Producing your own chicken feed. Is it really that complicated?

I don't know who is getting on who's are but I hope it's not me.

Vit A D E & K are fat soluble. We get them from eating fat. If a cannibal ate me then they would be rich in these lol.

Modern society IMO is obsessed with vitamins. A balanced diet is all we need. Most vitamins you buy are excreted in your urine if water soluable and via bile and therefore your poop if fat soluble.

Now when we feed chickens it's a little different. If they don't free range in an area with scores of different plants and lots of bugs then we are denying them the ability to instinctively select the food they need. Even running around a 1 acre grass paddock won't be enough as the flora is not varied enough.

When feed companies make feed most don't list their recipe because they constantly change it to meet budgets. They interchange wheat oats corn etc based on price. They then add high protein meal to boost to guaranteed protein levels. They then top up with vitamins and minerals they buy as a premix.

If pelletized they have to heat it.

My mix is based on local availability. Soy oats wheat millet sorghum and such are imported. Fish meal, corn grits (bran), rice bran, copra meal are locally produced.

I buy 50lb of vitamin premix at a time. Its $150 but is good 20 tons of feed. I buy other ingredients by the 50kg sack.

Oyster shell is free.

I add coconut vinegar to the water at the rate of 1/2 gallon per 55 gallon drum once per week. Its naturally fermented like ACV.

My chicks get a mix that's 28% protein. Bird 6-12 weeks get 22% and birds 12-18 weeks get 18%.

It's not rocket science. An excel spreadsheet helps though.

I don't ferment. Its not viable with this many birds

Chris09 said:

There are a number of vitamin and minerals that are water soluble and proteins can start to become less useful if left in water very long also.

I myself soak hard to digest fibrous grains like Oats and Boss.
Soaking allows the harder to digest fibrous grains to be easer digest and does not take as long as fermenting so there is less nutrient breakdown/ loss.

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Ahh, thanks, that makes more sense. As in "less useful" when left in water too long. Do you feed the soaked oats from a rolled oat, whole oat or other? I'm also curious if you feed it as a staple or a supplemental item?

theophila said:

Vitamins are just a name for groupings of organic compounds (organic as related to life, not in the hippy sense) and are different for every animal. When I ferment, I am fermenting whole foods, not crumble, and I still provide dry feed free choice, garden vegetables, and table scraps, and let them roam and scratch about. A lot of the vitamins in feed are produced either synthetically or released via fermentation. "Water-soluble" just means what it dissolves in and how the body absorbs it, not how it breaks down (as a REALLY basic example, table salt is water-soluble, but it doesn't get destroyed by sitting in liquid). For human nutrition, for example, fermentation actually helps release vitamin C and B-complex vitamins (both water soluble). Some compounds are obviously more volatile than others, but it depends on the conditions.

The bigger worry about overdoing it is with fats and proteins. Among other things, fermentation helps with breaking down proteins, carbs, and fats into their components (e.g., amino acids) for absorption by the body, but eventually you can completely denature the protein, as pointed out above by @Chris09. Don't do it for too long, and feed a variety. Think kimchi or pickles, not vinegar.

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Thanks, now I have a better image of what "water soluble" means.

And perhaps I might stop fermenting their commercial feed and instead ferment whole grains, as you suggested. What's your basic suggestion/recipe for fermenting whole grains, if you don't mind my asking?

ozexpat said:

I don't know who is getting on who's are but I hope it's not me.

Vit A D E & K are fat soluble. We get them from eating fat. If a cannibal ate me then they would be rich in these lol.

Modern society IMO is obsessed with vitamins. A balanced diet is all we need. Most vitamins you buy are excreted in your urine if water soluable and via bile and therefore your poop if fat soluble.

Now when we feed chickens it's a little different. If they don't free range in an area with scores of different plants and lots of bugs then we are denying them the ability to instinctively select the food they need. Even running around a 1 acre grass paddock won't be enough as the flora is not varied enough.

When feed companies make feed most don't list their recipe because they constantly change it to meet budgets. They interchange wheat oats corn etc based on price. They then add high protein meal to boost to guaranteed protein levels. They then top up with vitamins and minerals they buy as a premix.

If pelletized they have to heat it.

My mix is based on local availability. Soy oats wheat millet sorghum and such are imported. Fish meal, corn grits (bran), rice bran, copra meal are locally produced.

I buy 50lb of vitamin premix at a time. Its $150 but is good 20 tons of feed. I buy other ingredients by the 50kg sack.

Oyster shell is free.

I add coconut vinegar to the water at the rate of 1/2 gallon per 55 gallon drum once per week. Its naturally fermented like ACV.

My chicks get a mix that's 28% protein. Bird 6-12 weeks get 22% and birds 12-18 weeks get 18%.

It's not rocket science. An excel spreadsheet helps though.

I don't ferment. Its not viable with this many birds

Click to expand...

I'm with ya on the vitamin kick. I haven't taken an actual vitamin pill in many years. All my "vitamins" now come in food form...grass fed butter, fermented cod liver oil, sauerkraut, in addition to a largely whole foods diet. I did have a multi-year kick with "Superfood", a greens powder mix, but I don't any longer.

Yeah, I am now getting that because the way chickens have been bred, they require higher quality nutrition, aka vitamin/mineral-enhanced feed because most people don't have the ideal floral setting like you suggested.

In any case, sounds like you have quite a cost-effective setup there! Thanks for adding to the wisdom here.

I did not know you could ferment an oil.

The setup up works for me.

The locals thinks I am crazy. How could you possibly make feed as good as name brand??

ozexpat said:

I did not know you could ferment an oil.

Click to expand...

The actual livers of cod is fermented not the oil.
When you ferment the livers of cod it allows the fat soluble vitamins and oils to separate from the livers.

Quote:
I soak Whole Oats.
The "scratch" that I use has Oat Groats in it along with about 10 or 15 other grains but all the grains are cleaned and or polished so the hulls are removed and theres no sharp ends.

I feed the Soaked as a supplement, mostly in the morning and about 10% of there diet.

I happened to find a mill in southern Tennessee about an hour away from where I live that sells Non-GMO 16% layer for...I believe it was $13.57 a bag. That seems like a good deal to me? Mine are almost through their first bag already, and definitely enjoy it more than the TSC Dumor & Co-op brand layer feed. They even look prettier, but that's probably just in my mind
Anyone interested in the mill store's info, message me. If there just happens to be a lot of people wanting to know, I'll just post it, but I figure most of you aren't close enough to make the trip.