitamins assist minerals to be better absorbed and used. Yeah. Yep, 100%. Things all work together. All work together. You know, I when I think of vitamins and minerals, I people always say, well, and they're familiar with the calcium for eggshells and and maybe a little bit about potassium, but they don't quite understand all of the rest of them. Is is there a good book that they might refer to? Or or would that Mulder's mineral interaction wheel provide some of the things that you're doing?

Jeff Mattocks 38:26

Mulder's only Molders only shows you how minerals work together or or work against each other, right? That's all it does. It doesn't give you levels, it doesn't tell you where you need to be. You know, you and Carrie.

Speaker 3 38:41

I know a good book.

Jeff Mattocks 38:42

You you and Carrie.

Speaker 3 38:43

I know a good book.

Jeff Mattocks 38:44

You guys already have commercial poultry nutrition, you know, on your shelf, right? I don't expect everybody to go buy commercial poultry nutrition. You know, the data we've talked about.

Carey Blackmon 38:56

I mean, you address a lot of it in these poultry.

Jeff Mattocks 38:59

I do. I do.

Carey Blackmon 39:01

And that's what I was gonna say is that that book, because you you list a lot of that stuff in there, right?

Jeff Mattocks 39:08

And I've pulled that out of commercial poultry breeder new or I've pulled that out of commercial poultry nutrition and translated it from you know, kilograms to pounds, you know, for our market here for folks to understand, you know, and again, those are the requirements. Those are not those are the minimum requirements, you know, they're not optimum levels. Nobody really reports those optimum levels, you know, you know, the Hubbard breeding information that we've posted many times on here, you know, Hubbard breeders, their management and nutrition probably as good as any. But, you know, we're we're working in an unknown zone. Like we don't know what that perfect level is or what that optimum level is because all of our PhDs and all of our scientists are working on what we can do to minimize and get costs down. They're not they're not out there. There's no money in researching, nobody's gonna sponsor them, or no, there's no money to research what is the optimum levels of all of these nutrients, right? That's just not how society works. It's all about saving money, right?

Rip Stalvey 40:27

So Jeff, incidentally, I I just found today when I was looking for something else, but I found a free PDF copy of commercial poultry nutrition.

Jeff Mattocks 40:39

Yeah. Do you have the link still handy? You can post it for people if they if they're curious.

Rip Stalvey 40:45

Yeah, I can post that tomorrow. Sure can. Kevin Hatley wants to know how does someone who knows nothing find quality feed? And I know we've addressed that several times, but it's not easy. It's not easy because there's really not much over-the-counter feed, honestly, that I would feed to my birds.

Jeff Mattocks 41:07

But I've been spoiled. Rip, you've had a revelation in your life, right? You you you you've come over to the dark side.

Rip Stalvey 41:14

Well, no, I prefer to think about it. I move from the dark end of the light.

Jeff Mattocks 41:18

There you go. You did. You did. You know, Kevin, all you can do, okay. So there's we've had shows on how to read tags, what you're looking for, nutrient levels, things like that. So you may want to go back and look through the archives. You know, we talk about optimum levels and actually going through the ingredient list and looking at, okay, what what are the ingredients? What do they mean? Right? You know, and if if that don't work for you, you know, you can always post a picture. People do this every day. You can post a picture of your feed tag, you know, to Poultry Keepers 360 or Poultry Breeder Nutrition. Now, be careful because some of us are extremely blunt and obtuse, and we will happily tell you that that is garbage. See, so if you're a sensitive kind of person, probably shouldn't post your feed tag. Yeah.

Rip Stalvey 42:16

Kevin, one thing I would suggest if you're new to this, and it sounds like you are, uh, I would get a copy of Jeff Maddox's book, Niche Poultry, Feeding and Management. And a lot of that, a lot of that information is covered in Jeff's book. It's a great resource to have, and it's not just nutrition, but it's about poultry management. And, you know, when you stop and think about it, nutrition and poultry management impacts our birds at every stage of their life.

Jeff Mattocks 42:43

I have to hire you two for books sales.

Rip Stalvey 42:46

You talk.

Carey Blackmon 42:47

I mean, I I did I did sell a couple one or two for you today. Yeah. In that book, it talks about brooding, food selection, you know, all kinds of stuff. So if you are a new chicken tender and you're and you're looking for those ideas, you you could either get that book or like like Jeff said, go go watch a lot of the videos where we address some of the specific topics that you're looking for. I learned a lot from this show when it started.

Rip Stalvey 43:20

So David has a question here. I clicked on the wrong one. Sorry. Hang on.

Carey Blackmon 43:33

That was true though.

