Poultry Keepers Podcast

The Importance of Vitamins and Minerals-Part 2

• Rip Stalvey, Jeff Mattocks, and Carey Blackmon • Season 2 • Episode 85

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In this episode of the Poultry Keepers Podcast, Rip, Jeff, and Carey conclude their discussion on the importance of vitamins and minerals in poultry nutrition. 

They address how to maintain vitamin potency, identify and prevent deficiencies, and the roles of various minerals. The hosts also discuss the significance of metabolizable energy and field questions from the audience about nutritional additives, quality feed sources, and specific diet recommendations for poultry. 

They mention the support from their sponsor, The Fertrell Company, and highlight useful resources such as Jeff Mattocks' book and Mulder's mineral interaction wheel.

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Alex:

Hi, and welcome to the Poultry Keepers Podcast. In.todays episode Rip, Jeff and Carey finish up their discussion on the Importance of Vitamins and Minerals in poultry nutrition. So lets pick up where we left off last time.

Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Mattocks:

And you're talking about the show and breeder, right? And just feed in general that you buy, trying to keep those B vitamins going, for an extended period of time, unfortunately, I'm reading posts from folks. They're starting to read, they're starting to read the lot numbers. And figure out when the feed was made. So people are, they're now looking at how old is that feed, right? And, they're talking to their tractor supply person or their feed mill person or whoever, and say, look, this is old, you got anything fresh. And our education is working here, I can tell, I'm seeing the post, but it's, yeah, it's just air is going to be your heat and air is going to be your killer of vitamins. And like I said, the ones that cost you the most, which are the B vitamins, they're going to be the first ones to go, they have the least amount of stability for oxygen and heat.

Rip Stalvey:

Jeff, do you have any, sort of general tips and advice for, excuse me, preventing vitamin deficiencies or maybe identifying vitamin deficiency in our birds?

Jeff Mattocks:

I'm not sure. Run that by me a different way. I'm not sure I know what you're asking 100%.

Rip Stalvey:

Okay. How would somebody go about preventing vitamin deficiencies in their birds?

Jeff Mattocks:

Be a tag reader, see what's in the ingredient list, make sure that the vitamins are there. Seeing the deficiencies five years ago or four years ago when, show and breeder came out, that's the reason I invented it or created it was, I could tell that what's being offered on the open market was not enough to give you the best bird, right? And that's so You know, honestly, I wish I didn't have to sell a supplement. I wish people would just make feed that's made the right way and do it right from the beginning. But, look, I take vitamins and supplements for myself because the food that I eat is not properly balanced. I don't eat a, that's my fault, right? I don't eat a good diet, but, yeah, it's, sadly, these supplements have a place in our lives, whether it's for us or our chickens.

Rip Stalvey:

Hey, before we go any further, I've got a little thanks to our sponsor thing I'd like to run here. So let's pay attention. We would like to take a short break to express our appreciation to the Portrell Company for their sponsorship of the Poultry Keepers 360 live programming. Portrell has been a trusted name in sustainable farming and poultry nutrition for decades. And their commitment to providing high quality, natural products aligns perfectly with the values we hold dear in our poultry community. Thank you for TRAIL for partnering with us to empower poultry keepers everywhere. We're truly grateful for your dedication and support. Okay, let's shift gears a little bit, and we've been talking about vitamins for a good bit in this show. Let's switch over to minerals. They are, to me, they're just equally as important as vitamins. Correct me if I'm wrong there. But, minerals are important for bone and eggshell strength, enzyme function, immune health, nerves, and muscle function, just so many other, and honestly, I didn't know this until I heard you say it one time, but it can also have an impact on the intensity of colors in our birds plumage.

