BROILER STOCK FEED: part 1: Factory Made

Agriculture in Zambia 10: The first part of the chapter on feed of what hopefully soon shall be the smart guide for broiler rearing in Zambia. This issue mostly is about factory stock feed. Its sequel is about home made feed.

Version: 6 March 2015
Text by: Bert Witkamp

Chapter 5        BROILER FEED

The cost of feed is by far the largest single cost in rearing confined broilers. Feed management and the quality of feed are also major factors in success or failure in broiler rearing. An underfed chicken is underweight and perhaps unhealthy; a wrongly fed chicken may get or be sick, taste poorly and be harmful to the health of the consumer.  

5.1              Sorts of Feed

Broilers, in principle, have access to three kinds of food:

       i.        Natural food such as insects, seeds and leaves.

      ii.        Factory made stock feed.

    iii.        Homemade stock feed.

Stock feed is made in three different varieties: starter, grower and finisher. Each of these varieties is formulated according to changing nutrient needs during the fast forward sort of live of the broiler.

Natural Food

Option 1, natural food, is only substantially available to free range chickens, or chickens kept in a movable coop. The chickens forage this food and it therefore is an activity engaging the muscular system, instinct and senses of the broiler. The foraged food is supplemented by regular stock feed; either factory or home made.

Broilers from different hatcheries or batches have considerable variety in appetite for natural greens by broilers – some hatcheries produce chicks that have hardly any interest in fresh vegetation and others do. You can try to supplement confined broilers with greens – they might pick any green including grass. Cabbage leaves and all sorts of indigenous wild vegetables are eaten by some with great enthusiasm. You thus provide variety to the menu as well as fresh, natural nutrients. Older birds are likely to also consume surplus or damaged fruits from the garden such as guava’s, banana’s or avocados. Just throw some in the house or yard and see if the broilers go for it or not.

Commercial stock feed

Most backyard farmers use industrially produced stock feed and so do many small scale farmers. Commercial feed is made by specialised stock feed producers, such as National Milling, Tiger Feeds, Nutrifeed, Novatek, Choma Milling, Yielding Tree and others. Broiler stock feed is a sophisticated product formulated to deliver you a 1.6 to 2+ kg dressed weight broiler in six to seven weeks time. Examples of such feed formula’s are in the 2007 Livestock Services publication – including some medical additives common in industrial production. Stock feed producers are guided by the following basic principles:

• Availability of raw materials and other ingredients.
• Cost of raw materials and other ingredients.
• Quality of raw materials and other ingredients.
• Combination of ingredients such that maximum weight gain is achieved in the shortest period of time.
• Good Food – Weight Conversion (FCR) ratio (meaning maximum conversion of feed into bodily weight gain).
• Carcass characteristics (e.g. meat quality, fattiness, colour).
• Cost effectiveness of production.
• Competitive production (effects mostly price but also reflects consumer satisfaction).
• Market availability and demand.
• Profitability.
• Legal regulation and standardisation within the industry.

Stock feed production practically is a trade off between various factors so as to arrive at a product that is competitively priced, does its job of delivering a weighty chicken in a short time without too many chicks falling by the wayside and that yields profit for the owners of the plant.

Factory stock feed producers do not provide you with the details of feed composition and you therefore do not know the composition of the main ingredients and of the additives. The main ingredients in Zambia invariably are maize and soya products, together accounting by weight for 75 to 85% of feed composition. Other natural organic ingredients in factory feed are or might be sunflower or sunflower cake, fish meal, bone meal, blood meal and meat meal. Commercial feed contains a small amount of a synthetic (that is, factory made) essential amino acid called methionine if it is insufficiently present in the natural feed components. Feed also contains small amounts of minerals: salt and possibly ground limestone and/or calcium phosphate. The additives are a package of substances which act like boosters or growth enhancers. These are or might be medical substances (antibiotics and coccidiostats), trace minerals, and hormones or enzymes that enhance food-weight conversion ratio’s (meaning these hormones or enzymes make your chicks gain more weight using the same amount of feed) and growths stimulants such as vitamins. Of these additives the minerals and vitamins may be classified as “normal” food supplements, enzymes appear to be harmless and hormones should be banned.

