Recovering Academic on Nostr: Here is the current egg program, with amendments implemented upon discovery during ...

Here is the current egg program, with amendments implemented upon discovery during the egg programming note series.

-- Japanese Quail Food for Magnificent Eggs --

To make ~ 1.43kg @ ~ 20% Protein & ~ 5% Fat:

-- 1kg Yellow Peas*

-- 270g Raw White Rice

-- 34g Paprika

-- 30g Dehydrated Pilchards

-- 30g Flax Seeds

-- 25g Grass-Fed Butter°

-- 10g Coconut Oil°

-- 10g Dehydrated Bull Kelp (Durvillaea potatorum)

-- 10g Dehydrated Grass-Fed Beef Liver

-- 7.2g B.V.M. Probiotic Powder

-- 4.2g Iodised Salt

Optional:

-- 7.5g Turmeric

-- 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.

Grean leafy lower oxalic acid things also provided daily.

* = 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.

° = Melted and poured through mix.

Note within a note (noteception): entire mix is ground prior to feeding.

The next note in the series will be about #paprika.

quoting nevent1q…782y

Welcome to another episode of egg programming.

This note is about feeding fish to poultry.

Two vital components of fish are eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA).

These are the notorious marine omega 3s.

Up until this point we have been talking about the plant omega 3: alpha-linolenic acid (ALA).
We have been deploying flax seeds to balance ALA with omega 6 fatty acids; and we have been doing this because humans do well when this is balanced.

Here is an image of the chemistry of these fats:



The different elongation pathways for these fatty acids compete to use the same desaturase enzymes, as you can see here:



You will notice arachadonic acid on the omega 6 side. This is the precursor to inflammatory eicosanoids, which are vital for lots of things. However, we do not want them around in excess.

To grug it out a bit: we want inflammation to be well managed, and this is why we balance the omega 3:6.

You might say that another purpose is to make more EPA and DHA from ALA, and this is true. However, those elongations are inefficient processes. But, conveniently, we can utilise other creatures to access more EPA and DHA.

Birds are more efficient than humans at converting ALA to EPA and DHA, so we are kicking goals just eating eggs from birds who eat ALA.

However, we can do better than that.
We can eat fish, and we can also feed fish to our legendary egg producers!

Al-Daraji et al.'s (2010) study "Effect of dietary supplementation with different oils on productive and reproductive performance of quail" found that fish oil at 3℅ of the feed produced the best results in regard to egg weight, hen-day egg production, egg mass, cumulative egg production, feed conversion ratio, fertility, hatchability of eggs set, hatchability of fertile eggs, and embryonic livability—followed by the results of flax oil. The lowest values for these traits was recorded for corn oil and sunflower oil—neither of which (oil nor whole) feature in this egg program.

A more recent review by Alagawany et al. (2019) titled "Omega-3 and Omega-6 Fatty Acids in Poultry Nutrition: Effect on Production Performance and Health" fleshes-out the nuance here and, more specifically to this note, teases apart the differences between fish and flax:

https://image.nostr.build/4ec6eb46526c94013e6a7f35b3b5e5b257ce6a8f6e6f5165033a51b97d53c8f9.

This image was taked from their Table 1 which is a good TLDR on supplements and results.

Here is the article:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6721126/

This egg program features dehydrated pilchards. Why? They are high quality and cheap. Lots of fish meal you might find for poultry has had the oil extracted from it at at least 100°C/212°F, so it is really only useful for protein—not so much for less stable micronutrients and certainly not for omega 3s.

I get the pilchards in frozen block form. These are bait for fishing and the fish look healthy: it seems like they have been frozen on the boat that they were caught from.

Dehydrating the pilchards is a smelly affair: the whole homestead will smell like 1000 piers. But, it will be worth it.

It is exciting to see bones, scales, offal, and oily flesh, making their way into the mix.
It is lovely rich stuff.

I keep the dehydrated pilchard meal in the fridge: there are lots of goodies in there that we want to preserve.

Fish hey . . .
Consider sending some at your birds.

#bird #egg #food #nutrition #science #fish

#health #longevity #farm

#homesteading #eggprogramming thread:

nevent1q…288c

#feed #food #poultry #birds #quail #nutrition #eggstr #henstr #roosterstr #eggprogramming