Rip Stalvey 43:34

Yeah. Who is the best oil? I think they mean what is the best oil in poultry nutrition. And you know, we've talked about it before that our preference is for coconut oils and olive oils. Animal fats are good, like lard or or tallow. But uh I I th to me those Are the the top ones, I think.

Jeff Mattocks 44:02

But yeah, I know there's others after yeah, I would, you know, and and I apologize, we did not talk about this in like the earlier shows last year, year before. But you know, honestly, if you can get them, tallow first, right, and then lard second, then you're gonna go into your coconut and your olive. You know, somebody asked about camelina oil, which is also outstanding, right? And then after that, pretty much all of your seed oils, in my opinion, are are gonna be pretty equal in their nutritional value.

Rip Stalvey 44:38

So I I gotta admit, I'm pretty tight with uh any lard I might have because I like to use that in biscuits. Yeah, I'll bet.

Jeff Mattocks 44:54

I posted the link to the book in the comment section for folks. So if they want to find it, it's it's there.

Rip Stalvey 45:04

I'll leave that up for a little minute. Uh Jeff, let's and uh I realize we're getting kind of short on time here, but let's talk about metabolizable energy, what it is and why it's important.

Jeff Mattocks 45:17

All right. So we know that each grain or everything that goes into a poultry into a any diet, right, is measured. So its energy is measured in so depending on what species of animal is it's different. It's a calculation, but like metabolized energy is the amount of calories that are assumed to be digested by the chicken, right? So it's it'll be poultry capital ME. Here in the U.S., we measure them kilocalories per pound when you go abroad outside the U.S., you know, and then it's always in metric. It'll be kilocalories per kilogram, right? And so we're trying to, it's the only standardized method that we know of as far as energy for getting the right amount of calories into our chickens every day. And you know, like a laying hen is going to be right around 300, 320 calories, kilocalories per day. All right. Meat birds, we don't really track it during the grower, the starter and the grower phase because they get full feed. But you know, we're looking at per pound basis, you know, I'm like 1,360, up to 1400. I don't like to quite get above 1400. Then we start having things like heart attacks and so on, 1350, 1380 in the starter feed, you know, dropping that down to now for our type of birds here, not for meat development birds, I want to drop down into like 13 to 1320, you know, for that grower phase, because I don't want them to start putting on fat, right? I I don't I don't want them to start developing fat in the first six weeks or the second six weeks. Then then when you drop into a developer phase, we're even gonna drop that energy slightly lower, 1280 to 1300. And even at that level, they're gonna start putting on small body fat deposits, right? Not you know, in around the thigh, not a huge amount of pad fat in the abdomen, but they're gonna start, you know, under the skin, they're gonna start building up a little bit of fat because they're gonna need that when they start laying. Okay. And but it's yeah, so I mean, metabolized energy is a calculated value, and you know, corn is king, and then everything, you know, like corn is 1500, 1540, depending on the quality of the corn. You know, wheat, wheat is 1440, barley is 1250, you know, oats is 1080, field peas are 1300. So, you know, everything has been assigned an energy value. And in a laboratory, they actually they burn it and they measure the BTUs that come off of that, and then it goes into a calculation. You know, it's a long, laborious calculation to assign it a an energy value. Well, the energy for a horse is different, the energy calculation for a horse is different from a chicken, different than a pig, different than a dog, different than a rabbit. Right. So somewhere back in time they've studied you know the efficiency of each animal and their ability to digest energy. And that's gone into this really big math equation on assigning these values. Okay, so it's based on fat, fiber, carbohydrates that they measured when they burned, and that's more than people really wanted to know about metabolized energy.

Rip Stalvey 49:09

So here's the question, Jeff. Nicole wants to know is fish meal preferred over other kinds of animal protein sources or even insect protein sources, or is it just the most cost-effective option?

Jeff Mattocks 49:24

Yeah, it's not the most cost-effective option. So most of your like insect insect protein sources, believe it or not, they're feeding like cricket, mealworm, etc. They feed chicken feed to these animals. So, you know, I don't know that you're gaining anything on most of the insect meals. You know, even like black soldier flies feeding on mostly plant residue, you know, from produce and so on, depending on where they come from. Some places they feed them animal manure and and meat and bone products. I only go, so I'm a big proponent of fish meal, and here's why, because it's a wild harvested out of the ocean. To me, it is a cleaner. There's no risk of antibiotic residues or other medications coming through, right? And there's less risk of like cancer cells from an animal that was about to die that went to the rendering plant. So I'm I'm avoiding other possibilities. Okay. And that's why I'm a big fan of fish meal. You know, if you had a good source of like, you know, pork, meat and bone meal, ruminant beat meat and bone meal, if you were satisfied that it was a clean source, you know, those can all be used in in formulating a poultry diet. I just, again, back to my perfectionism. I lean towards the best source I can find, and to me, that's fish meal.