The permanent addition of antibiotics and coccidiostats is considered necessary in the industrial production of broilers to reduce risks of loss by disease. The same applies to small scale broiler rearing and in part serves to make up for poor management practices. The preventive administration of certain antibiotics also is supposed to improve the feed-weight conversion ratio. Hormones affecting food conversion are or might be added because of the economic motive to save money on feed and to keep the rearing period as short as possible. The use of these hormones in broiler feed is forbidden in the Western world and its effectiveness in better broiler food-weight conversion rates is disputed.

Commercial stock feed may include “slaughter waste” such as ground up bones (bone meal), meat meal or blood meal. Bone meal (mostly from slaughtered cows) must be sterilized before usage as an ingredient in feed. Blood meal is dried, processed and powdered blood, also usually from slaughtered cows. It is not allowed in the West to feed blood meal to broilers that are to be organically raised.

Note that all pesticides (i.e., insecticides, fungicides and herbicides) present in stock feed ingredients shall be consumed by the chicken and possibly ultimately by the human consumer at the end of the food chain. Feed may also contain fungicides to prevent mold in storage. Imported soya or maize or their products used for feed may be of the GMO variety. Presently in Zambia it is forbidden to grow GMO maize or soya, but not in the Republic of South Africa.

Check the manufacturing date when you buy feed – feed should be fresh.

By far most broiler farmers have no option but to feed their broilers on industrially produced stock feed. And indeed, that option has major advantages. The feed is ready-made available in the shops and offers a balanced diet. The main disadvantage is that you don’t know what you are feeding your broilers particularly concerning insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, food preservatives, medication, growth promoters, slaughter waste, bacterial contamination and possibly GMO products.

You can and should feed your broilers at least during ten days before slaughter on so-called Withdrawal Finisher (that is finisher without pharmaceuticals) or any regular finisher that is guaranteed free of pharmaceuticals. You need to check this with your stock feed supplier. You should not routinely add vitamins and medication to the feed as these are already in the feed. Only provide extra vitamins at arrival, during vaccinations or when broilers are sick. Provide medication only when birds are sick after having been advised by a professional.

There is no point in preparing your own feed or purchasing homemade brands unless this can be done professionally using quality ingredients. Stick to commercial feed till you have a good, ecologically sound do-it-yourself alternative.

Starter, grower and finisher.

Broiler feed is composed of starter, grower and finisher varieties. These varieties correspond to changing nutritional needs of the growing broiler and in particular concern the protein – energy ratio of the feed and possibly the sources of the protein. The broiler, as a day old chick, needs much protein for body building and little energy for body energy. After six weeks the situation is the opposite: by the time the broiler is ready for the market it utilises most of its feed intake for energy and a small portion for growth. Data below are from the 2007 Ross manual and apply to the 6 – 7 week “heavy broiler” schedule.

	Starter	Grower	Finisher
Days	1 -10	11 - 24	15 - slaughter
Crude protein %	22 -25	21 -23	19 - 23
Digestible protein %	17.7	17.7	Min. 14.2
Energy in kcal	3025	3150	3200

 Table 1: Protein and energy requirements for 2 to 2.5 kg broiler.

Crude protein (CP) is protein as in the source (such as soya meal) and digestible protein (DP) is protein that the broiler actually can absorb. Meeting the protein requirement is a major problem for stock feed manufacturers and this is reflected in the actual protein content of the feed. This generally is lower than the recommended percentages stated above; reason is the cost of suitable protein rich ingredients.

