Feed Price and money saving tips

[NatJ]

First thing is to count the birds and multiply by .25, equal pounds of feed per day you should be feeding. I'd ignore roosters and banties unless you have a lot of them. Now you have a baseline to judge if you are spending too much money in feed per bird.

As a very rough guideline, I would say a rooster eats about the same as a hen, and a banty (hen or rooster) eats about half what a standard sized hen does. That will not be perfect, but it means you can just count chickens plus half of banties, then divide by four to get pounds of food per day.

If we want to be completely accurate, we also have to account for some standard-sized hens needing more food than others. Big-bodies hens that are good layers will be the most obvious ones to need more feed. I don't know of any source with accurate numbers for large hens, or roosters, or bantams.

 

[Al Gerhart]

That is why I say to ignore roosters, most people have laying hens and a rooster eats a lot less and is one out of many. : ) Unless you have a lot of bachelors in the flock.

Rough is enough for a quick reality check on feed use.

 

[SourRoses]

The most important part is only keeping chickens you truly want or need!
Roosters are wasteful, unless you need them for hatching. All the boys we have had seem to eat like teenage male humans.

We pay $20 USD for 50lbs of 20% Grower (exactly the same as All-Flock). The price of All-Flock is $26 at my store. I've fed it before and it looks and smells and feels exactly the same, so the same mill is my thought. That's one way we save on our 4 bags a month.