Best Homemade Chick feed recipes please!?

[Ashleyboz]

We grind and make our chicken feed ration from local whole grains and buy out vitamins and minerals to make a healthy ration. When I say we I mean my husband that has patience to do all of that! I’m super cautious with my chicks when they hatch! I want to make sure they are getting exactly what they need from day one. Does anyone have their go-to ration they would like to share!? We have super sacks full with flax, garbanzo beans, split peas, many different kinds of lentils, corn, wheat, and oat groats. We use soy meal also. I have seen fish meal and brewers yeast in many rations. Thoughts? Ideas? Reassurance! lol

** I would like to edit and add that recently I did purchase store bought chick starter feed. We seen a spike with pasty butt in almost all of our babies. We had none before. thoughts and opinions on this also

 

[Perris]

this is what I give
https://www.backyardchickens.com/ar...eat-tears-a-calculator-or-deep-pockets.78655/
There's a section in the article specifically on chick feed.

 

[akpiglet]

Ashelyboz, I'd appreciate more detail on your recipe, if you have it... it sounds good. Chick looks very nice and healthy.
I've been using a recipe found online somewhere: 1 part corn, 1 part barley, 1 oats, 1 sunflower seeds, 4 wheat, 1/2 peas, 1/4 flax, 1/2 lentils, with some brewer's yeast. This seems to work very well as they are strong, healthy and good looking (several grown already). But we do give them fertile, rich humus from a forested area, rich with worms and stuff, immediately. It is so obvious how no matter what age that worms are number one and natural is superior.
Unfortunately, the hens need to start paying for themselves, and they are definitely not and may have to be given up. We are on a shoestring. I want to cut out the flax and sunflower seeds and probably the lentils. We initially sourced animal feed grade beans (though they have to be soaked and cooked. Makes you want to go buy a bag of commercial feed, although I probably won't.)
Currently it costs the same to feed 22 adult hens per day, as it does 7 two month old chicks (plus 4 more babies and mother)... something wrong with that. I just cannot afford the time to do what you do, Perris, as the hens are already a hobby/passion that is taking my time that I should be using to find a job/help husband build house, etc, etc!! I had to use a recipe that is the same every day. Any thoughts?

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Ashelyboz, I'd appreciate more detail on your recipe, if you have it... it sounds good. Chick looks very nice and healthy.
I've been using a recipe found online somewhere: 1 part corn, 1 part barley, 1 oats, 1 sunflower seeds, 4 wheat, 1/2 peas, 1/4 flax, 1/2 lentils, with some brewer's yeast. This seems to work very well as they are strong, healthy and good looking (several grown already). But we do give them fertile, rich humus from a forested area, rich with worms and stuff, immediately. It is so obvious how no matter what age that worms are number one and natural is superior.
Unfortunately, the hens need to start paying for themselves, and they are definitely not and may have to be given up. We are on a shoestring. I want to cut out the flax and sunflower seeds and probably the lentils. We initially sourced animal feed grade beans (though they have to be soaked and cooked. Makes you want to go buy a bag of commercial feed, although I probably won't.)
Currently it costs the same to feed 22 adult hens per day, as it does 7 two month old chicks (plus 4 more babies and mother)... something wrong with that. I just cannot afford the time to do what you do, Perris, as the hens are already a hobby/passion that is taking my time that I should be using to find a job/help husband build house, etc, etc!! I had to use a recipe that is the same every day. Any thoughts?

Generally cheaper to buy than to make your own. Removing the flax, the sunflower, and the lentils removes your highest , second highest, and fourth highest protein/pound sources (after the brewer's yeast, of course) and your top three methionine sources.

I ran that recipe thru a calculator (raw data sourced from Feedipedia.org), and I've not corrected for moisture content (which will make it roughly 10% worse), but that recipe {as listed above} outputs as 14% protein, 6.2% fiber, 8.35% fat, and is sub standard on Methionine 0.23, Lysine 0.57, Threonine 0.47 and Tryp 0.16 (due to the low overall protein numbers, needing about 1/3 again as much feed to reach desired targets of Met, Thre, Tryp) while already being a moderately high energy feed.

Remove the flax and sunflower, it drops to 13.5% protein, 4.7% fiber, 2.5% fat, and your key aminos are 0.21, .55, .44, .15. Remove the lentils on top of that and its 12.6, 4.7, 2.5 key AAs .20, .47, .40, .14

Targets, btw, are at least 0.3, 0.65, 0.6, 0.2 for adult hens, higher for hatchlings and adolescents.

