When raising broilers or laying hens, a mandatory element of technology is the use of chicken feed. Balanced in composition and highly nutritious, such feeds allow for normal growth and reduce the risk of diseases and digestive disorders in young chickens. All this allows you to raise healthy and productive birds in the future.
Composition of feed for chickens
Such combined feeds consist of the following components:
- cereals;
- samp;
- meal;
- finely ground fish bone meal;
- chopped grass;
- yeast used for feed purposes;
- regular table salt;
- lime materials.
In addition, vitamins and minerals necessary for poultry are necessarily added to the feed..
Advantages and disadvantages
The main advantages of using mixed feed are as follows:
- formation of a healthy body in young animals;
- high nutritional value;
- no need for additional feeding.
The disadvantages of such feed mixtures include:
- high price;
- to avoid the death of young animals, you have to carefully select feed of a certain brand;
- The naturalness of compound feed is sometimes questionable. In this case, you have to rely on a trusted manufacturer.
List of the best foods
Depending on the age of the chickens at which the compositions are used, all feed is divided into three categories:
- starters - up to 14 days of age;
- growth - aged from 14 to 30 days;
- finishing – used for young animals starting from 30 days of age.
Start
This starter feed is used for young animals from the first days of their life and over the next 2 weeks. It contains components such as finely ground corn, grains and legumes. This food often contains chalk, flour from ground bones, amino acids, and vegetable fats.
Its daily consumption rate is 10-25 grams per head of young animals. To increase the effectiveness of such food, crushed boiled eggs, low-fat cottage cheese, and green grass mass are additionally added to it.
Sun
This feed is used when feeding young animals aged 14 to 30 days. It contains the same ingredients as the Start brand. Additionally, green mass and proteins are not added to the mixture, as it is completely balanced. This brand differs from others in its high price.
PK-5
Compound feed PK-5 is available in 3 types: starter; height; finishing. Thanks to this diversity, it is used to feed young animals of all ages.
Its main ingredients are finely ground corn and wheat grains, soybean meal, rapeseed cake, rapeseed oil, corn gluten, sugar beet molasses, pork fat, soda, vitamin supplements, various amino acids necessary for chickens, phosphate, finely ground rock salt.
PK-6
The PK-6 mixture is intended for feeding broiler chickens over 30 days old. The mixture includes the following components:
- Flour from wheat and corn grains;
- Sunflower cake.
- Soybean meal.
- Fine flour from fish bones.
- Vegetable oil.
- Limestone.
- Vitamins necessary for chickens.
- Minerals.
- Salt.
PC-2
This brand is used to feed chickens aged from 30 to 60 days. The mixture consists of components such as corn, wheat, sunflower meal, meat and bone fish meal, fat, salt, limestone, vitamin-mineral-protein premix, antioxidant, antibiotic, coccidiostat, probiotic.
Height
This feed is used to feed young animals 2-4 weeks of age. Its composition includes:
- proteins of different origin;
- finely ground grains;
- amino acids;
- special additives;
- vitamin and mineral complex.
To increase nutritional value, vegetable oil and meat and bone meal are added to the feed of this brand.
Finish
The basis of this feed is made up of components with a significant protein content - such nutritional value is necessary for the normal feeding of grown birds.
Compound feed of this brand contains a large amount of wheat flour, various types of cakes, legumes, feed yeast, meat and bone fish meal.
Purina
This type of feed mixture is used for young broilers. It consists of such components as grain flour, soybean and sunflower meal, vegetable fats, lime materials, proteins, and a vitamin and mineral complex. For each age of young animals, a specific composition is selected.
There are 3 main brands of this feed combination mixture - Start, Grower (growth), Finisher ECO. Of these, the first two mixtures are the most popular.
Purina Start, used for feeding young animals at the initial stage, consists of the following components:
- Corn and grain cereals.
- Soybean and sunflower meal.
- Fats
- Squirrels.
- Flour from ground limestone.
- Vitamins.
- Macroelements.
- Amino acids.
- Cellulose.
This feed also contains probiotics and various essential oils. The Purina Grower brand includes:
- Maize groats.
- Wheat flour.
- Soy flour.
- Soybean oil.
- Sunflower meal.
- Enzymes.
- Limestone ground into flour.
- Salt.
- Monocalcium phosphate.
To maintain immunity and strengthen the body of chickens, coccidiostats, various minerals and vitamins necessary for young birds are also added to this mixture.
Preparing food for chicks at home
In order to reduce the cost of raising chickens, combination mixtures are often made by hand. The composition of the mixture depends on the age of the young animals being fed:
Up to 14 days of age, the mixture should consist of:
- 50% – ground corn kernels;
- 20% – finely ground wheat flour;
- 10% – low-fat kefir;
- 11% – sunflower cake;
- 9% – medium grind barley flour.
For chickens at 14 days of age, homemade feed is prepared, observing the following proportions:
- Medium grind corn flour - 50%.
- Sunflower seed cake - 20%.
- Milled wheat - 12%.
- Fish bone meal—8%.
- Yeast - 4%.
- Chopped herbal mass - 2%.
- Skim milk in powder form - 3%.
- Fat - 1%.
How to properly feed chicken feed
Proper feeding of young poultry depends on its age:
- Newborn chicks are fed 8 times a day, at the rate of 15-20 grams of feed per chick.
- Starting from 3-4 weeks of age, the daily amount of feed for chicken is increased to 100 grams.
- 5-6 week old chickens are given mixed feed at the rate of 120-140 grams per head.
Failure to comply with these standards and overfeeding or underfeeding chickens can lead to negative consequences - digestive disorders, growth retardation, excessive exposure to environmental factors.
How to choose food?
The choice of feed brand depends on the age and type of bird. Thus, feed suitable for laying hens is not nutritionally effective for young broilers. The most applicable are universal types of feed.