Jeff Mattocks:

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like your iron is going to give you a more deeper reds and your manganese is going to give you, ultimate in black. Each one of them, each one of the trace minerals in the right proportion. I don't want anybody going out and buying manganese tomorrow, right? And start just free willy nilly in it into their feet. Don't do that. Look, there's this unique relationship you need this much calcium, but you gotta have this much phosphorus, and this much magnesium, and this much potassium, right? So they are all kind of hinging off of what the other one's doing, and too much of one can interfere with the uptake of another, right? So you can create a nightmare. by overdosing just as bad as, not having enough. So just don't go out there and think I want my bird to be blacker. I'm going to, I'm going to give it some manganese or I need more red in my bird and I'm going to up the iron. So just don't it don't work that way. And for folks that are interested after the show, they can go out. And there's this thing called Mulder's M U L D E R. mineral wheel mineral interaction wheel. And it's really interesting where it talks about, okay zinc is going to control how phosphorus moves. And it gives you a snapshot of mineral interaction, whether they work with each other or against each other. It's pretty cool. And it's worth taking a look at. I think it'll be an eye opener for a lot of folks. And so mineral interaction, it's the right levels of each one of those at the right time. And that's the key. Okay. And a lot of them help each other. Go into the system, like boron actually is the driver of calcium and calcium actually is the vehicle where many other minerals are absorbed. But too much. Okay. Like your optimum calcium level is around 3. 5%, 3. 25 to 3. 75. Going over 3. 75 is not going to give you a better eggshell. It's not going to, it's not going to help the birds. It's not right. So you just wasted money and you're spending money on something that's really a cheap ingredient. Like manganese, 100 parts per million, between 100 and 120 parts per million, you start going over 200 parts per million, you're running a risk of overshadowing another mineral. So each 1 of these, it's pretty well known what level they should be at. And, we can be slightly higher. Let's just not get crazy about it.

Rip Stalvey:

I just saw a comment earlier, and I wanted to see if I could find it here. While we're on the subject of minerals Elizabeth Humeyer posted, she adds, if I add copper to my water to prevent algae, could I overdose my birds on copper?

Jeff Mattocks:

You could. I don't think you're going to. And, copper. So most of us formulate copper at about 10 to 15 parts per million in the feed. And copper toxicity is up over 100 parts per million in the total diet. I don't think you're going to get there. I don't know how much you're using Elizabeth, but. 1 8th of a teaspoon per gallon is plenty, right? So if you're using copper sulfate, it's, it doesn't take much, right? It really doesn't. That's, so the folks that are using like a penny or a piece of copper pipe or something like that, the amount of copper that's coming off of that into the water. It's so small and it works

Rip Stalvey:

and Sue Dobson makes a good point here. Many of the vitamins assist minerals to be better absorbed and used. Yeah. Yeah, 100 percent Things all work together You know when I think of Or minerals people always say and they're familiar with the calcium for eggshells and maybe a little bit about potassium, but they don't quite understand all of the rest of them is there a good book that. They might refer to or would that molders mineral interaction wheel.

Jeff Mattocks:

Molders only shows you how minerals work together or work against each other. That's all it doesn't give you levels. It doesn't tell you where you need to be. You and Kerry, you guys already have commercial poultry nutrition, on your shelf. I don't expect everybody to go buy commercial poultry nutrition. The data we've talked about

Carey Blackmon:

mean, you address a lot of it in these poultry.

Jeff Mattocks:

I do. I do. And yeah, that's what

Carey Blackmon:

I was going to say is that book, cause you, you list a lot of that stuff in there.

Jeff Mattocks:

And I've pulled that out of commercial poultry breeder. I've pulled that out of commercial poultry nutrition and Translated it from kilograms to pounds, you know for our market here for folks to understand You know, and again, those are the requirements. Those are not, those are the minimum requirements. They're not optimum levels. Nobody really reports those optimum levels. The Hubbard breeding information that we've posted many times on here, Hubbard breeders, their management and nutrition probably as good as any. But, we're working in an unknown zone, like we don't know what that perfect level is or what that optimum level is, because all of our PhDs and all of our scientists are working on what can we do to minimize and get costs down. They're not out there. There's no money in researching. Nobody's going to sponsor them or no, there's no money to research what is the optimum levels of all of these nutrients, right? That's just not how society works. It's all about saving money.

Rip Stalvey:

Jeff, incidentally, I just found today when I was looking for something else, but I found a free PDF copy of commercial poultry nutrition.

Jeff Mattocks:

Do you have the link still handy? You can post it for people if they're curious.

Rip Stalvey:

Yeah, I can post that tomorrow. Sure can. Couple of interesting questions and comments here. Christopher wants to know any additives to add in feed or water to make my broiler meat Featherless. I guess maybe he's trying to avoid flicking.

