Organic poultry feed comes to Columbia

Organic poultry feed comes to Columbia

Bourn also sells Purina Poultry Feed, which is what I’ve been using. I’m not sure if I’ll change or not yet.

The organic feed’s selling point for me is GMO cannot also be certified organic. The drawback for me is that the ingredient list reads like a pharmacy. The first two ingredients in all their versions of feed are 1. organic grain products and 2. organic plant protein products. The remaining ingredients are supplements and vitamins. It’s not that I have anything against supplements or vitamins. It’s just that I know that a complete balanced feed can be closely achieved through a diverse group of plants/seeds/legumes. The Purina feed ingredient list is pretty much the same. The difference comes in cost. A bag of chick starter and a bag of layer feed of Purina and Natures Grown at Bourn are $17, $13 and $24, $20, respectively.

So the two combating characteristics are GMO and price. Now $7 for a 50 lb bag of feed doesn’t seem like too awfully much, but backyard eggs (for many people) are already pretty expensive. Many people spend hundreds of dollars on their coops and runs, then the cost of feeders and waters, bedding, and feeding the chicks for the first six months, before they even begin to see a return. For too many first time backyard hen owners the cost of the first egg is more than the cost of buying commercial eggs for the entire household for two years! That said, many backyard hen owners are not raising hens for the cost. Most are doing it for more subjective reasons. Not supporting commercial egg production. The desire to know what goes into the food on the table. Wanting a closer connection to food. Wanting their children to know that food comes from living animals and plants rather than prepackaged in plastic on a shelf in the supermarket. And some, like me, also come to love the hens for themselves and their quirky personalities and crazy antics.

Commercial feed rations aren’t the be all and end all of feeding backyard birds. Many homes have the ability to also feed table scraps to their birds. I rarely have leftovers or scraps for my birds. Certainly not enough to sustain them, not even enough to supplement their diets.

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