Sprouts for chooks
- From: "Amy Blankenship" <Amy_nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 23 Feb 2008 09:26:17 -0600
Someone posted this to the yahoo pastured poultry list, and I thought people
here might appreciate it:
Years ago, I remembered reading something about feeding chickens sprouts for
better growth. Then my husband and I ordered 50 chicks this last summer and
I couldn't find anything about it anywhere, so I let it go. Just a couple
weeks ago, I was cleaning out my closet, and I found the quote I had read!
I was so excited! I am hoping to get some meat birds this spring to raise
and I plan to follow what I read.
Here it is:
The book is called Making the Best of Basics. The intro to Chapter 15 has
an interesting story that might help if it interests you. Quote:
"My friend Richard tells this story from his youth: "*I remember when I was
a young boy, and druing all my growing-up years, each year Dad would buy one
hundred baby chicks. Like all the other farmers in the area, he fed them
starter mash until they reached their mature stage. Then most of them would
be killed, dressed, and put into the freezer for our winter meat, leaving
the best layers to provide fresh eggs for the winter.*
**
*I distinctly remember my dad putting those chickens on the scales, one at a
time. He'd say, 'yep, this one's five pounds! Yep, five pounds!'
Occasionally he'd say, 'OOPS! this one didn't eat enough, it's not five
pounds.' I also remember the large streaks of yellow fat on the fatter
chickens when they were being dressed and wrapped before freezing.*
**
*Now I have a large family of my own. We've also raised our hundred baby
chicks to five pounds with lots of fat on their bodies, too. A few years
ago, my then eight-year old son and I decided to experiment on a
recommendation from a friend. He said we could increase the chickens'
growth with sprouts, so we decided to feed at least half of our chickens a
diet of three-day sprouted wheat and other sprouts. *
**
*That year our chickens reaches 6-6 1/2 pounds with very little fat! The
next year we decided to go all the way and feed all the chickens a sprout
diet uniquely. Every bite of food we fed them was 'live food,' as opposed
to 'dead food' of dried ground grains. Much to our surprise, not one
chicken was under 8 pounds, and some were as much as 8 1/2 pounds-- with
absolutely no fat at all!*
*We had kept track of how many hundreds of pounds of grain it normally took
to raise those chickens. The big surprise was that with the live sprouts,
we used 25% less food by sprouting the same amount of grain--and yet those
chickens were much miggger, heartier, and had less fat!"*
The author says that at the time of the writing of the book, Richard was
the president and owner of Life Sprouts in Paradise, UT. I found the web
site, too. www.lifesprouts.com
Anyway, I just thought this could help some of you who are devoted
to pasturing your chickens and letting them have their greens and bugs.
During those winter months when grass and bugs decline, a sprouted grain
would be so much better than dried feed in my opinion. Sprouting is
supposed to provide a higher quality protein than the dried grain, with more
usable nutrients. Awesome!
We had a beautiful sunny day this last monday, and some of our grass is
turning green. So when the kids accidentalIy let the chickens out of their
run into the yard/2nd run that isn't enclosed yet, we let them scratch
around for about 4 hours while we were around (we had to stay with them
because of the two hawks circling overhead). Anyway, so they had a record
number of eggs that day. Since then, we've had cold, cloudy days, and they
haven't laid as many eggs. I honestly think that nature has what our
chickens need, and we just need to let them have access to it in order for
them to be happy and healthy. (This reduces our feed costs, too.) Since
they still have a little longer until spring, I am going to start feeding
them sprouts every day. I can't wait to feed them their first sprouts in a
couple days... Wish me luck!
.
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