Rip Stalvey 50:54

Agreed. Uh, let's see. Question here from David. What are the recommended levels of metabolizable energy and gamecock speed, game cock feed before the show?

Jeff Mattocks 51:08

Man, this is, you know, this is almost like talking about politics and religion because, you know, there's one side of the fence that thinks you want to carbload them and you really want them to be, you know, have a bunch of carbohydrates and energy in them. I'd much rather have the bird at, you know, around 1,300 kilocalories per pound, but I would like to have the fat level a little bit higher, or have the bird burning fat, stored body fat, you know, coming up, you know, close to the show. It just I think they're I think they're healthier when they're burning body fat stores. And you know, I I don't understand carbloating. And and let me just say it a different way, right? You eat a big meal that has a big dessert at the end of it for us, like Thanksgiving, right? And and you eat a couple pieces of pie, which one would have been enough. Next thing you know, about an hour later, when all that sugar is winding down in your body, you fall asleep. Okay, it puts you to sleep. So controlling the carb load and understanding the carb crash that follows it, the timing is really important. So if I never go to carb loading and I'm and I'm running off of more of like a keto diet, burning fat, the energy level is more consistent, right? And it's gonna maintain throughout. And that's that's my two cents worth, right? And I know there's a whole lot of people that would disagree with me, but that's all right.

Rip Stalvey 52:51

Elizabeth Hume-Meyer says some of us are older enough to remember total digestible nutrients or TDNs.

Jeff Mattocks 52:58

TDNs, absolutely. Yeah, TDNs was actually, I don't know how it played in for poultry. I know they tracked that number pretty well for swine, and it was a huge number back when I was a younger man for doing ruminant and dairy feeds. And but yeah, we don't see TDN being used much anymore. They broke it all apart into individual nutrients and and levels.

Rip Stalvey 53:28

You know, I was sitting here thinking, I can't remember the last time I saw TDNs mentioned.

Jeff Mattocks 53:32

Yeah. I mean, my feed program will still calculate for TDN, but yeah, it's not, and it's not even a true measured number, but it was like this quick reference number that you know you could look at a TDN and well, if you were above 80%, man, you were you were cooking with gas. This was good stuff, right? And but yeah, anymore. We don't really you don't see TDN used, you know. Rip, you and I are old enough to to remember these things, but I don't uh it's been ages since I've seen it. Yeah. So I I wonder how old Elizabeth is. Don't answer that question. I don't really want to know. Okay, but I'm just you know.

Rip Stalvey 54:19

Um Rob makes a good point here. I'll just leave it alone. Huh? I said Rob makes a good point. Says so the nutrition label on a bag of chicken feed will give the metabolized nutrition for chickens and not a generic amount for all animals. Yeah. I think uh we've about got all our questions answered. Let me scroll back up to see if I missed one. We we've had a lot of good feedback and a lot of good back and forth. Joey wants to know if I wanted to add selenium to their diet, what source is recommended? Human capsules? How much?

Jeff Mattocks 55:06

All right, Joey. We we gotta do the math on this, okay? So your feed is calculated 0.3 parts per million. Okay, I would not want to do more than double that, right, and take it to 0.6. Okay, anything over 0.6, I think we're flirting with fire. So in an immune-stressed environment or in a known health situation, the selenium yeast products tend to be absorbed faster and be utilized at a higher level. So you would be looking for like the Altec Selenium yeast, and there's there's two or three others on the market that make a selenium yeast product, but you just need a very small amount of a selenium yeast, but typically sodium selenite is what's being used in most feeds. You know, we'd have to work together, look at the labels on what human capsule you got, and just do the math. Again, you know, your feed's already at 0.3, 0.25 to 0.3. I wouldn't want to do more than double that, and that's gonna be some long math to get that figured out, but it can be done. Yep.

Rip Stalvey 56:31

Um in this episode, we look beyond the protein number to better understand the vitamins, minerals, and metabolizable energy that help a poultry diet to do its job. The important takeaway is that good nutrition depends on balance. Too little of a nutrient can limit a bird's development and performance, but adding more without understanding the complete diet can cause problems of its own. Now, if you would like to continue learning how to evaluate poultry feed, listen to our audio edition, What's Really in Your Chicken Feed: Protein, Fat, and Fiber Explained. Together, these two programs will give you a much clearer picture of what the numbers on the feed tag can and cannot tell you. Thanks for joining us. Until next time, keep observing your birds, keep asking good questions, and keep helping your flock perform at its best. I'm Rip Stallby for Poultry Keepers 360, where we help poultry keepers make better decisions.