Alternative to commercial feed

[LargeShaft99]

Can I feed my chickens grass, weeds, spinach and earthworms and or meal worms as a sustainable diet? What else would I need? I am trying to get away from needing to buy from the store as I want to become a homesteader.

 

[Lauravonsmurf]

There are several threads… I’m need to add links to them but here is one I started recently, it includes discussion on pro and cons, whys and old to modern ideas, my goal is the thread be helpful

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/chicken-feed-recipes-articles-and-systems.1510115/

 

[nuthatched]

It's not advisable to feed earthworms since they can carry parasites. Your ideas are a good base but there's not enough protein or other nutritional needs.

 

[NatJ]

Can I feed my chickens grass, weeds, spinach and earthworms and or meal worms as a sustainable diet? What else would I need? I am trying to get away from needing to buy from the store as I want to become a homesteader.

It may be possible, but just buying commercial feed is much easier.

If you are planning to buy those ingredients (especially the mealworms), you might save money by buying the commercial feed instead.

I do not see any kind of grain on your list. Chickens need a certain amount of energy (calories) each day, and grain is often the cheapest way to provide that. (Things like potatoes might be able to substitute for grain, in some situations. But they are harder to store, and must be cooked.)

There are lots of other nutrients to consider, but I don't know enough about them to give advice. I just know that list looks short on energy, unless you feed LOTS of mealworms (high in fat), which is usually not cost-effective.

@U_Stormcrow knows a lot more than me about balancing feeds, and may be able to help with other details.

One way to REDUCE purchased feed is to offer the chickens everything you have that seems like it might be good, while also leaving a complete feed (purchased) available at all times. Your chickens might still eat too much of some things, or too little of others, and may be unhealthy and less productive. But with the commercial feed always available, they can eat it if they are short of anything, and are likely to stay mostly healthy. (I mean a crumbled or pelleted commercial feed for this purpose, NOT one of those mixes of grains that allow chickens to pick out their favorite parts.)

Other things you can offer your chickens, that you did not already list:

eggshells
meat from animals you butcher (including guts of the chickens you eat).
Table scraps, freezer-burned food, peels & trimmings from any food you prepare for your own use, etc.
Many kinds of fruits & berries
(None of these make a complete diet, but they can all be PARTS of the chickens' diet.)

Also, if you use the chicken run as your "compost pile," it will eventually breed various amounts of bugs & worms that chickens can eat as they scratch through it.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Can you feed those things? As others above have said, yes, with reservations.

Is it a sustainable diet? NO!

Next up, what we really need from you is a LOCATION. Any home grown solution is going to be very much location dependent. We are also going to need to know how much space you have, how many chickens you plan to have, what your expectations of your chickens are, and whether or no you have any heavy equipment you plan to use to feed said chickens.

I did mention "NO!"?

Not to be a downer, but the more I read about chicken nutrition, the less inclined I am to make a home-brew feed. Take away my ability to source ingredients via the internet, and its simply not possible*. In the last six months, I've seen three decent home-brew feeds. One is from Justin Rhodes. If you don't know who that is, and you plan to homestead, go do a Google search. His feed uses Fish meal. No fish meal? His feed is terrible. The second feed that was any good, I helped craft for a fellow BYCer in Ethiopia. It took most of a week/ten days, I had to build a calculator to figure it out, and an off the shelf solution would still be cheaper and better (if any was available). The third home brew solution I've seen worth a damn was this week. Link here.

@spaceylocust posted it in a VERY informative Thread @Lauravonsmurf is assembling, which you should definitely read in full - it has links to older posts and lots of resources we've assembled. Spacey's feed requires alfalfa meal (that's harvested, heated, dried, not green off your field), fish meal (like J RHodes'), flax seed, hard wheat, kelp (!) - have an ocean nearby?, lentils, oats, and winter peas - that's a lot of crops to try and produce on your own, in bulk, and store for later use.

Now, can you bend your feed curve some? Sure - I'm doing it with no tools whatsoever. I also happen to have one of the most tolerant climates in the nation. Are my birds surviving on it, nay, thriving on it? You judge - culling pics.

I'm also working on a flock, specifically, to thrive in these conditions. But keep in mind, I also feed hundreds of pounds of commercial feed each month, there are plenty of chickens out there that lay larger eggs, more frequently, that grow bigger, and grow faster, at better feed efficiencies. There is no "perfect" bird. At this point, I would argue that there are no great "dual purpose" birds, though there are some that are very good to exceptional. I'm hopeful, in a few more years, to have a bird that qualifies as "very good" for my conditions. Just be aware that the things that make a great free ranger aren't the same things that make a great meat bird, or a great layer.

