Can’t afford rising feed prices

[SurferchickinSB]

We do give them all the kitchen scraps, which is a pail-ful daily, and they free range half the day, but at about 20 hens they eat a large bag of feed every week. Are we overfeeding them? I wonder.

That sounds like they are going through way too much feed! When I had 14 chickens, they would go through one 50 pound bag every five or six weeks. I am down to nine Chickens now and a 50 pound bag lasts about two months. Sounds like something may be eating the food besides your chickens or they may be spilling a lot of it. Try to make sure none of their feed gets spilled on the ground and wasted because I would think 20 hens would go through a 50 pound sack in three or four weeks. Mine don’t get hardly any chicken scraps, but I do give them about a cup of dried BSL every morning. They do get to forage every day in my yard for 3-4 hours.

 

[Judy Todd]

Commercial feed is the most economical option.

Input quality leads directly to output. If you feed too many scraps and treats, their nutrition becomes unbalanced, and the egg production suffers. If you put less in, you get much less out.
That's why big business actually cares about getting the nutrition right.
If they could get the same number of eggs by turning a bunch of hens loose on a property, that's what egg production would look like in America.

If you want to save money on feed, you need production hens. Young ones. They are bred to make the most out of every drop. 3-4 Leghorns would feed a big family all the eggs they could eat.

We recently had 8 Leghorns, now 4, and we are drowning in eggs. Been selling the hens to nice homes and plan on only keeping 2.

Excelent common sense. I only raise high production hens also, I do not have any leghorns right now, but sex link and any that lay 280 eggs a year or more. As mentioned I do not agree with free feeding, not with my dogs either, I measure the feed they will finish in one day, no more. I am also have eggs galore, sell to neighbors. My feed is free, if you do not count my labor.

 

[Judy Todd]

And my 20-30 birds eat 100lbs in roughly 2 weeks.



$2!?!?!?!

I was getting $5 for an 18 pack, family and friends only and will be raising my prices to $5 a dozen on that basis and more when I'm complying with all sales regulations for roadside stand sales.



Not unless the birds are wasting massive amounts of feed.

The savings from fermenting feed generally amount to the same savings seen when switching to a no-waste type feeder.



This is a situation that sets up massive waste as the hens scratch and compete for food out of containers that allow them to dump great quantities on the ground.

I prefer an old-fashioned metal feeder with a deep pan. This one isn't quite as good as the one I have now, which seems to have been discontinued, but it's close: https://www.southernstates.com/catalog/product/p-221-little-giant-galvanized-hanging-feeder-30-lb?category=horse-livestock+poultry+feeders-waterers

There are a number of other designs that limit waste, both homemade and commercial. Some require the bird to stick it's head into a port to eat, others have some device to limit their ability to rake feed out.

Chickens do best when free-fed so that they have access to their feed at all hours of daylight. This can actually reduce waste because knowing that they always have access means that they don't feed as frantically and don't throw feed around so much.

But if you do use a measured feeding strategy it's imperative to feed in dishes that permit the entire flock to eat at the same time so that dominant birds can't prevent the low-status birds from eating.

Some people find that less feed is wasted when using pellets. Especially when using this sort of feeder with the plastic bars in the pan to limit raking: https://www.southernstates.com/catalog/product/p-230-little-giant-plastic-hanging-poultry-feeder-11-lb?category=horse-livestock+poultry+feeders-waterers

Birds also waste more when fed down on the ground than when the feeder is hung at the level of their backs.

That plastic one is the one I use, if they spill some, very little, they clean it up themselves.

 

[Chinachik]

I’ve seen online that some people go feed-free with whole grain berries, bugs, and other foraging.
Has anyone here tried to cut back amounts by a good deal or even entirely omitted chicken feed?
I was planning on letting them summer over my garden bed this year instead of gardening, but husband is looking at abandoning the chickens all together. If he does that I’ll have to do a garden or lose both outdoor pleasures. (Because if I don’t labor on the weeds, and the chickens don’t than it’ll be impossible to get back.)
Hoping y’all have some better ideas than I’m coming up with.

I'm still kinda of new to determining how much I spend on feed. Flock total is 8. My first 3 chicks are now 9 months old and in September I added 5 more. We went on vacation over the holidays and were gone for 6 days. I filled a bird feeder that held about 5 heaping cups of grower/starter and oats mixed in for the younger birds and filled up my 15lb galvanized feeder with a mixture of 5 grain scratch, oats, corn and all flock mixed with some layer feed I had left. I also filled a fishing basket with a broccolli crown ($.98) and mixed greens $5(16 oz size) for extra water and entertainment. Yes it was cold my brother and granddaughter took very good care of them checking in on them at least twice a day. Just letting them eat what I provided when we came home the feeder still had enough feed for one more day and part of the broccolli crown was left. (they also have grit and calicum to the side) When I am home in the morning they get a mixture of the different feeds, scraps, blueberries, sometimes scrambled eggs, maybe meat or fish scraps on a oval cracker barrel take out platter. I add hot water to the mixture to sorta soften it up. They eat on this most of the day and usually have the platter clean by the end of the day. I usually put a 30 oz feed mixture in their galvanized feeder about every 2 days. This helps keep their feed fresh. I will continue to use the small bird feeder until the grower starter is done and it lasts about 2 days as well. Weather permitting they get free-range time of about 30 mins to 1.5 hours in the evening. Egg production is down but hopefully will pick back up when the routine gets back to normal. Hope this helps.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

