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mochyn

Wheat feed

Anyone know what's in it? I'm looking at the composition of the pigs' pellets:

40%+ Wheat
40-25% Wheatfeed
25-10% Soya ext
10-0% Full fat soya: Molasses, Vitamin premix, Calcium carbonate, oat meal, oat by-product.

I also wonder how well peas compare with soya as regards protein.
BadgerFace

Wheat feed - By product of Flour milling. Contains bran & endosperm.

No idea about soya v peas. Only I won't feed soya. I thought over 90% of it is either GM or GM contaminated ??
mochyn

BadgerFace wrote:
Wheat feed - By product of Flour milling. Contains bran & endosperm.

No idea about soya v peas. Only I won't feed soya. I thought over 90% of it is either GM or GM contaminated ??


Soya is why I'm looking. Having got the birds off of soya-based feed I want to do the same for the pigs. I'm firing off e-mails to people who might know, but I didn't know what wheat feed was.

Thanks for that!
BadgerFace

Soya seems to have sneaked into lots of animal feed when I wasn't looking. Certainly not the norm 20 years ago, now it's hard to avoid it. Sad

I remember as a kid thinking Spiller Horse & Pony cubes were a revelation ! We could never afford them though, so our's still had straights. Good old oats, boiled barley, linseed, bran & chaff - and they still do Wink
Rob R

Peas - 87% Dry Matter, 26.1% Crude Protein
Soyabean meal - 89% DM, 50.55% CP

I don't have the amino acid profiles of each to hand, but if you google it you should be able to find comparative data.
mochyn

Thanks for that Rob. I'll have a look for the AAs.
bring me sunshine

Pel has written several posts on the subject.

I'm in the process of moving the chickens onto straights and want to do the same for the pigs as well, so could you keep us updated, Mochyn?
mochyn

Yup: as soon as I get some answers I'll let you all know.
bodger

I'm thinking that wheat feed is one and the same as what is referred to as wheatings in the older pig keeping books.

Would something as simple as double the amount of peas than soya in the ration do the job ?
mochyn

Given that soya ext. is 10-25% I would assume that the same amount of peas would work.
Ixy

My chickens honestly look better than they ever have on just straight wheat and peas - I've never known them to be in such good condition in the moult. That's the reason I decided to enter the Fed!
mochyn

Yup: mine are full of beans (as it were)! The diet seems to really suit them. They all love their peas, too.
GSHP

Ixy / Mochyn, could you please give more details on your feed regime re. hens.

I'm really would like to get away from bags of pelleted feed but lack confidence in taking the final step.
Rob R

Wheat feed is slightly higher DM & gross energy than wheat grain but slightly lower in metabolisable energy. Protein is quite a bit (50%) higher but much lower (30% of that in wheat) in starch, which stands to reason.

I have a theory that the less the feed is processed, the better it is for the animal. When we compared concentrate fed lambs with bought in & home grown concentrates they did noticeably better on the home mixed ration, despite it being less 'formulated'.
Ixy

GSHP wrote:
Ixy / Mochyn, could you please give more details on your feed regime re. hens.

I'm really would like to get away from bags of pelleted feed but lack confidence in taking the final step.


It's about as simple as you can get - ad lib wheat and ad lib peas + greenstuff, grass/range if you have it, if not things like cabbage, even silage! They decide how much they need of each according to the individual - which makes sense to me, more sense than a 'one size fits all' pellet.

Although I must admit I haven't been ad libbing the peas recently - just giving them a load twice a week to go through - they eat them all immediately but as nobody's losing weight (quite the opposite) it must be OK! A sack of micronised peas, which I have to soak first, cost roughly a tenner - in August!! That's fed 25ish birds, and young chicks who were taking whole grain wheat from a day old and are very vigourous a few weeks later for it!

For a more detailed method get a cheap little copy of 'natural poultry keeping' by jim worthington. It's my bible love5
GSHP

Thanks Ixy ..googling for the book now.
Rosemary Judy

um
nutritionally peas and wheat complement each other to give a 'complete' amino acid profile, so it should be okay to give them together.

I would wonder if they should have their protein every day, as you can't store the amino acids til the others come along, and I know I recommend humans have protein at least twice a day.
Weight is not a good indicator of protein status, and in fact a low protein diet can lead to water retention, which feels like the same weight.

What are micronised peas.....?

off to google....

ETA http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8893301

Makes sense to me !
Rob R

Much of what we're discussing relates also to pigs:

Rob R wrote:
bodger wrote:
Rob.
Can peas provide the protein portion in full for an otherwise cerial based diet ?


The basic answer; yes.

Pigs have a number of essential amino acids (the list I've googled for, I don't know them off my heart)

* Arginine
* Isoleucine
* Histidine
* Leucine
* Lysine
* Methionine plus cystine
* Phenylalanine plus tyrosine
* Threonine
* Tryptophan
* Valine

And cereals complement them well. The trouble being that AA profiles vary with the quality of the crop, so while the inclusion of other protein sources can give more optimum results in practical terms the advantage of testing all feeds is not worth it, unless you're a big feed mill. Even then they can only give a representative sample. All animals vary slightly as well so the 'perfect' ration never trully exists.

Peas are a highly digestible protein and have a good amino acid profile, however increasing their rate of inclusion in a diet is not necessarily going to increase growth as it may be limiting in certain amino acids but wasting many more of those available in the peas. Like most things in life, variety is best, I would try growing a pea or bean, lucerne & cereal mix for the pigs to self feed, if I had the land, and make use of the protein value of the forage element too.

Soya is probably the most digestible vegetable protein available to us, but obviously comes with it's own issues, and I don't personally believe that the energy costs are worth it. I also think that the availability of soya on the world market has made us 'lazy' as far as making the most of home grown protein crops, particularly as forage. Things are really picking up now though, as world prices fluctuate.


It's important to remember that different species have different capabilities as far as amino acod synthesis goes, so always best to check the 'essential' AAs of the species in question.
Ixy

Rosemary Judy wrote:

Weight is not a good indicator of protein status, and in fact a low protein diet can lead to water retention, which feels like the same weight.



Come feel my cock's breast and tell me it's water retention Wink



Yesss! cock, breast and feel in the same sentence on downsizer!
Rosemary Judy

Very Happy






I guess I walked into that one.....


do you pay travelling expenses ????? Rolling Eyes
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