Adhere to the predescribed order of broiler feed: first starter, then grower and lastly finisher.  The number of days for each of these feeds depends on:

1.   Actual feed composition of the feed you use (check the tag for the protein %, the stated % refers to crude protein) and

2.   The kind of chicken you want to grow and thereby the rearing period.

The schedule of table 1 above is based on an optimum protein diet. Practically the protein content of many brands is less - meaning that the number of days on starter feed shall be more than 10 days. Nutri Feed Starter, for example, contains 20% CP and you are advised by their current flyer to give starter for 18 days, followed by 10 days of grower after which you feed finisher till sale or slaughter. You should therefore read information leaflets of your stock feed supplier so as to establish the best feeding regime for your broilers.

Finisher and finisher

Finisher differs not only from starter and grower in CP %, it also is or should be different as far as ingredients are concerned. Finisher should not contain fish meal as it imparts a fishy taste to the meat. It is better if finisher does not include slaughter waste products, blood and meat meal in particular. You need to give at least ten days of finisher to flush out any pharmaceuticals that have been added to the feed; this pharmaceutical free finisher is referred to as “withdrawal finisher.” Some companies, however, manufacture finisher without pharmaceuticals and still label their finisher just plainly finisher. Other companies produce finisher labelled finisher that contains pharmaceuticals including antibiotics. Some companies produce a special pharmaceutical free finisher called withdrawal finisher – implying that their regular finisher does include these substances.

You need to know what the pharmaceutical status of your finisher is and ensure that your broilers are fed pharmaceutical free feed for at least ten days before slaughter. Failure to do so means that you are putting your clients involuntarily on a diet of antibiotics and possibly other harmful medicine. In that event you shall also be contributing to the increasingly serious problem of bacterial resistance against antibiotic treatment in human beings.

Stock Feed Concentrate.

Stock Feed concentrate is regular feed without maize products. When you mix concentrate with coarsely ground maize (“masembe”) in the proportion of 1 concentrate to 2 maize you get regular feed. It saves money especially if you can buy the maize cheaply at the beginning of the harvesting season or if you grow the maize yourself. Masembe is the coarsest particle size the hammer mill can grind. Chicken feed should not be powdery. Masembe sometimes is used to feed chicks upon arrival as some feeds give the chicks digestive problems when they start eating.

Manufactured feed plus extra maize or other supplement  

Many broiler farmers are in the habit of diluting (“reducing the density of”) factory feed with third grade mealie meal (“sweepings”) or maize bran. Generally it is better not to tamper with starter and grower feed – unless of course you have run out of money and cannot afford the feed. After all diluted feed is better than no feed, but weight gain inevitably shall be retarded. Less harmful is to add third grade maize or coarsely ground maize to finisher, especially if your birds already have the desired weight and you are just waiting for a buyer. At that stage you can also add sunflower and processed soya – see also below under homemade feed.

Homemade feed.

The third feeding option is to make your own feed by mixing ingredients that you have purchased or have cultivated. This option is discussed in the sequel to this text.

FACTORY BROILER FINISHER & REARING CHICKENS ON ANTIBIOTICS

Agriculture in Zambia 9:Broiler growers, whether big or small, have a responsibility to deliver a healthy, tasty chicken to the customer. But do they? And what about the stock feed manufacturers? Do growers know what they feed their chickens?

Text by Bert Witkamp

Version: 22 February 2015

1) Until recently I thought that factory stock feed finisher was free of pharmaceuticals so as to ensure that the human chicken consumer would not be treated with coccidiostats, antibiotics and possibly hormones. But then I came across the term “withdrawal finisher” in the Ross and Cobb broiler manuals (freely downloadable from their websites; thanks!). Withdrawal finisher is finisher without medication and should be provided to broilers for as long as it takes to flush out the medication/growth promoters that have been added to factory stock feed as of day 1. The withdrawal period is 7 to 10 days. Choma Milling does not put antibiotics in the finisher, most brands do and you have to order from these major stock feed producers the special “withdrawal finisher” that in fact should be the normal finisher if you don’t want to administer harmful antibiotics to the customer that provides you with income. Novatek produces withdrawal feed as part of their regular package; Nutri Feed is willing to do so on request. I don’t know the National Milling situation – they don’t have a useful website with an e-mail link. This account confirms my earlier notion that stock feed must be labeled and the label must provide a full account of all pharmaceutical additives. It would appear that the Poultry Association of Zambia (linked to ZNFU) has some work to do in this regard.

