Intro to feed Formulations
Feed and feeding of chicken takes 70% of the total cost of production. Even human, feeding consume much and more than half of our income and if care is not taking, one would spend all his money feeding himself and his family.
That is why some people call them self educated, so they bring in the white man’s style of eating by giving their children small small food, using different feed combination like oats and egg, Palo and bean cake, tea and biscuits etc to reduce feeding cost.
The same thing applied to chicken, if care is not talking, one might spend all his profit on feed. At the end of it all, no profit.
How do we beat it? Many people are forced into closing down their chicken farm because of the high cost of feed.
The company would have their price, the seller would add their price, the hatchery are also doing their own part by increasing the price of Day old chicken. And the trend continue like that such that the farmer, the last person on the chain has nothing left as profit etc.
What they don’t know is that, it will affect everybody. If intending farmers and farmers stop buying day old chick, there would be a total waste and absolute waste of day old chick since the demand is lower than their supply and eventually the price of Day old chick would fall because they want to push out their day old chick to farmers.
Let us know that the price of feed ingredients might not go down as many are thinking, well let’s look at the reasons.
The feed ingredients are too competitive with Humans, maize for instance is being consumed by Humans and also included in animal feed, and many others like that which are used to produce animal feed are also needed by man, there fore making the price of such feed to be high.
Economic instability : No provision has been made for farmers since the killing of farmers in this country and the government has nothing to do, any day we loose a farmer, we loose food. If there is no one to farm, we are heading to hunger. Man that has not eaten, would he be the one to remember chicken?
The reasons to formulated feed is to minimize cost, and saves money so that at the end of the day, you would have some changes left for your self and do other things.
Before you formulate feed for your chicken, you must know theses things listed below
1. Nutrient requirement of the animal: How many protein does this animal need, does it need a high protein or a low protein? An animal on maintenance diet doesn’t need protein that much, all its need is something to feel the belly so they won’t die of hunger.
Example is you animals that are not productive at the moment, rearing a cow during the dry season, cow don’t produce during dry season because of the weather, there won’t be much grass for them to eat and you won’t want waste the little you have. So you feed them on maintenance ration, just to maintain them till raining season when there would be plenty of grass and production from the animals.
If you have a chicken you are not selling but you don’t want them to die of hunger, you would give them maintenance ration, you won’t loose them to death but they won’t be hungry too.
ingredients that I want to include in this formation, is it protein or carbohydrates, if it’s protein, what’s the protein value, what’s the number of calories (energy is measure in calories, literally how many energy content does it have) , how many fibers does it have Etc.
Anti Nutrients factors: Does this ingredients have any toxic substance that can kill my chicken or animals, these are important because you don’t want to give your chicken poison.
How many ingredients do I want to include in these feed?
Common ingredients used in feed are
1. Maize (energy source)
2. Soya (protein source)
3. GNC (protein source)
4. 0ffal (energy source)
5. Limestone
6. Fishmeal
7. Wheat
8. Oyster shell
9. Molasses
10. Etc
They are not limited to the listed ingredients. It depends on your environment.
We need then comments so we are write on further on feed formations.
