Brace yourselves, feed prices are going to rise!!!!

[Mom 2em All]

13.99 for 20lb of chick starter, 15.89 for 50lb of grower yesterday at my TSC.

 

[Stephen in SoKY]

I use my local feed mill. I have 500 lbs custom ground & mixed to 21% protein. Last week it as $15.09/100lbs. They keep 19% layer mash in stock at $16/100lbs. Those of you buying from TSC type stores may want to check out "Feeds" in the yellow pages.

 

[morelcabin]

I went to the grocery stor today and bought a bag of flour for $12.99!!! Just 6 months ago it was $5.99...YIKES! I hate to see what a loaf of bread is going to cost us soon...I am seriously thinking of buying a years worth of feed for my 20 birds real soon.

 

[RayP]

I just built a feeded for my chickens, may of misfigured a little, when I poured a 50lb bag of feed in it only filled it a third of the way, from what you guys are saying I may go and buy another 100lbs and fill it all the way before feed prices go up some more, our wally world does not have chicken anything but I may ask them to, I agree if it comes to feeding the family or buying local I just have to go cheap, I already bake our bread and anything else to cut our costs, not much more I can do to save anymore money.

 

[Julie08]

how high would feed have to get to make it impact your decision to keep chickens? I'm not sure for me but it would have to get pretty HIGH!!

 

[highmountainchick]

I was talking to a wheat farmer yesterday and he said that wheat prices crashed yesterday (????). He said they went from $20 bushel to $6 a bushel. Guess Australia just had a HUGE harvest of wheat as well as India and Urzbekestan..so there is a lot of wheat out there, why are our food prices still going up?

 

[ninjapoodles]

To answer a lot of the "why" questions for what's going on right now (and how it's been building for decades), I HIGHLY recommend Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma . I thought I was pretty savvy about the food chain and the politics of agrarian culture, but I had NO IDEA.

Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is a perfect companion book to "Dilemma," or vice-versa...if you've read either one of them, but not the other, I'd suggest reading the other! While much of what you learn is disheartening, there is also a lot of hope there--a revolution is coming, and we can make it happen.

Sorry if I'm repeating here (I'm new), and I know that these books are definitely "preaching to the choir" with this crowd, but I love how they both gave me hope for the future and new ideas for how to make positive change in our own lives and the lives of others.

 

[seedcorn]

Quote:
Wheat prices are stable. Most of our wheat in USA is winter wheat, prices are stable between $7-9 per bushel. Spring wheat was as high as $24/bushel. There are a lot of factors in play here with supply/demand not one of them.

Those that own 401k's, mutual funds, etc are the problem with fluctuating commodity prices.

 

[kstaven]

Quote:
If feed prices get too high you will see some people devote small plots to growing their own. Some already do.

 

[Lazy J Farms Feed & Hay]

Quote:
Omnivore's Dilemma is a Left-Wing, touchy feely book to make one feel better about bashing "Commercial Agriculture" and spending more than needed on food. The author ignores the economic and Captialistic truths of food production and the world we live in. His attempts to lace commercial food and feed production with the nostalgia for the way things were and an attempt to makes one's conscience clear do not apply to the current state of supplying the world with safe, wholesome fooods.

The author does stimulate one to think about what they eat and the ramifications of those decisions, but I am NOT going to stop eating grapes in winter or California Asparagus in September.

Jim