Carey Blackmon:

If you buy those Cornish crosses they're pretty close to it.

Rip Stalvey:

Yeah, there's not many feathers on them.

Jeff Mattocks:

If you keep the amino acids down, if you keep the cysteine and methionine down a little bit, yeah, they don't grow feathers very well at all. Yeah, but the only way

Carey Blackmon:

to do that would be to buy a crap feed and then it would affect the flavor profile and everything else and they wouldn't have the growth rate or anything else you

Jeff Mattocks:

need. They're not going to grow very fast that's for sure. But there is a, I don't know where it's at. I have to find it, but there is a naked chicken. There is a little chicken out there. And actually, it's all pink. It's a weird colored chicken, but. It, the one, the pictures I've seen is it looks pretty meaty, like a breast or something like that. It's actually got some pretty good muscle development,

Rip Stalvey:

last time I was checking into those, they were the only place I was able to find them as a couple of universities had some.

Jeff Mattocks:

Okay, I thought they were out of India or China, but I'm not sure that I think

Rip Stalvey:

so over that way somewhere.

Carey Blackmon:

Somebody wants to send me a dozen of those hatching eggs for science. I would be willing to feed them really well and check the growth rate on that. After the show,

Jeff Mattocks:

after the show, go on Google, naked chicken pictures and you'll see them. They're a real thing.

Carey Blackmon:

I don't really know that I want to do that because I feel like if I type in naked chicken. It may give me a lot of unwanted stuff, too. Yeah, you gotta be careful what you search for on

Jeff Mattocks:

Google. Alright, you can go featherless, right? You can go featherless.

Yeah.

Jeff Mattocks:

Rob found it. He goes, the original the original featherless chicken, the featherless chicken was originally developed for Israel,

Carey Blackmon:

he also said you keep your protein low enough, they'll pluck each other.

Jeff Mattocks:

That's 100 percent true. Yep, you keep that methionine level low enough they're going to eat off their brothers and sisters.

Rip Stalvey:

But that's not really what you want anyway, no. Kevin Hatley wants to know, How does someone who knows nothing find quality feed? And I, we've addressed that several times, but it's not easy. It's not easy because there's really not much over the counter feed, honestly, that I would feed to my birds. But I've been spoiled.

Jeff Mattocks:

Rip, you've had a revelation in your life, right? You've come over to the dark side.

Rip Stalvey:

I prefer to think about it, I move from the dark into the light.

Jeff Mattocks:

There you go, you did. Kevin, all you can do, okay there's, we've had shows on how to read tags, what you're looking for, nutrient levels, things like that. You may want to go back and look through the archives. We talk about optimum levels and actually going through the ingredient list and looking at, okay what are the ingredients, what do they mean? If that don't work for you, you can always post a picture. People do this every day. You can post a picture of your feed tag, to poultry keepers 360 or poultry breeder nutrition. Now be careful because Some of us are extremely blunt and obtuse and we will happily tell you that is garbage, okay? So no, if you're a sensitive kind of person probably shouldn't post your feed tag

Rip Stalvey:

Yeah, Kevin one thing I would suggest if you're new to this and it sounds like you are I would get a copy of Jeff Maddox book niche poultry feeding and management and A lot of that, a lot of that information is covered in Jeff's book. It's a great resource to have and it's not just nutrition, but it's about poultry management. And, when you stop and think about it, nutrition and poultry management impacts our birds at every stage of their life.

Jeff Mattocks:

I have to hire you two for book sales.

Carey Blackmon:

I did sell a couple, one or two for you today. In that book, it talks about brooding, feed selection, all kinds of stuff. So if you are a new chicken tender and you're looking for those ideas, you could either get that book or. Like Jeff said go watch a lot of the videos where we address some of the specific topics that you're looking for. I learned a lot from this show when it started. Yeah.

Rip Stalvey:

David has a question here. I clicked on the wrong one. Sorry. Hang on.

Carey Blackmon:

That was true though.

Rip Stalvey:

Yeah. Who is the best oil? I think they mean what is the best oil in poultry nutrition. And, we've talked about it before that. Our preference is for coconut oils and olive oils. Animal fats are good, like lard or tallow. But to me, those are the top ones. I think

Jeff Mattocks:

I know there's others. Yeah, I would, And I apologize, we did not talk about this in like the earlier shows last year or year before, but, honestly, if you can get them tallow first and then large second, then you're going to go into your coconut and your olive. Somebody asked about camelino oil, which is also outstanding, right? And then after that, pretty much all of your seed oils, in my opinion are gonna be pretty equal in their nutritional value.

