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2025-02-26 23:40:27

Recovering Academic on Nostr: Welcome back to the #eggprogramming note series. Let us talk about yellow peas and ...

Welcome back to the #eggprogramming note series.

Let us talk about yellow peas and red lentils, and why they feature in this egg program.
Please consider all values presented to be in the proverbial ball-park, rather than guaranteed.

Upon macronutrient inspection, yellow peas and red lentils are similar:

Yellow peas are 22% protein and 2% fat.
Red lentils are 24.5% protein and 2% fat.

Japanese quail need 16–24% protein to be well. Studies will often arrive at 20% for an adult quail, and 24% (or higher) for an adolescent, especially when they are younger than three weeks.

There are pros and cons to either end of the spectrum. From the egg perspective, more protein generally results in more, larger eggs. From the cloacal perspective, more large eggs are generally associated with more prolapses.

If one were to shoot for the lower bound, it would be prudent to utilise more animal protein and/or supplement lysine and methionine. You will see these featured in commercial mixes as deficiency can be an issue, especially when plant protein is predominantly deployed.

I want to minimise supplements, and focus on whole foods, as well as minimise how much fish I need to deploy for financial and proccessing reasons. Although, the current fish method does seem to be going a long way. More to come in another note about that. If you had access to cheaper meat meal of some kind, I could see how it might find its way to being a larger constituent.

We have 5% as the upper bounds for fat for the total mix so it is nice that yellow peas and red lentils are 2%, which is quite low.

The omega 3:6 (the ratio between omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids) for yellow peas is .205, whilst for lentils it is .271. I consider anything above .1 to be pretty groovy/manageable in the plant realm when programming eggs and humans.

For every 100g of red lentils there is .414g of omega 6 and .112g of omega 3. This leaves .302g of omega 6 per 100g of red lentils to be balanced: and we can do this with 1.51g of flax seeds for every 100g of red lentils.

So, 3.775g of flax seeds would draw our omega 3:6 to 1, just taking into account the 250g of red lentils in the mix.

We need more due to the yellow peas which have .696g of omega 6 and .143g of omega 3 per 100g. So, that is .553g to be balanced per 100g which equates to an additional 20.74g of flax seeds to cover the entire 750g of yellow peas in the mix.

I am fond of flax seeds for this ability and will produce a separare note about it.

You might have noticed that there is processing involved with the yellow peas and red lentils. This is because they have unideal antinutrients in them like tannins, phytates, and trypsin inhibitors. Conveniently the red lentils and yellow peas we get are dehulled/decorticated, which removes a lot of the tannins and phytates, but some still remain and so do the trysin inhibitors.

Cooking thoroughly is a solution. Soaking also helps. You can even ferment. If they were whole seeds, it seems that sprouting them first then cooking them would be the most effective way to destroy these compounds. So, if you have whole seeds, that is an option.

I have played the fermentation game, and my nose just says no to me when I smell their food and it smells like nice kombucha. I prefer it to smell buttery, sweet, and fishy.

To process the yellow peas and red lentils I wash them first and deliver the milky rinse to the garden. I feel like I have more leeway before they smell weird doing this. This is especially useful on hot days. The nose knows, you know. It also gets rid of miscellaneous debris, and perhaps peculiar residues. Six hours is ample on the soak, but I usually do it overnight.

After soaking, I rinse it all again and then put them in a large cast iron pot without the lid in the oven for 90 minutes at 170°C/338°F. It seems that 121°C/249.8°F for 90 minutes is ample. So, you could use a pressure cooker. It is also nice to get to this temp or higher to destroy any bacterial spores. Mayhaps I sleep better dancing above this temperature . . .

I like the ease of the oven. In the antinutrient literature I have read they go up to 180°C/356°F, and I feel better about all of the yellow peas' and red lentils' exposure to heat at this temperature for this time in this way, taking into account that I do not stir them to save time.

Once they are cooked I lay them out on sheets of baking paper in the beloved dehydrator (perhaps the singing heart of the homestead). They get 5 hours at 70°C/158°F. Upon dehydration, the yellow peas and red lentils are ready for inclusion in the mix, although they will need to be ground prior to consumption.

You might be wondering why I have used 25% red lentils and 75% yellow peas. Price is a factor. Yellow peas are 62.5% of the price of red lentils. Red lentils are, however, more performant: they are higher in protein, they exhibit a better omega 3:6. They are also more dense in several micronutrients: calcium, iron, potassium, phosphorus, selenium, ascorbic acid, niacin, pyridoxine, folate, and compounds in the vitamin E group, although there is more vitamin K in peas.

The reason I have used red lentils is becauase they are easily accessible. I have noticed some black lentils present with even higher protein, so that is exciting. However, they are not as easily available for me. Moreover, I like that these are red, becasue I like red pigmentation in yolks.

A lot.

More to follow regarding yolk colouration in later notes.

#protein #peas #lentils #egg #programming #nutrition #health #homestead #homesteading #bird #quail #farm #wellbeing #wellness #chickens #longevity

I love programming eggs. Here's is my current quail food recipe. Our legendary egg producers are quail of the Japanese variety.

The followong will make 1.4153kg
@ 21.1% Protein & 4.8% Fat:

-- 750g Hulled Yellow Peas*

-- 250g Hulled Red Lentils*

-- 200g Red Millet

-- 81.5g Japanese Millet

-- 30g Dehydrated Pilchards

-- 30g Linseeds

-- 25g Paprika

-- 7.5g Turmeric

-- 7.1g BVM Powder

-- 10g Dehydrated Grass-Fed Beef Liver

-- 4.2g Iodised Salt

Melted and poured through the mix:

-- 15g Grass-Fed Unsalted Butter

-- 5g Coconut Oil

* = Rinsed then soaked for 12 hours. Then drained, and then roasted for 90 minutes at 170°C/338°F, then dehydrated for ~ 5 hours at 70°C/158°F.

Optional additives that are general health and carcass quality oriented:

-- 5.25g Cloves
-- 5.25g Dry Olive Leaves
-- 1.2g Onion Powder
-- 1.2g Cinnamon Powder
-- .75g Ginger Powder

Calcium carbonate/egg shells/cuttle bone/limestone/oyster shell grit provided separately and consumed at the discretion of the performer. We use their egg shells and cuttle bone as we are near the ocean.

Green leafy lower oxalic acid things are also provided ad libitum/twice daily.

I am quite fond of the BVM powder. It is nice to have a multinutrient additive around. I have been trying for months now to facilitate complete nutrition with whole food only. The final sticking point I encountered was iodine. Iodine is vital for poultry, they need at least .5mg per kg of feed. Some people provide their birds with up to 3mg per kg of feed. Iodised salt in the aforementioned dose provides about .2 mg, and I cannot add more as we want the added salt to be around .3% of the mix.

Seaweed might come to mind as a solution, but the concentration of iodine varies greatly, and depends largely on processing too, so I feel like I would be running the gauntlet with our entire flock if I were to rely on seaweed like this.

If you have seaweed that is tested for iodine and you trust the dose, I would love to know about it. I may need to learn the local seaweeds where I am and process them myself and then I might feel comfortable dropping the BVM powder which ads .35mg per kg, so we are approaching .5mg per kg of feed, providing the miscellaneous greens they are eating also provide iodine . . .

In light of this closeness to the lower bound, I may consider increasing the BVM dosage (perhaps double), but if I do that I will half the beef liver dose and reduce the pilchard dose, as these are very nutritious and the protein percent is already higher than what is necessary. I might then also drop lentils and replace with more peas.

I will detail my rationale for each ingredient in following notes.

#homestead #homesteading #poultry #eggprogramming #quail #health #food #birdstr #eggstr

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