I would not feed that recipe to my birds.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

We grind and make our chicken feed ration from local whole grains and buy out vitamins and minerals to make a healthy ration. When I say we I mean my husband that has patience to do all of that! I’m super cautious with my chicks when they hatch! I want to make sure they are getting exactly what they need from day one. Does anyone have their go-to ration they would like to share!? We have super sacks full with flax, garbanzo beans, split peas, many different kinds of lentils, corn, wheat, and oat groats. We use soy meal also. I have seen fish meal and brewers yeast in many rations. Thoughts? Ideas? Reassurance! lol

** I would like to edit and add that recently I did purchase store bought chick starter feed. We seen a spike with pasty butt in almost all of our babies. We had none before. thoughts and opinions on this also

Justin Rhodes. He has a recipe, its one of the better "make at home" recipes, in that if you put the ingredients in to a feed calculator, it outputs nutrition data in the ranges you would anticipate for a decent to good off the shelf feed, unlike many (most!) "make at home" recipes on facebook and youtube. it also has the benefit of successful use by a lot of people over a (relatively) long period of time. So according to both theory and practice, its good.

It may not be less expensive, but it will call for some of the ingredients you list above. Once you understand why Rhodes uses the ingredients he does, you can consider potential substitutions - but the fish meal is key to the recipe's success. In a nutshell, this is it (output from the calulator I built). If you can't get high quality fish meal (near 60% protein), you can compensate in part by usuing hard winter wheat, but its not a perfect substitution by any stretch. You can play with the addition of soy meal - depending on its assay - to back out some of the fish meal as well, since its generally the most expensive ingrediet in the recipe.

Many of the published copies of recipes purporting to be Rhodes' (I don't own his book, can't say from first hand knowledge) include a vitamin/mineral premix (like Fertrell's Nutribalancer) as well, in very small quantity. (Again, caveat that the numbers below are not corrected for an "as fed" condition, which would drop these outputs roughly 10%) Lower protein fish meal will also have signifcant effect - I used 75%DM CP in the calulator, but there is good chance you will find only a 58-63% CP by weight option, which again would have slightly lower outputs.

Pasty butt is often stress related - chips that are shipped are prone to it. Heat stress can encourage it. Some feed ingredients, like oats, which are high in beta-glucans can do it. Sometimes, there are no clear causes, can be a combination of factors.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

@Perris has posted some old recipes as well, I know from prior math that they output well from a feed calculator.

Recipe #1 looks like this out of the calculator, though you may have difficulty sourcing the wheat bran and middlins, and of course "Meat and Bone meal" is a term of art for a feed ingredient we aren't allowed to use anymore. You can substitute fish meal or porcine blood meal, and have a close approximation.

 

[akpiglet]

Thanks Stormcrow for your super detailed research and analysis! Truth is, I think the recipe suggested a few other proteins but not really with an amount listed. We've had several batches of chicks, really spread out from each other so it's been taxing my ability to make up this mix for months on end, during a very busy time. If I can source the ingredients, those ones posted by Perris do look a bit simpler, and definitely animal protein seems to be superior for them.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Happy to share. There's no One Right Way. You've got to find the way that works best for you, in your situation, with your expectations and needs for performance, within your resources. Good luck!

I'm still learning myself. Some things work, other things... don't.

 

[AaronBoz76]

Justin Rhodes. He has a recipe, its one of the better "make at home" recipes, in that if you put the ingredients in to a feed calculator, it outputs nutrition data in the ranges you would anticipate for a decent to good off the shelf feed, unlike many (most!) "make at home" recipes on facebook and youtube. it also has the benefit of successful use by a lot of people over a (relatively) long period of time. So according to both theory and practice, its good.

It may not be less expensive, but it will call for some of the ingredients you list above. Once you understand why Rhodes uses the ingredients he does, you can consider potential substitutions - but the fish meal is key to the recipe's success. In a nutshell, this is it (output from the calulator I built). If you can't get high quality fish meal (near 60% protein), you can compensate in part by usuing hard winter wheat, but its not a perfect substitution by any stretch. You can play with the addition of soy meal - depending on its assay - to back out some of the fish meal as well, since its generally the most expensive ingrediet in the recipe.

