menadione nicotinamide bisulfate

Today, I was googling some of the ingredients in my certified organic layer pellets and came across menadione nicotinamide bisulfate. At first , I just searched menadione, and found this Natural News article... http://www.naturalnews.com/024244_food_pet_sodium.html. It isn't exactly the same... the middle word on mine is nicotinamide and the one in the article is sodium... but it also says it goes by many names. Can anyone comment on this?

I thought I scored with this stuff. It's grown and produced locally and certified organic. It's just too bad that the USDA sets the organic rules and they really can't be fully trusted, so on occasion, we still must question ingredients, even on certified organic stuff. I'm not saying that this particular ingredient is bad... I don't know that yet and it's hard to sift through all the conflicting google results. I just don't think the USDA is properly researching all the things that they allow in organic food and I'm sure they are even more relaxed on animal feed.

I can avoid feed during summer by free ranging, but I haven't established any way to supply my own winter feed yet. So I guess I am stuck with this stuff for now.

Does anyone see any other questionable things on this ingredient list?

http://blueseal.com/files/feeding-and-mgmt/poultry/1001-organiclife-layer.pdf

Menadione is a synthetic vitamin K precursor. As opposed to napthoquinone, which would be a naturally occurring precursor molecule. The nicotinamide is otherwise known as niacin or vitamin B3, not a problem molecule in the mix.

Here is an abstract which talks about nicotinamide being problematic for weight gain as opposed to a similar formulation where nicotinamide was replaced by dimethyl-pyrimidinol.

Nothing else on the label arouses my chemist curiosity.

You know why they have these feed additives in the layer pellets -- because a soy+corn mix is insufficient for the health of the chicken. So they go to the chemical shelf and add whatever is missing. If your chickens have access to kale and the slugs and bugs that live on the kale, then you don't need these additives. Kale contains all the vitamin K the chooks would ever need, and a tasty grasshopper or slug will have lots of niacin.

Did I answer your question?

P.S. If you just supplement the winter feed with cabbage/sauerkraut/silage, it will cover a lot of these vitamin issues.

That was very thorough... thanks. I will make sure to include a lot of kale in my feed mix once I clear out enough room on my land to grow my own.

Since we're here, I was going to post this question in the mushroom forum, but you might know...

Is there anything on that ingredient list that is unsuitable for organic mushroom production? The reason I was investigating the ingredients in the first place was because the feed increases yields when used as a supplement to straw and fixes the flavor loss of using straw alone. I know there is other stuff I can use, but I like the pellets.

Shouldn't be a problem.

Cool... thanks.