Rip Stalvey:

I got to admit I'm pretty tight with any lard I might have because I like to use that in biscuits.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah, I bet. I posted the link to the book in the comment section for folks. So if they want to find it, it's it's there.

Rip Stalvey:

I'll leave that up for a little minute. Jeff, let's, and I realize we're getting short on time here. Let's talk about metabolizable energy. What it is and why it's important.

Jeff Mattocks:

All right. So we know that each grain or everything that goes into a poultry, into it, any diet is measured. So it's energy is measured in. So depending on what species of animal is, it's different. It's a calculation. But like metabolized energy is the amount of calories that Are assumed to be digested by the chicken, right? So it's, it'll be poultry, capital M E here in the U. S. We measure them on kilocalories per pound. When you go abroad outside the U. S., and then it's always in metric. It will be kilocalories per kilogram. And so we're trying to, it's the only standardized method that we know of as far as energy for getting the right amount of calories into our chickens every day. And, like a laying hen is going to be right around 300, 320 calories, kilocalories per day, right? Meat birds, we don't really track it during the grower, the starter and the grower phase because they get full feed. But, we're looking at per pound basis, I'm like 1, 360 up to 1, 400. I don't like to quite get above 1, 400, then we start having things like heart attacks and so on. 1, 350, 1, 380 in the starter feed, dropping that down to now for our type of birds here, not for meat development birds. I want to drop down into 13 to 1320, for that grower phase, cause I don't want them to start putting on fat, right? I don't want them to start developing fat and the first six weeks or the second six weeks. Then when you drop into a developer phase, we're even going to drop that energy slightly lower, 1280 to 1300. And even at that level, they're going to start putting on small body fat deposits, right? Not. In around the thigh, not a huge amount of pad fat in the abdomen, but they're going to start, under the skin. They're going to start building up a little bit of fat cause they're going to need that when they start laying. Okay. And but it's, yeah. So me metabolized energy is a calculated value and. Corn is gang and then everything, like corn is 1, depending on the quality of the corn, wheat is 1, 440, barley is 1, 250, oats is 1, 080, field peas are 1, 300. Everything has been assigned an energy value and in a laboratory, they actually, they burn it and they measure the BTUs that come off of that. And then it goes into a calculation. It's a long, laborious calculation to assign it a, an energy value. The energy for a horse is, the energy calculation for a horse is different from a chicken. Different than a pig, different than a dog, different than a rabbit, right? Somewhere back in time, they've studied, the efficiency of each animal, and their ability to digest energy, and that's gone into this really big math equation on Assigning these values. So it's based on fat fiber carbohydrates that they measured when they burned. And that's more than people really wanted to know about metabolized and

Rip Stalvey:

so here's the question. Jeff Nicole wants to know, is fish meal preferred over other kinds of animal protein sources or even insect protein sources? Or is it just the most cost effective option?

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah, it's not the most cost effective option. So most of your insect protein sources, believe it or not, they're feeding cricket, mealworm, etc. They feed, chicken feed to these animals. I don't know that you're gaining anything on most of the insect meals. Even like a black soldier flies feed on mostly plant residue, from produce and so on, depending on where they come from some places they feed them animal manure and meat and bone products. I only go, so I'm a big proponent of fish meal. And here's why, because it's a wild harvested out of the ocean. To me, it is a cleaner. There's no risk of antibiotic residues. Or other medications coming through. And there's less risk of like cancer cells from an animal that was about to die that went to the rendering plant. So I'm avoiding other possibilities. Okay. And that's why I'm a big fan of fish meal. And if you had a good source of pork, meat and bone meal, ruminant meat and bone meal. If you were satisfied that it was a clean source, those can all be used in in formulating a poultry diet. I just, again, back to my perfectionism, I lean towards the best source I can find, and to me, that's fish mint.

Rip Stalvey:

Agreed. Let's see, question here from David. What are the recommended levels of metabolizable energy in game cock feed before the show?