Many of the published copies of recipes purporting to be Rhodes' (I don't own his book, can't say from first hand knowledge) include a vitamin/mineral premix (like Fertrell's Nutribalancer) as well, in very small quantity. (Again, caveat that the numbers below are not corrected for an "as fed" condition, which would drop these outputs roughly 10%) Lower protein fish meal will also have signifcant effect - I used 75%DM CP in the calulator, but there is good chance you will find only a 58-63% CP by weight option, which again would have slightly lower outputs.
View attachment 3873277

Pasty butt is often stress related - chips that are shipped are prone to it. Heat stress can encourage it. Some feed ingredients, like oats, which are high in beta-glucans can do it. Sometimes, there are no clear causes, can be a combination of factors

@Perris has posted some old recipes as well, I know from prior math that they output well from a feed calculator.

Recipe #1 looks like this out of the calculator, though you may have difficulty sourcing the wheat bran and middlins, and of course "Meat and Bone meal" is a term of art for a feed ingredient we aren't allowed to use anymore. You can substitute fish meal or porcine blood meal, and have a close approximation.

View attachment 3873301

Hi All, this is OP husband, whom is very computer illiterate, so please bear with me. Here is the ration I have been making for a few months now and it seems to be working well. I do have a ration calculator, I was unable to post the ration on here from it so I will do it manually:

Hard RWW (rolled) 42
Corn (cracked) 26
Flax (rolled) 24
Alfalfa leaf 17
Chickpeas (roasted) 15
Soymeal 8
Calcium Carb 12
Vitamin/Min pac 2
Salt 1

Justin Rhodes. He has a recipe, its one of the better "make at home" recipes, in that if you put the ingredients in to a feed calculator, it outputs nutrition data in the ranges you would anticipate for a decent to good off the shelf feed, unlike many (most!) "make at home" recipes on facebook and youtube. it also has the benefit of successful use by a lot of people over a (relatively) long period of time. So according to both theory and practice, its good.

It may not be less expensive, but it will call for some of the ingredients you list above. Once you understand why Rhodes uses the ingredients he does, you can consider potential substitutions - but the fish meal is key to the recipe's success. In a nutshell, this is it (output from the calulator I built). If you can't get high quality fish meal (near 60% protein), you can compensate in part by usuing hard winter wheat, but its not a perfect substitution by any stretch. You can play with the addition of soy meal - depending on its assay - to back out some of the fish meal as well, since its generally the most expensive ingrediet in the recipe.

Many of the published copies of recipes purporting to be Rhodes' (I don't own his book, can't say from first hand knowledge) include a vitamin/mineral premix (like Fertrell's Nutribalancer) as well, in very small quantity. (Again, caveat that the numbers below are not corrected for an "as fed" condition, which would drop these outputs roughly 10%) Lower protein fish meal will also have signifcant effect - I used 75%DM CP in the calulator, but there is good chance you will find only a 58-63% CP by weight option, which again would have slightly lower outputs.
View attachment 3873277

Pasty butt is often stress related - chips that are shipped are prone to it. Heat stress can encourage it. Some feed ingredients, like oats, which are high in beta-glucans can do it. Sometimes, there are no clear causes, can be a combination of factors.

Hi all, this is OP husband. This is the ration I have been formulating for the past couple months and it seems to work well with the laying hens. I do have a calculator and tried to get as in the screen as I can. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I enjoy formulating rations but this past year has been my first at poultry rations. It is a fun learning experience for sure and I’m always looking to improve more.

		C	D	E	F	G		I		K
2	%of Diet	Feed ID		Units(Ibs) Cost $/Unit	DM%		Protein % ME kcal/kg	Ca %	P %	Price/lb
3	28.0	WHEAT HRS (cracked)	2000	$200.00	87.8	14.4	3880	0.58	1.66	$0.10
4	16.0	CORN cracked	2000	$146.00	86.3	8.3	3840	0.19	0.46	$0.07
5	16.0	FLAX SEED (rolled)	2000	$60.00	91.5	21.7	6422	0.56	0.93	$0.03
6	11.0	ALFALFA Leaf	2000	$150.00	89	26.0	2767	2.88	0.34	$0.08
7	13.0	CHICKPEAS roasted	2000	$60.00	87.3	18.6	4080	1.04	1.37	$0.03
8	5.0	SOYMEAL 44	50	$22.00	87.7	43.5	4090	1.68	1.24	$0.44
9	0.0									$0.00
10	8.0	Calcium carbonate	50	$11.05	99	0.0		38.50	0.04	$0.22
11	2.0	POULTRY BALANCER CONCENTRATE	50	$27.00	99	25.0	0	1.00	0.60	$0.54
12	1.0	SALT	100	$2.25	97	0.0		0.00	0.00	$0.02
13	100.0						Summary of Diet
14					$/50lbs	СР%	Kcal/kg	Ca %	P %
15					$5.37	16.79	3768	3.92	0.98