⠀ Cheap natural chicken food

[wwarren8200]

Does anybody have a recipe for natural and cheap layer feed and or scratch feed

 

[iwiw60]

Me personally? I have found that by the time you buy all the various ingredients separately just to make your own feed, it sometimes ends up more expensive than just purchasing ready-made feed. Is there any particular reason you want to make your own?

 

[wwarren8200]

Bulk feed and trying to cut down on costs.

 

[iwiw60]

Bulk feed and trying to cut down on costs.

When you say 'bulk feed' do you mean buying in bulk the various ingredients to make your mix? Wow...you must have a larger flock.

 

[jtn42248]

The thought of buying chicken feed bulk got me curious so I did a little research:

Bulk generic chicken feed = 260.00 to 380.00 per metric ton (minimum purchase is 19 metric tons)

So, unless you are planning on reselling under your own label you may find you are wasting a bunch of feed and money.

I buy "bulk" in the sense that I purchase a months supply of feed for my 62 birds at one time. The feed store I deal with gives me a 2.00 off per 50 pound bag due to the size of my purchase. Anything over a months supply at a time, I am afraid, might suffer some spoilage and end up costing me more to store around the farm.

 

[wwarren8200]

I would share the feed with my landowner...he has been thinking about a small silo for the very reason that it's cheaper in the long run

 

[jtn42248]

I would share the feed with my landowner...he has been thinking about a small silo for the very reason that it's cheaper in the long run

Would you and your landowner have a large enough operation to deal with 19 metric tons of generic chicken feed much less the 5,000 to 8,000 dollar investment plus the cost of a silo?

 

[wwarren8200]

He owns a few hundred thousand cumulative acres and he's a multimillionaire haha we got it covered. He just build a $250,000 horse arena and bought $50,000 worth of river rock for a wall and he's still not through for the year

 

[ChickenCanoe]

I agree with iwiw and jtn.
If however, you have several hundred birds at a minimum, you may be able to benefit.

Feed mills are buying grains by the trainload and minor ingredients by the ton. Hence the reason a bag of chicken feed is cheaper than a bag of grain.

 

[mossyroo]

I believe that unless you plan on just enough feed in the silo to go through in a few weeks, you are going to lose a lot to mold. There is going to be a certain amount of moisture in the feed and depending on the climate you will probably get condensation in the silo. I think you might end up loosing more to spoilage/rodents/insects than you would save.