What is in Chicken Feed?
Chickens get more from their diet than just calories. Poultry feed can affect a bird’s health, size and even the nutrition of their meat. If your chickens are layers, nutrition can impact the eggs, too. To choose the right feed, it helps to know the ingredients used.
What Are the Main Ingredients in Chicken Feed?
Feed producers take many factors into consideration when deciding what poultry feed ingredients to put in their formulas. They may consider the availability and price of ingredients, the nutritional needs of poultry and their brand. Chicken feed also has different ingredients depending on whether it’s aimed at layers, chicks or chickens. The top three ingredients in most Nature’s Best bagged chicken feeds are corn, soybean meal, and wheat or wheat middlings.
When you look at the ingredients list of many types of chicken feed, you may also find:
- Cereals and cereal byproducts: Cereals in feed may include wheat, corn, sorghum, barley or rye. Byproducts are produced during the milling or brewing of some of these cereal grains.
- Protein: Chickens readily eat insects because they are omnivores and need protein for nutrition. In feed, most protein comes from soybean, canola or sunflower meal, a byproduct made when these plants are processed for oil. Protein in chicken feed can also come from lupins or peas or even from animal byproducts such as bone, feather and fish meal. In some cases, even poultry meat and feather by-meal are used in chicken feed. Nature’s Best Organic Feeds have zero animal byproducts.
- Fat: In chicken feed, fats or oils are added. Common sources are rendered pig or beef fat or linseed, soy, sunflower or palm oil. Fats and oils are important because they help chickens absorb some vitamins and offer energy. They’re also a source of essential fatty acids, which are needed for overall health.
- Vitamins and minerals: Amino acids, minerals and vitamins, including sodium, calcium, phosphorus, Lysine and methionine, are commonly added to feed. Sometimes, vitamin D3, niacin, vitamin B12, vitamin, vitamin A and Riboflavin may be added.
Some brands of feed may contain additional items.
What Ingredients Are in Chicken Pellets?
Pellets are made with protein, supplements and crushed grain. These ingredients are mixed, heated up and pressed into pellets. Pellets are intended to meet all the nutritional needs of chickens, making them a complete feed.
What Is in Chicken Feed From Nature’s Best Organic Feeds?
Nature’s Best Organic Feeds takes the guesswork out of your chicken feed ingredients. Our feed is non-medicated, organic, and Non-GMO Project-Verified. The grain used in our chicken feed is regularly tested to ensure USDA Organic requirements are not just met, but exceeded. Nutritional experts devise the formulas of Nature’s Best Organic Feeds, so your chickens get high-quality and nutritionally balanced feed in every bite.
Our website always lists our chicken feed ingredients so you know exactly what you’re feeding your chickens.
Take a look at the ingredients in Nature’s Best Organic Feeds chicken feed and pick up some feed for your chickens today.