2) When I tried to find out if it was possible to make a combined withdrawal feed order with fellow local broiler growers it appeared that most growers don’t use finisher at all but finish their chickens on grower – the reasoning being its presumed higher nutritional value for 4-7 week old broilers than the standard finisher. ARE THESE FARMERS AWARE THAT THEIR BROILERS AT THE TIME OF CONSUMPTION BY HUMANS ARE CONTAMINATED WITH ANTIBIOTICS? Do they know that this practice of permanent administration of medication results in the development of new strains of bacteria that are increasingly harder to combat?

3) Concerning the sense of replacing finisher by grower because of presumed nutritional advantages: starter, grower and finisher feed composition is based on the different nutritional requirements of the broiler in its short, over-speeded, living trajectory. In this trajectory the nutrient focus shifts gradually from “growth and little energy for body maintenance” to “much energy for maintenance and little for growth.” For this reason the amount of maize in feed should increase as the birds grow. If commercial finisher contains 20% crude protein (CP) as recommended by standard manuals I would say that replacing finisher by grower on nutritional grounds is senseless, and even counterproductive. Unfortunately commercial Zambian finisher is likely to contain only 17% crude protein, but this may not be true for all brands. Grower has a higher % of crude protein than finisher (Nutri Feed grower for example has 18.5%) and therefore comes closer to handbook standards for finisher. Farmers should check on their stock feed suppliers so as to make an informed nutrition feed choice. They should, in any case, provide withdrawal finisher for at least a week before slaughter. Ten days is better.

4) The matter of pharmaceuticals added to feed is aggravated by the tendency of many farmers to treat broilers automatically with antibiotics whenever there is trouble (and trouble there often is – broilers are bred and reared for trouble; developing meat on the highway while the remainder of the body is at pedestrian speed); by the unwarranted addition of often unspecified boosters that may contain more pharmaceuticals on top of those already in the stock feed and by shopkeepers that supply clients as a matter of routine vitamin packages combined with antibiotics. Your chicken by such careless administration of a cocktail of medicines now is an experimental laboratory for the development of new strains of bacteria resistant to conventional medicine. And so are you!

MANAGING BROILER CHICKENS TO DEATH

Agriculture in Zambia 8: Some notes on broiler chicken light management and stock feed.

Photo 1: Keeping broilers naturally.

I thought  I had my broiler management system well into place when two things happened.

The first thing was an unexpected increase in mortality of apparently healthy broilers in week 5 and 6. What happened was that we were managing our chickens so well that they grew too fast and became overweight in relation to the development of vital organs. Helped by a snippet of info by Sebastian Scott I suspected that the light management we had into place was wrong, and that broiler chickens should NOT be given the opportunity to eat 24 hours a day. Checking recent internet manuals (COBB, ROSS) confirmed this presumption. We now give chickens as of 21.00 hours a period of genuine night. Problem solved spectacularly: mortality rate dropped to almost 0 and all of the sudden we saw the emergence of a lively, energetic broiler.

The schedule that works for us is: Day 2-6 lights off from 21.00 to 22.00 hrs; week 2 and 3 lights off from 22.00 to 05.00 hrs BUT we switch the infrared bulb(s) on at night when it gets cold; and finally as of week 4 light bulbs off at 21.00 hours till 05.00 hrs and heating bulbs as well. By that time the birds normally do not need artificial heating anymore.

