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Re: Chicken Feed / Pig Feed



Research has shown that given a choice of ingredients, pigs will pick out
a balanced diet.  Moreover, each pig seems to pick out a diet suited best
to itself.  There are a few foods that pigs will eat too much of, such as
fermented products (brewery wastes, etc.) because they like them so much,
but you can easily notice this and make a good guess as to how much to
restrict these feeds. 

I suspect that chickens do the same thing, but I haven't seen the
research, if any.  My suggestion is to give animals a choice of
ingredients and let them select their own diet. I'm sure your workers will
understand this approach. 

ECHO has published a piece in Echo Development News a few issues back on
raising pigs on tree leaves in Haiti. You might supplement the pigs diet,
and the chickens as well, with such tree leaves, reducing production
costs. The trees can be used as living fence posts, etc., If you are
interested, email me directly and I'll look up the information offline and
send the proper references to you. Or you can visit ECHO's web page,
http://www.xc.org/echo

For Mother Earth, Dan Hemenway, Yankee Permaculture Publications (since
1982), Elfin Permaculture workshops, Permaculture Design Courses,
consulting and permaculture designs (since 1981) and the Forest Ecosystem
Rescue Network.

   



References: