What you may want to do is follow Joel Salatin's thinking on free ranging layers. His claim was that with broilers - 30% of their feed was gained from pasture, 70% was from commercial feed. With free range layers, those numbers were reversed. So, commercial feed only amounted to 30% of their diet.
With 80 free range layers and thinking that they would be eating about 27 pounds (12.2 kilos) feed a day in confinement - 30% of their required feed would be about 8 pounds (3.6 kilos). That would be quite a savings but with that many cows and sheep for neighbors, it probably will require 4.5 hectares of land
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Steve
Egg Production in the Pastured Poultry Model
edited to add: I haven't read Salatin in quite a few years but I believe that he isn't using any run-of-the-mill feed to supplement pasture for the laying hens. High quality stuff is what they are getting to go with what they can get for themselves
.
With 80 free range layers and thinking that they would be eating about 27 pounds (12.2 kilos) feed a day in confinement - 30% of their required feed would be about 8 pounds (3.6 kilos). That would be quite a savings but with that many cows and sheep for neighbors, it probably will require 4.5 hectares of land
Steve
Egg Production in the Pastured Poultry Model
edited to add: I haven't read Salatin in quite a few years but I believe that he isn't using any run-of-the-mill feed to supplement pasture for the laying hens. High quality stuff is what they are getting to go with what they can get for themselves
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