The second issue in a way was and is more problematic. Over time I had more and more questions about commercial/industrial stock feed. The key issue is the incorporation of medication in the feed, starter and grower in particular, and the presumed absence of such medication in finisher. Most stock feed manufacturers add antibiotics and coccidiostats to the feed. They do this as a preventive measure against disease for industrial growers who keep immensely large flocks under fully artificial conditions. They also do it to reduce mortality for small scale farmers who don’t know how to keep broilers well. The addition of hormones to the feed of chickens is forbidden in the USA and I think in the EU as well. Hormonal additives presumably serve to improve the feed-meat conversion rate; the desired effect is a saving in stock feed cost – or a shorter rearing period. Unfortunately, you, the consumer of fine broilers, may involuntarily also become the consumer of the antibiotics, coccidiostats and hormones administered to the chicken you eat. 

Producers using commercial stock feed must observe a ten day period of feeding finisher*, and of withdrawal periods in case they had to administer medication during the finisher feeding period. (This may turn out to be very costly and I bet many producers do not abide by such regulation!). Producers should also insists that stock feed manufacturers state in full on the sack the pharmaceuticals they have added on and must push for better regulation possibly through the Poultry Association of Zambia (did you know we have one such organization?). Personally I am inclined to think that the only safe solution is to make your own feed, but that is not easy for the very small scale farmer and has its own problems. In any case that is the direction we are taking.

Lastly, medication is not the only controversial additive in stock feed. Another issue is the recycling of slaughter waist (bone meal, blood meal. meat meal) and the concomitant chance of (cross-species) transmission of diseases. And, increasingly so, is the possibility of incorporating GMO crops into the feed; maize and soya in particular. This currently is forbidden in Zambia, but that does not preclude the possibility of it eventually happening.

* Read the sequel to this post about pharmaceutical free finisher. Most stock brands continue to add pharmaceuticals to the finisher feed, therefore to the the chicken and therefore to you, the consumer at the end of the food chain. Check your finisher out before you buy!

Keeping Broiler Chickens Well

Agriculture in Zambia. In which the announcement of the publication of the booklet "Keeping Broiler Chickens Well."

“Keeping Broiler Chickens Well”

has been written for the backyard and small scale chicken farmer who wants to rear chickens with a difference.

Chickens walking freely in and out of the chicken run.

The author promotes a manner of raising broiler chickens in which the well being of the chicken and of the consumer comes firsts. The small scale farmer, unlike the industrial producers, should not as a matter of routine put chicks on antibiotics from start to finish or treat them as part of a mechanical production process where numbers are more important than quality. You, broiler keeper, must seek to avoid antibiotics by good management and stay away from feed supplements that contain hormones and other undesirable substances. You, this booklet says, can avoid these and other harmful practices because you are a small scale grower. Exploit that position!

And, this booklet says, you consumer, be mindful of the fact that whatever has been put into this chicken might wind up in your very own system!!!

The writer: Alias O. Teur

The author is an artist/art teacher/cultural anthropologist/project manager/development worker/internet publicist who likes keeping chickens.

Be Aware of the Chicken You Eat! Part 2: Malpractices.

Agriculture in Zambia issue 7: Greed and/or ignorance by suppliers of inputs, broiler producers, distributors and consumers alike account for the bulk of malpractices in the broiler industry; a situation aggravated by excessively lenient legislation or regulation and non-compliance with whatever regulation there might be.

The common commercial broiler at 6 weeks.

The first issue of this series of three posts on broiler chickens outlined some dangers and drawbacks of eating broiler chickens. This posts lists malpractices of input suppliers, growers and consumers. The final posts is about remedial action resulting in responsible behaviour of all players in the broiler business.

Input suppliers mostly are companies offering packages of growth enhancers and vitamins, pharmaceuticals and medication, and stock feed. Input suppliers, directly or indirectly, also are farmers growing the grains for feed and the soya bean for protein; producers of fish (meal), bone meal and salt; and any other ingredient that may be part of the composition of stock feed for broilers.

