Any suggestions on cutting back on cost?

Fermented feed is supposed to save food costs. Lots of people on here do it. Food dishes that cut waste can help.
Bedding options.... Wood shavings, rice hals, hemp bedding ( not cheap ) sand.... Dry fall leaves ( free )... That's all I can think of.

 

Controlling feed, ie, only feeding once or twice a day can work if you have enough feeder space that all birds can eat at once. I think some chickens will overeat due to boredom if are left free access to food anytime they want it. Ours will eat up to 50% of their food by free ranging.

You can also see if there are any grain farms near you. If so, call them up and see if they will sell you for cheap any of their grain tailings. Some grains, such as wheat are desirable over others, such as rye. Mix these in with your store bought feed, along with some fish meal to keep the protein balanced. It will be some extra work but you should be able to save a pretty penny or two.

Wood shavings, at least around here, are a lot less expensive than hay. Wood shavings also have the added benefit of not having been sprayed with pesticides or herbicides. We used raked leaves last winter and we think those may have been the source of our lice and mite issues from wild birds.

 

An expansive, uncrowded trailer park nearby blows their leaves and creates a HUGE mountain of leaves every year. Lately, they have been running the leaves through a shredder. Last winter I made 40 yards of compost by mixing horse manure with the leaves. When I got chickens, I figured I'd use the shredded leaves for bedding since I'm going to use to make compost anyways. It is free and I think it works well. I'd be curious to hear others' opinions on it. If you have access to a lot of dried leaves, and you probably do, you could invest in a leaf shredder.

 

I'd be worried about the dust that leaves will create as the chickens break them down.

I use wood chips in my coop but I also put a part bale of straw in my run once a week or so and let them spread it around and break it down, then I rake it up and replace it.

This time of year is a great time to score lots of FREE straw. Many places use it for decorations at this time of year. Last year I stopped at a couple of businesses that had straw bales out for decorations and they were more than happy to have me haul them away for them after holloween had past. It saved them the cost of having to dispose of it themselves. So that could be a source of free straw for you if you ask around.

 

We use leaves mixed with pine shavings. Whole leaves, not shredded. Works great, not dusty at all. We do deep littler, so no replacing, just adding, until next spring when we'll remove the top portion. Chickens do a good job of mixing it up, but I go in every week or two with a tine fork and turn it over, getting down to the bottom layer.

Also, just pine shavings in the nest boxes right now.

 

I use the deep litter method, utilizing pine shavings some straw, LOTS of leaves, weeds, grass clippings, etc.

I do NOT have any issues with dust.

 

Nesting... Trying to think of things that haven't been mentioned yet.

-We used sawdust in the past but they couldn't keep it in the nesting boxes.
-Pine needles work well. We used white pine, which has needles 4-6 inches long that don't poke.
-Shredded newspaper/junk mail (without plastic) would work.
-Maybe dried lawn clippings, but they'd be prone to mold.

 

We loved using the leaves, since we have a lot of them, but we think the leaves may have been harboring mites and lice from wild birds. Our birds got both the scaly leg mites and I think it was lice (small red bugs mostly around the vent). We won't be using leaves this winter and we'll see how it turns out.