Jeff Mattocks:

Oh, man. This is this is almost like talking about politics and religion because, there's one side of the fence thinks you want to carb load them. And you really want them to be, have a bunch of carbohydrates and energy in them. I'd much rather have the bird at, around 1300 kilocalories per pound, but I would like to have the fat level a little bit higher or have the bird burning fat, stored body fat, coming up, close to the show it's just, I think they're, I think they're healthier when they're burning body fat stores than, I don't understand carb loading and let me just say it a different way, right? You eat a big meal that has a big dessert at the end of it for us, like Thanksgiving. And you eat a couple pieces of pie, which one would have been enough. The next thing you know, about an hour later, when all that sugar is winding down in your body, you fall asleep. Okay? It puts you to sleep. Controlling The carb load and understanding the carb crash that follows it, the timing is really important. So if I never go to carb loading and I'm running off of more of a keto diet, burning fat, the energy level is more consistent. And it's going to maintain throughout and that's my two cents worth. And I know there's a whole lot of people that would disagree with me, but that's all right.

Rip Stalvey:

Elizabeth Humire says some of us are old enough to remember total digestible nutrients or

Jeff Mattocks:

TDNs. TDNs. Absolutely. Yeah. TDNs was actually, I don't know how it played in for poultry. I know they track that number pretty well for swine. And it was a huge number back when I was a younger man for doing ruminant and dairy feeds. And but yeah, we don't see TDN being used much anymore. They broke it all apart into individual nutrients and levels.

Rip Stalvey:

Sitting here thinking I can't remember the last time I saw TDNs mentioned.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah. Yeah. My feed program will still calculate for TDN. But yeah, it's not, and it's not even a true measured number, but it was like this quick reference number that, you could look at a TDN and if you were above 80%, man you were cooking with gas. This was good stuff. And but yeah, anymore, we don't really, you don't see TDN used, rip you and I are old enough to remember these things, but I don't.

Rip Stalvey:

It's been ages since I've seen.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah. So I wonder how old Elizabeth is? Don't answer that question. No, I really wanna know. Okay. but I'm just,

Rip Stalvey:

Makes a good point here. I'll just leave it alone. Huh? I said Rob makes a good point. Says so. The nutrition label on a bag of chicken feed will give the metabolized nutrition for chickens and not a generic amount for all animals. Yeah, I think we've about got all our questions answered. Let me scroll back up, see if I missed one. We've had a lot of good feedback and a lot of good back and forth. Joey wants to know if I wanted to add selenium to their diet, what source is recommended? Human capsules? How much?

Jeff Mattocks:

All right, Joey we got to do the math on this. Okay. So your feed is calculated at 0. 3 parts per million. Okay. I would not want to do more than double that. And take it to 0. 6. Okay. Anything over 0. 6 I think we're flirting with fire. So in an immune stressed environment or in a known health situation, The selenium yeast products tend to be absorbed faster and be utilized at a higher level. So you would be looking for like the Altex selenium yeast, And there's two or three others on the market that make a selenium yeast product, but you just need a very small amount of a selenium yeast. But typically sodium selenite is what's being used in most feeds. We'd have to work together, look at the labels on what human capsule you got and just do the math. Again, your feed's already at 0. 3, 0. 25 to 0. 3. I wouldn't want to do more than double that. And that's going to be some long math to get that figured out, but it can be done. And it will, and Jeff

Carey Blackmon:

calculates math best at around 7 30, 8 o'clock eastern standard time in the morning.

Jeff Mattocks:

In the morning. In the morning, right? Yes. 8:00 AM for sure. It's not gonna happen tonight.

Rip Stalvey:

So those math things give, make my head hurt. I was never in my strong suit.

Jeff Mattocks:

Yeah. I suck at English and reading and all that on that side of it, but science and math, I'm a happy camper.

Rip Stalvey:

Guys, I think we had a good show tonight and I appreciate you being here and I appreciate all our listeners for joining us and some good interaction and good feedback and good comments. We always appreciate those.

Alex:

That condcludes this Episode of the Poultry Keepers Podcast where we talk Poultry From Feathers To Function. Thanks for listening and we'll be back next week with another helpful episode.

People on this episode

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John Gunterman

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Mandelyn Royal

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Rip Stalvey

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