Typical malpractices of input suppliers are/might be:

1. Inclusion of growth hormones and antibiotics in “growth enhancer” packages or in feed.
2. Production of “growth enhancer” packages without specified content. This might be done in countries with lack of legislation as regards permitted enhancers and hence contain harmful materials.
3. Lack of specification of content of stock feed, including of the “additives.” Quality control of animal stock feed should be as good as that of food for human consumption – after all we are at the end of the food chain.
4. Lack of information to the grower about the period of time that each feed maximally or minimally should be given.
5. Careless sale by agro shops in cases when customers (farmers) should be properly informed about usage of the materials purchased.
6. Sale of materials in agro shops that should not be sold at all; opportunistic use of lack of regulation and implementation as regards hazardous feed supplements.

The Zambian broiler farmer roughly can be divided into three types:

1. The backyard chicken farmer. This farmer keeps chickens as a source of extra income, numbers ranging from 100 to a few hundred, kept in one or a few runs in the garden. The neighbourhood (individuals and usually small businesses) is the market, the outlet is at home.
2. The smallholder farmer having a number of runs continuously producing chickens in numbers ranging of a few hundred to a few thousand monthly. The smallholder depends mostly on a market composed of retailers (marketers, groceries, supermarkets) and larger consumers such as hotels, restaurants, snack bars and guesthouses. The small holder usually has packaging facilities and deep freezers for storage. Some smallholders make their own feed, by growing most of the ingredients and purchasing the supplements.
3. The industrial or large scale producer producing up to ten thousands of packaged chickens for retailers, retail chains and other customers buying in bulk. An industrial producer such as Zambeef also produces feed for the small scale and backyard farmer and retails frozen chickens in its own shops.

Zambia may have a few thousand backyard chicken farmers and these supply a considerable part of the local market. This farmer offers usually a competitive price  by being both producer and retailer, non-payment of turnover tax or VAT and low labour costs. They often have poor understanding of technical management. Small holders, unlike the backyard grower, are genuine farmers; and like the industrial producers, usually know what they are doing and why they do what they do. The bottom line is production for profit, and that may be by farming methods that may be unfriendly for both chicken and consumer.

Typical malpractices of growers are:

1. Over dosage of “growth enhancers” by providing these when already added to the feed by the stock feed company.
2. Usage of harmful growth enhancers such as growth hormones and “pre-therapeutic” antibiotics.
3. Excessive usage of “stress pack,” i.e., vitamin packages. Only excess vitamins B and C leave the body in urine, the others are stored.
4. Non-observance of the withdrawal period before slaughter following treatment with antibiotics.
5. Skipping of the “finisher phase” in rearing chickens that are slaughtered when 3 to 4.5 weeks (the typical supermarket chicken), resulting in chickens possibly containing undesirable “growth enhancers.”
6. Resorting to inferior feed. Feed is by far the main cost in raising chicks and very expensive.
7. Keeping birds in poor conditions (overcrowded, unhygienic, lack of ventilation, wrong temperature) resulting in need for medication, high mortality rate and the slaughter of unhealthy birds.
8. Unsuited housing affecting temperature, ventilation, hygiene and pest control (mosquitoes, flies, rats and mice).
9. Non-observance of cleaning, disinfecting and resting procedures prior to re-usage of the chicken house.
10. Poor slaughtering.
11. No rapid cooling of the carcass after slaughter, cleaning and packaging.
12. No proper storage: insufficient capacity of deep freezers, wrong packing inside the freezers resulting in (too) slow decrease of temperature.
13. Lack of interest in and understanding of proper technical management. This may apply especially to the backyard farmer.
14. Unwillingness to invest in proper infrastructure: the farmer wants to make money without making the necessary investments.
15. Cash flow problems inhibiting the timely purchase of feed. The capital layout until point of sale of broiler chickens is considerable (about ¾ of the sales price). Cash flow problems are common and result in premature sales, wrong feeding, and other undesirable “short cuts.”
16. Poor and/or irresponsible waste disposal. Chicken litter is a desirable fertiliser but slaughter waist is not and must be disposed of responsibly.

