Am I feeding my flock right?

[peeppers]

The guy we get all our chickens from told me to mix my feed and get (all 50 lbs.except sunflowers) 1 bag layer pellets, 1 bag black oil sunflowers, 1 bag hog feed, 1 bag cracked corn. We mix it all together and feed that. Does that sound right? I have tried to feed scraps and vegies at times but am now just learning what kind of scraps to feed. They do free range during the day. I have tried both hog crumbles and hog pellets and they seem to like pellets better. I have turkeys, chickens, geese and guineas. I just give them all the same mix. I didn't know any better but want to learn. Any advice would certainly be wonderful.

 

[enola]

It would be much easier to buy bags of Flock Raiser, the nutrition would probably be better.

 

[PirocaKeeper]

Different people feed their chickens different mixes. The bag of layer should have the right combination of ingredients for nutritional purposes. You can mix in other stuff with it. I personally feed mine (layer X chick raiser X cracked corn X about 10% of scratch) mixed. On the side I give them as treat mealworms especially in the winter, greens and veggies (scraps). I have read of other people making really meticulous combinations. I don't feed layer to mine until the firs girl laid the first egg, so prior to that was just starter/raiser with the other mixes. Once the first one laid the first egg, I added the layer. I don't particularly see anything wrong with your mix , not sure about the hog feed though.

 

[cafarmgirl]

It would be much easier to buy bags of Flock Raiser, the nutrition would probably be better.

X2. Much easier and simpler. For their main diet commercial poultry feed is properly balanced nutrition without mixing or adding a bunch of other stuff.

 

[pdirt]

The guy we get all our chickens from told me to mix my feed and get (all 50 lbs.except sunflowers) 1 bag layer pellets, 1 bag black oil sunflowers, 1 bag hog feed, 1 bag cracked corn. We mix it all together and feed that. Does that sound right? I have tried to feed scraps and vegies at times but am now just learning what kind of scraps to feed. They do free range during the day. I have tried both hog crumbles and hog pellets and they seem to like pellets better. I have turkeys, chickens, geese and guineas. I just give them all the same mix. I didn't know any better but want to learn. Any advice would certainly be wonderful.

Sounds like it's probably a decent mix, not sure what the protein level is, but it doesn't sound like it would be too low.

I agree though, unless it's a lot cheaper to mix your own this way, it would be much easier to buy a flock raiser feed. The problem with mixing in other things to a formulated chicken feed is it dilutes the added minerals and vitamins of the layer feed (not sure if hog feed has any of those vitamins/minerals). So unless you also buy a pre-mix (or make your own pre-mix) of additional vitamins and minerals to balance out the sunflowers, hog feed and corn, they may not be getting everything they need to thrive.

 

[aart]

It would be much easier to buy bags of Flock Raiser, the nutrition would probably be better.

Absolutely!!

I like to feed an 'all flock' 20% protein crumble to all ages and genders, as non-layers(chicks, males and all molting birds) do not need the extra calcium that is in layer feed and chicks and molters can use the extra protein. Makes life much simpler to store and distribute one type of chow that everyone can eat and have calcium available at all times for the layers, oyster shell mixed with rinsed, dried, crushed chicken egg shells in a separate container.

The higher protein crumble offsets the 8% protein scratch grains and other kitchen/garden scraps I like to offer.