5 Essential Nutrients in Broiler Chicken Feed

The right broiler chicken feed helps your birds grow well, and broilers put on meat quickly when you give them the right feed. To feed them properly, you need to know a few tips. Careless feeding can keep chickens from growing and developing fully. Meat chickens such as broilers need five nutrients in their feed: protein, energy, vitamins, minerals and fat. To provide all of them, you can mix the feed ingredients together or feed them in rotation. Here are the most nutritious broiler feeds:

Also read 5 Broiler Chicken Traits You Need to Know

Energy Sources

When you feed the broilers you raise, the first thing to provide is energy. Energy keeps your chickens lively and active, unlike chickens that lack it and look sluggish, as if they were sleepy. One energy source you can give is corn, which supplies more energy than other options. Choose good corn for your feed, such as yellow corn or red-kernel corn, which contains carotene. Carotene helps keep your broilers' eyes healthy and clear. Other carbohydrate sources you can give broilers include rice, dried cassava flour (gaplek), sweet potato flour and sago.

Animal Protein

To provide the right nutrition, you can add animal protein to your broiler feed. Animal protein helps chickens gain weight sharply. Feeds you can give include fish meal, corn meal, and meat and bone meal. You can also give a high-protein meal made from shrimp heads, and mix these meals into the chickens' energy sources such as corn, rice, dried cassava flour and so on.

Also read 4 Most Attractive Benefits of a Broiler Chicken Farming Business

Plant Protein

Besides animal protein, you can give plant protein, which comes from plants. Animal and plant protein are equally important for broiler growth and development. To meet their plant protein needs, you can feed soybean meal, winged bean seeds, soy sauce and tofu pulp, and finally peanut meal. All of these ingredients are very high in plant protein, so they help broilers grow and develop quickly.

Minerals

Broilers need minerals, even if only in small amounts, and minerals are essential for bone health. Strong bones let a chicken stand upright and help maintain bone density. To meet their mineral needs, you can give bone meal, shell meal, table salt and many others.

Supplements

In addition to the main feed, you can give supplements that make broilers more resistant to a range of diseases. These supplements act as medicine and antibiotics, along with antifungal, antitoxin and anti-free-radical agents. Supplements you can give include coccidiostats, antimold agents, antitoxins and antioxidants.

Also read 4 Ways to Raise Broiler Chickens Profitably

Simply filling them up is not enough to keep the broilers you raise healthy and fit. Poultry farmers who only feed their birds until they are full can keep the chickens from reaching their full growth. So start meeting your chickens' nutritional needs right now. By giving your broilers nutrient-rich feed, you gain benefits such as birds that rarely get sick and grow to their full potential.