Almost all Zambian love eating chicken. Most of the chickens consumed are broilers, especially in municipal and urban areas.

Typical malpractices of the consumer are:

1. Buy cheaply without consideration for quality.
2. Ignorance about the product and its production.
3. Ignorance of and lack of interest in the ecology of the chicken business.

The next and last issue on broilers is about Remedial Action addressing malpractices in the industry. 

Be Aware of the Chicken You Eat! Part 1: Hazards.

Agriculture in Zambia no 6. Broiler chickens: Cheap meat at what price? This first issue of three lists potential dangers of eating broiler chickens and describes briefly how these birds are reared.

Note: The sequel to this post is about malpractices of input suppliers, growers and consumers. Part 3 is about remedial action.

Photo 1. The 6 week old broiler in characteristic posture: sitting next to feeder.

The so-called broiler (or broiler chicken) is by far the main source of chicken meat worldwide. The broiler comes in two types. The minority type is a chicken that needs about 12 weeks to grow to its optimum weight. This type is suited for free range or organic chicken rearing. The majority type, and an overwhelming majority it is, is the regular white broiler sold in a dressed weight range of 0.9 to 2.5 kg. Its life is short: about 3½ week to 7 weeks at the most. That broiler is the subject of this post.

The broiler is produced in many different ways: small scale or large scale; animal friendly or with utter disregard for the wellbeing of the bird; with competent and responsible technical management or without it; by abiding regulations and proper procedure or by flouting and ignoring them; in a sophisticated high tech fashion or simply and manual; for maximum profit or optimum profit; eco friendly or totally unfriendly; in respect of the health of the consumer or in disregard of it.

I shall approach the broiler chicken business firstly from the viewpoint of the consumer, and highlight the dangers of irresponsible growing and consumption. What are the dangers and drawbacks of eating broilers?

1.      Eating broilers may constitute a health hazard.

1.1.  You are eating what has been fed into the bird and a number of these materials are pertinently not meant for you. Industrially produced broiler feed contains “growth enhancers” of usually unspecified composition. Growth enhancers are or may be composed of antibiotics, growth hormones, minerals, vitamins, plant and herbal extracts. Some growth enhancers are residual and/or present in excessive quantities in the chicken, meaning that you eat them with the chicken.

1.2.   The maize (in Zambia about 65% of the feed) or other grain or organic matter that is a constituent of the feed may be contaminated with insecticides or other poison.

1.3.  There is in the bio-industry a tendency to feed “waste” of one form of animal husbandry into another line. Who guarantees you that the bone meal fed to your chicks comes from healthy animals? It might even be that the slaughtering waist of the very chickens themselves is “recycled” back into the chicken feed.

2. Danger of food poisoning by eating chickens that are slaughtered improperly (notably by exposing the carcases to flies, lack of hygiene generally); or by eating dressed chickens that have been stored wrongly (taking too long to cool or freeze, or that have been refrozen after defrosting, or simply been stored too long).

3.   You may (unknowingly) be supporting forms of chicken farming that are “chicken unfriendly” and possibly downright cruel. Examples are overcrowding of the chicken house, poor feeding (e.i., farmers saving on the cost of feed by supplying the chickens with inferior food), poor hygiene, poor slaughtering.

4. You may be supporting forms of chicken farming that pose environmental hazards. A chicken house, for example, is a perfect brooding place for flies and mosquitoes, attracts rats and mice; may develop into a transmitting station of diseases to neighbouring chicken growers and may be the source of foul odours.