We can help you in your quest, but its a hard row to hoe, and will likely require some experimentation on your part to find what works best for you and your particular circumstances.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

* I forgot to address this little asterisk, above.

**IF** you have lots of land, and **IF** you have no expectations of your birds, and **IF** you live in a climate better than mine, then yes, birds can get by on very little - feral flocks in Hawaii are a good example. But they don't lay a lot of eggs, they certainly don't do it in convenient nest boxes for you, they don't make tender eating, and they don't put lots of weight on quickly.

and yes, your great great great grandparents probably had a farm with a bunch of chickens they didn't feed (directly - the chickens were harvesting scraps and missed feed given to the horse, the cow, the pigs, spilled seed, etc), and those birds were smaller, slower growing, and laid MUCH less frequently than their modern equivalents. Laying contests at the turn of last century had birds producing less than 150 eggs a year. A modern commercial layer, on commercial feed can easily produce over 300 in a year.

 

[Red-Stars-in-RI]

As others have said, full replacement of commercial feed is difficult in all but the most ideal scenarios.

That being said, supplementing your commercial feed is a worthwhile goal. That can be feeding a few table scraps up to growing your own grains and veggies or a compost setup.

I’m seeing that in my compost/food waste system the flock eats a lot more commercial feed when it’s below freezing. Sure, that’s partly due to increased caloric needs to stay warm, but the ground being frozen is a big contributor.

 

[Lauravonsmurf]

The closest thing I seen to 0 feed still takes work… you will need horse, and cow manure, lots of yard waste, free food scraps from restaurants and schools, it all has to be processed and put into a big compost pile for the chickens… and honestly they are not trying to maximize growth or eggs… so I’m not sure how well it would work. You know the line “your results may very“… and I would research this sort of thing heavily… I might run a mini experiment, I can get certain things to compost and I make jungle and soil here so I got the yard waste… so I might make the chickens their own compost pile to work over… just for fun (but I would still be feeding them).

The oldest seemingly workable systems I have read so far involve moveable coops, free ranging in orchards, planting cover fodder crops, drying and storing greens, but still rely on feeding the chickens a diet that includes grains, meats, and lots of stuff to round out their nutrients… that was me reading old time farm books from when things were dine very differently than today for commercial egg production.

The bigger the flock the more cost conscious you become out of necessity. My fiddling with feed is definitely not cost effective.

 

[Sally PB]

Is it a sustainable diet? NO!

My fiddling with feed is definitely not cost effective.

And these two things sum this topic up pretty well, for me.

I can't grow everything I need to eat to stay healthy, though I can grow SOME of it. Same thing with my chickens.

Can I live a long life on what I can grow for myself? Hey, if people can eat nothing but junk food, then I suppose so. I also know that some of the junk food eaters have many chronic, debilitating health issue. I don't (that I know of). But I would get pretty darn hungry, and sourcing food would be a full time job. Right now it's a part time job/hobby that I enjoy.

Same thing with my chickens. I go to the doctor for regular medical checkups and care, and my chickens have never seen a vet, and most likely never will. Their health is all on me, and what I feed them is a huge part of that.

I feed them organic feed. I don't know if it makes *that* much of a difference in their health, but that is my choice. I look for ways to stretch my feed dollar, but that is secondary to giving them what they need.

 

[K0k0shka]

and those birds were smaller, slower growing, and laid MUCH less frequently than their modern equivalents.

And didn't live long. People like to romanticize the past, but forget that nobody expected a chicken to live past a couple of years. Males were eaten straight away, except for the 1 designated flock rooster, and the females were cycled out regularly past their prime. Whatever nutritional deficiencies they had, didn't have time to develop into full blown problems, because by year 2 the hen was soup. I know this because I've lived it. We had a fresh round of chicks every spring on the farm. When they came into lay, they replaced the old layers, and the old layers were eaten or frozen before their second winter (to avoid feeding freeloaders during the slow winter period). Every year, for generations, that's just how things were done. Nobody cared what the chickens ate, because they just had to live and lay for about a year and a half before being butchered for meat to feed the family.

If you want to get more than that out of your chickens, you'll need to invest more, too.