Yes, and kitchen scraps, lawn mower grass clippings, weeds pulled from the garden or lawn. There are YouTube videos of people feeding their chickens on compost piles. Just let the chickens scratch around and find their own food on the compost. Also, some people have arrangements with local restaurants or schools to pick up their kitchen scraps to feed to their birds. Probably saves them on garbage collection fees.
Chickens are omnivores, so I plan on feeding my birds fish remains when they get older (I live on a lake). Some people feed their chickens road kill, maggots, or homegrown meal worms. There are many ways to cut the cost of feed other than just buying feed in bulk.
If you suspect your birds are wasting their feed, you can check out the many BYC threads and YouTube videos of 5 gallon PVC bucket feeders, or PVC storage tote feeders, that reduce waste. I saw one video of a guy who built a small wooden frame with a wire mesh top, and he put the feeder on top of that frame. Then, when the chickens dropped or scratched out the feed, it fell through the wire mesh and he would just scoop it up and put it back into the feeder every day or so. How simple was that?
If you really want to buy feed in bulk for the price savings, maybe you could contact your local 4H organization and ask them if anyone would want to go in on bulk buys and save money with you. If you split the 10 bags of feed between a few families, then maybe it would be a win-win for everybody.
