How to prepare your own poultry feeds

 
 

With the rising cost of poultry feeds, farmers rearing chickens are increasingly finding it difficult to make profit from poultry keeping. While it is difficult for farmers to formulate feeds for hybrid chickens such as broilers and layers, they can do so for their indigenous chickens or dual-purpose breeds such as Kenbro under intensive management system. This can be done using the Pearson Square method.

However, this is only possible if farmers have the right quality of ingredients or raw material for formulating feeds. The Pearson Square method relies on the Digestible Crude Protein (DCP) as the basic nutritional requirement for feed. The most common ingredients used are whole maize, maize germ, cottonseed cake, soya beans, sunflower or omena (fishmeal).

Assuming that the farmer wants to make feed for their chickens using the Pearson Square method, they have to know the crude protein content of each of the ingredients used in feed making. The farmer may use whole maize (8.23 %DCP) Soya (45 % DCP) Omena (55 % DCP) and maize bran (7 % DCP) Sunflower (35 %DCP). To make a 70 kg bag of feed for layers, a farmer would require the following ingredients:

34 kg of whole maize
12 kg of Soya
8 kg of omena
10 kg of maize bran
6 kg of Lime (as a calcium source)

Each category of chickens has its own requirements in terms of nutrition. For example, feed for layers should have at least 18 per cent crude protein. If one were to formulate feed for layers, then they would have to calculate the percentage of digestible crude protein in each of the ingredients to ensure that the total crude protein content is at least 18 per cent to meet this nutritional requirement. To find out if the feed meets this standard, a farmer can do a simple calculation as follows:

Whole maize = 34 kg x 8.23 ÷100 = 2.80kg
Soya bean = 12 kg x 45 ÷ 100 = 5.40 kg
Omena = 8 kg x 55 ÷ 100 = 4.40 kg
Maize bran = 10 kg x 7 ÷ 100 = 0.70 kg
Lime = 6 kg x 0 ÷ 100 = 0.00 kg
(Total crude protein 13.30 kg)

To get the total crude protein content of all these ingredients in a 70 kg bag, you take the total crude protein content of the combined ingredients, divide by 70 and multiply by 100 thus, (13.30÷70) x 100 = 19.0 %. This shows that the crude protein percentage in the above feed formulation is 19.0 % which is suitable for layers. Before mixing the feed, whole maize including the other ingredients has to be broken into the right sizes through crushing or milling to make it palatable for the chickens. Add 250 g of table salt on every 70 kg bag of feed.