Mineral requirements for home made feed

the absolute best info on making feed is" Nutrition and feeding of organic poultry" by Robert blair. it reads a lot like a textbook and gives feed values of many different possible items to include as well as several sample formulas. one of the biggest hurdles with making feed at home is the particle size. whole or even cracked grain mixed with something like nutribalance leaves a powder at the bottom of the feeder of very important feed items. getting the birds to eat as much of that as possible can get tricky. top dressing the fines on the next days feed helps, as does feeding as a wet mash. letting the birds get real hungry before the next time you feed also gets the birds to pick up more of the fines.

I always suggest offering calcium in a separate feeder free choice.

Thanks for the book reference. Looks like a great book, too bad it is over $100 for just the PDF version!

We feed as a wet mash/fermented and this has solved the fines problem. When we used only dry feed, I would mix the fines with kefir and they gobbled this up.

I have seen it recently on amazon for under fifty dollars.

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I get a 50/50 mix of #2 legumes and #2 wheat from a local grain dealer. He mills it and sells it as approx 17% feed. I used this as my base and added a bit of oats and barley, sunflower seeds, (maybe 10% each) and the mineral mix. For this first batch I also combined about 25% with their old feed pellets as I worried about how they would accept the new feed. Well, they LOVED the new home made blend and literally tossed all the pellets out of the feeder going for the good stuff LOL!

I also got whole lentils and wheat and am sprouting a 50/50 mix along with some sunflower seeds and will use this on alternate days or when the feeder runs dry. I plan to take the fines from the bottom of the feeder and dump them over the damp sprouted mix.

I understand you have to be careful with legumes as some are not at all good for chickens. Lentils are fine though, and because of the whole GMO soy thing I prefer not to use soy at all. I'm still in the very early days of my home made feed regimen, but so far the chickens seem to like the change!

I am so excited. We soaked, sprouted 6 cups of grains (BOSS, Red H.W. Wheatberries, oats,green peas, lentils, pearled barley and shelled sunflowers. Everything sprouts except the oats. After 3 days, we measured out the original 6 cups which after sprouting is now 16 cups!! So yeah. Economical! We added to the drained sprouted mix : kelp granules, fish meal, D.E., a Chicken vitamin probiotic mix from TSC along with some Komucha mother cut in to bits with scissors. They ATE IT UP LIKE THEY WERE STARVING. Except for the green peas. They left pretty much every one. So next batch...no peas, but will be adding sesame seeds. Thank you girls for your input. haha

I have contacted my local health food store and feed stores, and between them and a few others we get all local, and some organic, no soy and no corn and no GMO. Good part is when I put in 1 part of something at so much a #, I get out double, closer to triple the volume. So my #50 bags for $27 are now #130 for $27.

I would like to do some fermenting too with the girls feeds. Currently we rotate lots through their water. Kombucha tea, APV, vitamin electrolyte from Rooster Booster, Raw Garlic, VetRX drops, Different herbal teas and more. I feel like some one else was saying, it would be hard to make one feed with the perfect nutritive blend at home without being able to calculate so much. So it was easier for them just to continue to purchase feed from a store. But my theory is....rotate much through their waterers and feeders and they free range all day anyway, so I think this is a win/win situation. Olden days, folks had chickens, they rarely fed. Just a few left over scraps at the back door.

I do want to do some fermenting of grains using ACV. First getting the feed assemble line perfected.

Ok, so @earthfriendlyfarm @Susan49 , how are your chickens doing?? Are they laying well on the homemade feed?

Our Chickies are doing great. The laying has dropped off as it is soo very hot right now. they seem to do that when it is so hot, or so cold. But they still love the feed. Nothing is left on the ground around the feeders. And what we have changed since March is this. There is currently 2 days a week we are gone from the Farm, and we have the home made 5 gallon bucket feeders (which we love) full of all the seeds and supplements we use when we sprout.except that they are dry, not sprouted. The chickens still love this. We use Pearl Barley, BOSS, hard red winter wheat, milo, millet, oats, plus now we have added a high protein non gmo laying pellet, we add kelp granules, flax seeds, nutritional yeast flakes, bentonite clay or D.E. I think that is it. They girls have access to a big electric fence run. They used to have total free range, until the local Fox family found our Chicken buffet. We had to put an end to that. So they remain in a large fenced in grass area. With plans to continually enlarge it as funds are available.

We have all these food grade 5 gallon buckets with the lids, we buy for $1 from Burger King. They smell horribly like pickles and the only thing I can find to get the pickle smell out is a light solution of bleach and water. I have tried EVERYTHING ELSE FIRST! Vinegar, baking soda, sitting full of water for weeks in the sun. None of these even touch the smell of pickles. haha But once I put the light bleach solution spray inside the bucket, let it sit for less than 10 minutes with the lid on, I wash them out really well, and they are perfect for our use.

We sit all these 5 gallon buckets on our wooden Pallet, (2 or 3 of each usually fits a #50 bag) Label the lids. Have a 2 cup container and we simply open each container, get 6 or 7 cups out of each one, put it our mixing buckets, pour it back and forth with another one, until all the grains and supplements are well mixed, then pour it in to all our home made 5 gallon feeders.

When we are at the Farm we either sprout the grains excluding Milo and millet,(they take so much less time than the other grains, they will start to ferment, in a bad way) and feed that to them on our "poopoo platters", or we make "poopoo Platters" with cooked organic brown Rice I buy in bulk through a buying club. (I highly recommend becoming part of wholesale bulk buying clubs in your local area), pastas, oat meals. then adding all the supplements before serving. Plus we cut up either tomatoes, or bananas on top and add either yogurt or cottage cheese. and occasionally raw garlic pods cut up. They are wild and crazy girls, and one fabulous handsome rooster, when they see all those platters coming. They absolutely love them. I love feeding them this way.

A side note: when we first had to keep the girls and rooster up due to a huge amount of fox attacks, we were unprepared for the whole situation. And after only about 5 days, we noticed the egg yolks were a light yellow all of a sudden. We thought it stress, but soon realized they were not getting the green vegetation they were used to, and found that 30% of their diet is greenery. We started using the little push mower with a bag and several times a day we would give them a huge pile of sweet grass and clover, plaintain and dandelion. They dove in. The yolks turned orangey again and everyone was temporarily happy. Course we had to wait for the electric poultry fence to arrive before we could let them out again. Now all is awesome.

Hope this long letter helps you in what ever you were wanting to know. I love our 45 chickens. We sell every egg they lay, because of the color and taste and knowing of their raisings. It is always a wonderful and sometimes but rarely sad adventure in chicken rearing. Cheers! Kelley

Wow, sounds like you have a fantastic system!!
Did you add the laying pellets because they weren't happy/laying well on just the whole grains? And do you have any problem with them leaving the fine kelp, clay, etc in the feeders or do they gobble it up?

Haha I hear ya on the pickle buckets. I have some from the local bakery & after a year and a half they STILL smell like garlic!!

Glad to hear your business is doing so well. Yay for healthy eggs and happy hens!