I Want to Find the Best and Least Costly way to feed my 40 Hens and Roos. How to Make it Sustainabl

First you want birds to forage entire area set out for them. This can be promoted by distributing resources they need throughout area to be ranged. Resource of particular importance is cover, ideally in the form of shrubs / bushes. I like it in patches that about 10 to feet in diameter when round and when in strips at least 4 feet wide. Brambles my preference. Then near those cover patches you have something like leaf piles chickens can scratch through. Such provide nutrition and moisture for critters the chickens like to eat which makes such patches a combination bio-attractor and supplemental food source for arthropod forages. Also allow patches of pasture / yard to grow with only one mowing in spring as that allows more height and density to provide cover for insects. Some insects will be from your yard proper is balance of yard provide suitable food and chickens do not over harvest. Another insect source comes in the form of drift where insects like grasshoppers move in during the day and they like to stay in and around the tall grass patches. Another very important insect forage base can come from night time drift where insects flying at night from areas outside those foraged by your chickens will settle by morning and be available for consumption the following day. Land management beyond where your birds forage impacts insect drift in a major way as does weather / season and in my case wind direction. I also like to make certain yard is not a uniform moniculture of grass, rater a lot of legumes and other forbes are promoted.

Make so yard is a mosiac as all cover and forage not good either, Chickens are edge loving.
 
I am not a real farmer either. I could not kill and eat my chickens. I will keep them their entire lives. You can get more longevity as far as Biglane goes if you do not give them light in the coop in the winter. This means they won't lay is much in the winter sometimes but they will lay longer overall. I get four dollars a dozen here, it doesn't pay for the chickens but it helps pay for some of the food. I choose to feed them a pretty high-end expensive food but that is my choice. You definitely don't have to.
If you have a compost pile your chickens can get lots of bugs from there. There is a thread in the learning center about composting with chickens.
 
I offset a lot of my feed cost by getting day old produce and other items that are destined for the landfill from a few local grocery stores... It takes a lot of ground work and sweet talking to find a store that will give it to you as most are reluctant or it's against corporate policy, but if you keep pounding the ground you should be able to find one... Write up a 'not for human consumption waiver' it can go a long way in selling your pitch... Of course it's not a steady supply ever single day, but at the end of the day it has cut my feed cost substantially and my birds enjoy the variety...

And because I offer such a vast variety of other foods, the dry feed does not necessarily have to be fully balanced as they are getting nutrients from other stuff... This allows me to have the option to cut the dry food with other things, but I try to only cut it with high protein stuff so that at least the protein profile is still high... I generally cut with whole oats, I can get them locally for about $8-9 50lbs and they are about 14% protein so it's still a high protein feed even after cutting... FYI I only cut the feed when the 'extras' are plentiful and varied, if my freebie food supply slows down I don't cut the dry feed at all...
 
It takes a lot of ground work and sweet talking to find a store that will give it to you as most are reluctant or it's against corporate policy, but if you keep pounding the ground you should be able to find one... Write up a 'not for human consumption waiver' it can go a long way in selling your pitch...
I guess I have been very lucky. My arrangement came about as a result of an advertisement by the veggie supplier, I didn't go looking or have to convince anyone.

When you are being told that it is not allowed because of potential liability, communicating in writing would be the way to go. They may give the blanket response because they get a lot of verbal enquiries (some of which could be for the purpose of getting cheap food for people) and they don't want to have to assess the validity of requests. If you set out in writing what you need and support it so that all that is required is a "yes", you improve your chances.

Also, if you could find a producer who would be happy to have some of it removed from their property, it might improve your chances. Stores throw away perfectly good produce for cosmetic reasons. They have good reason to believe that people will make use of their "waste" (it's insane what gets thrown away). If you can find a supplier where it really is waste, for example somewhere that makes salad sandwiches or prepared salads and trims off all the end bits of lettuce carrot and tomato and other ingredients, they might be less concerned that you'll be wanting to eat it yourself.
 
Stores throw away perfectly good produce for cosmetic reasons.


They also throw away perfectly good food that is close to the best by date (most food is plenty good well past the best by date) or simply rotate the old stuff off the shelves to make room for new stuff...

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They also throw away perfectly good food that is close to the best by date (most food is plenty good well past the best by date) or simply rotate the old stuff off the shelves to make room for new stuff...
Yes, it's shocking how much good food gets wasted. There are now services that take all the "still good but not good enough for the supermarket" food and use it for meals for charity, but those types of organisations are in the cities, not in rural areas.

If you get a knock-back from a local manager of a chain store, you can try writing to "head office" for a different response. There has been a bit of a shift towards not having ridiculous amounts of waste. If you establish your bona fides, you might be successful in getting agreement if you write to the "right person" within an organisation.
 
I would stay away from the chain stores. Try locally owned mom and pop type places. Ethnic grocery stores are good option also. Or talk with friends and neighbors, if they don't put pesticides and stuff like that on their veggies they should be safe.
 
I cannot comment on the least expensive type of feed since I feed Purina Layena, but I will say this. Don't underfeed your chickens, because then they wont lay due to stress, and then you will have not only unhealthy chickens but also no eggs.
 
Thank you for all the great helpful responses.

I am going to do all of it:

Set up bug areas, plant a variety of things, buy an old freezer, buy some metal trash bins, get supplements, ask neighbors to bring things, lay out compost, ferment feed, get oats, ensure they get enough light, contact stores with a waiver regarding human eating, and so on.
 

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