Chicken Feed..?

On the cricket farm I worked on they had their food made by a local mill that did chicken feed. It was basically the same with a few tweaks. At one point they scraped a bunch fearing dermestids and I have used it for my roaches for 2 years now.

 
Oh great! Well I just may start feeding that then. I was reading about roach nutrition and kept seeing that high levels of protein is a big no no for adults.. That led me to reading ingredient analysis on all of my pet foods (things I'd normally feed) and everything is pretty high in protein. Looked over at the chicken feed and it's only 14%. So thought I'd ask around.

 
It's not necessarily a big no no, I've been feeding dog food as a staple diet for all my roaches, including adults, and have had no problems thus far, same goes for several of the most experienced members of the hobby.

But yeah, I've heard chicken feed works great, hope your roaches like it! :)

 
I have also used mazuri rat block before and its effective it's really hard so best suited for larger roaches. It doesn't mold as fast as dog food does which really is my biggest complaint with dog food. Some adult spieces like more protein the ones prone to cannibalize and cat food is higher then dog food in protein.

 
We use Dumor chicken feed. It is a soybean protein based chick feed. There is the hatchling/grower feed (which we get) at 20% protein, chicken scratch which has a lower protein, a chicken pellet with lower protein as well, and a layer feed for hens. We sell a lot of feeders and meat based proteins break down to uric acid which builds up in reptiles as well as humans and can cause painful joint issues like gout.

 
I also feed Dumor. Right now my flock is on layer so I thought why not roaches too. Used to feed the guineas a game bird crumble (higher protein) but to be honest they do just fine on the layer crumbles too.

No worries Matttoadman. I would never give a medicated feed to anything other than the animal it was intended for.

 
I mix Dumor (non-medicated) Chick Starter, Scottish Oats, and Alfalfa powder as the main protein for my colonies. I do a partial grind on the chick starter so that nymphs can eat it, but the Scottish Oats and alfalfa powder are fine enough they need no grinding. With 1/3 of each, my protein average of the 3 is 18%. Typically the only part left in the colonies is the larger chunks of Dumor Chick Starter. 

 
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