Some observations about the life of the broiler

Major problematic issues in broiler production are a direct consequence of the very reasons for which these birds were engineered. Broilers are hybrid birds, bread in the first place for their ability to produce much meat tissue in a short time. The weight gain of these chickens indeed is spectacular. According to one Zambian breeder the broiler should have a live weight of 2.626 kg at the end of week six when ready for slaughter. That means an average weight gain of over 60 gram/day. Other factors also inform the genetic design: the chicks should be docile, suited for the artificial living environment they grow up in and have a favourable feed-meat conversion rate. The chicks are produced on an industrial scale; here in Zambia by Hybrid, Ross and Panda breeders. Chicken farmers need to purchase the chicks from these suppliers or their agents. The chicks are raised in flocks ranging from as small as 50 to as large as several thousands. The mini-birds live under fully artificial conditions; at night light is switched on to entice the chicks to go on eating. Industrial producers have houses with automated temperature, ventilation, feed and water control: the chicks have been incorporated in a mechanical system of manufacture. The broilers live in closed and crowded rooms (up to 10 birds to 1 square meter is accepted practice), constantly excrete, and produce especially after week three a great deal of body heat in an increasingly humid atmosphere.

This strange bird, even if provided with the opportunity to walk about on pasture around the chicken house is usually not keen to do so; hence the notion of a free range commercial broiler of this type is non-sense. The chick, actually, as it gets older is increasingly reluctant to walk. Its muscular development is at odds with the rate of increase in weight. As of the age of four weeks this eating machine prefers to sit close to a feeder to eat in that position. It does not require much imagination to understand that this animal is prone to diseases and stress.

In order to grow at maximum speed the broiler needs special food for each of the three feeding phases of its live. The chick starts with starter, moves on to grower and finishes with finisher. How long (and therefore how much of each type of feed) depends on the desired end product; be it a spring chicken of less than 1 kg to a fully developed bird of some 2.5 kg dressed weight, or anything in between. The three types of feed differ mostly in the amount of protein (starter having most and finisher less) and in the so-called “food supplements” or “growth enhancers.” The composition of the supplements and enhancers is not specified on the bags containing the commercial stock feed. These are or might be vitamins, minerals, growth hormones, prophylactic medication (including antibiotics), and plant and herbal extracts. The “growth enhancer” speeds up the weight gain of the broiler, meaning that the grower needs less time to arrive at a target weight; reduces chances of disease and generally cuts the cost of production.

A responsible chicken stock feed producer eliminates those elements of the “growth enhancers” out of the finisher feed composition that are harmful to the human consumer. Finisher should, for example, not contain antibiotics. The broiler at finisher stage should have ten days to flush out substances which should not be consumed by humans. And a better feed producer would not introduce any antibiotics or growth hormones at all in any of the feeding stages of the bird.

Broilers, for reasons mentioned above, are vulnerable to a range of diseases. The day-old-chicks as supplied by the breeder may or should be vaccinated and the chicken farmer should treat the chickens with lasota and gumboro vaccines. An industrial feed producer such as Tiger Feed routinely adds anti-coccidials to the feed. Chicken farmers have unrestrained access to chicken medication (vaccines and antibiotics) as well as factory made packages of growth enhancers without specified content. It appears that in Zambia there is no regulation in place concerning “permitted” growth enhancers, or the usage and sale of antibiotics. All these things are sold over the counter to anybody wanting to buy them. A withdrawal period, usually of five days, should be observed following the application of antibiotics – only then may the bird be slaughtered for consumption. Such responsible observance is very costly when antibiotics are applied to 5 or 6 week old birds ready for slaughter. At this stage a chicken eats some 200 gr / day costing about K 600 (10 E-cent). For a flock of 200 this amounts to K 600,000 (E 100) in a 5 period and that reduces the profit significantly.  

The drive towards cheap production by chicken farmers and the desire by the consumer to buy cheaply create a situation in which abuses and malpractices can thrive. These are the subject of the next post on broiler chickens.