I do roughly 800lbs a month. But I also know a fair amount is mouse and sparrow food

 

[MrsFixIt]

I don’t have chickens yet, but I have been doin a lot of reading. One person said they wanted to cut their feed bill in 1/2 and did so by feeding in the early afternoon instead of first thing in the morning. This helped with the chickens foraging first a little. She also used fermented food as well and fodder.

Here’s the blog post
https://mranimalfarm.com/cut-chicken-feed-cost-half/

 

[FunClucks]

I use two of these medium feeders for 16 (formerly 19) chickens (15 hens). We go through roughly 2-2.5 50 lb bags of commercial food a month. Very little spillage (my fault, not the chickens when I pour in the feed), and no one besides my chickens gets fed. Works great, just keep it covered and out of rain gusts so the feed will stay dry. I mount mine on pallets in the covered run. We feed a minimal amount of scratch grain and treats - when we go over a certain amount their eggs are smaller. My chickens do not free range due to predators.

http://ratproofchickenfeeder.com/
https://ratproofchickenfeeder.net/

Same guy sells through both sites, he also has an account on here, and a lot of folks on here have bought and reviewed his feeders.

I have 4 production red chickens (ISA Brown, golden comet), 1 buff orpington, 6 prairie bluebells, one olive egger and 3 starlight green eggers, all ~8-9 months old. The productions reds, BO, and SGE lay every day. The production red eggs are large to extra large, the SGE and BO lay medium to large. The PBB lay almost every day, and generally large eggs, but one consistently lays a medium egg, and they took a month or two longer to lay than the rest of my chickens. However, they have a high feed to egg conversion ratio, and lay almost every day, and the novelty factor of blue eggs makes them desirable here. Also the green eggs are a novelty and desirable here.

We get 12-14 eggs a day currently (one PBB is molting). We personally use 1-3 dozen eggs every 2 weeks or so, and sell 4-6 dozen a week for at least $4 a dozen. $64-72 egg income, $27.50/bag of food = my egg income pays for feeding my chickens, and my family's eggs are "free". Look at it this way, if you had a large breed dog, the cost of chicken feed is about the same cost you'd be paying for dog food every month. So the chickens are basically pets with breakfast benefits.

I think you need to reconsider your egg selling price and how you frame the cost of chicken food when discussing it with your husband. Also, if you can switch to production hens that lay extra large eggs every day, or at least a majority of your hens doing that, with some colored eggers for fun and customer appeal, that will increase your egg production while keeping your chicken feed cost the same, which lowers your feed to egg conversion ratio.

I get that you're trying to utilize the person food and garden scraps you have available to lower the chickens' feed cost, but if you feed production chickens more than 10% non-commercial ration, the egg size will decrease and your chickens may have nutritional deficiencies that show up long term and lead to lowered egg production and possibly decreased health. On the other hand, if you stick with heritage breeds, they can probably tolerate a person food and garden scrap diet slightly better, but because they too have been optimized to some extent for egg production and size (for dual-purpose birds), they will still need a significant amount of commercial feed to maintain optimal health, and then you are dealing with less egg production than for production breeds.

Good luck figuring it out!

 

[Chicken Heel]

I have transitioned more and more to bantams over the past few years which has greatly reduced the amount of feed I need. Their eggs taste just as good and I especially like them for making pickled eggs, egg salad and deviled eggs.

 

[Vicker]

I tried soaking or fermenting layer pellets. They just ate it up faster. I plan to grow some fodders, grains, seeds this spring to supplement even less commercial feed than I'm already providing. Commercial feeds often contain ingredients that aren't even the best for whatever animal it is meant for. Their top priority is $. Our ancestors in the Great Depression didn't have $ to waste on processed feed. The heritage breeds they successfully raised without commercial feed are still widely available.
My chickens are primarily for egg production. I don't keep them for longer than 3-4 yrs max before harvesting the meat. I don't worry about them eating every single nutrient on a list every single day. They get balance over time through a variety of foods.

 

[littlecoopnextdoor]

eggs near me are $6-9 a dozen in the grocery store for free range eggs. the cheapest cage horrible eggs are still almost $4. I can't believe people would only value small flock eggs at $2 a dozen! we buy from friends of ours for $6 a dozen and are happy to support (not that need eggs too often right now)