Chicken Feed Recipes, Articles and Systems

[Lauravonsmurf]

Hi, I'm a big fan of fertrell and their website has recipes: https://www.fertrell.com/livestock-rations.

Excellent, thank you

 

[Lauravonsmurf]

This post by @saysfaa was so valuable to me that I bookmarked it.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/making-feed-at-home.1495914/#post-24972349

The individual pages are wortht he load time to read.

Awesome contribution

 

[rjohns39]

I highly recommend Jeff's book and I can get his goto reference book if you like.

those are the two books I use

 

[Lauravonsmurf]

From Standard-bred Rhode Island Reds, edited by D.E. Hale, 1910

 

[Lauravonsmurf]

I highly recommend Jeff's book and I can get his goto reference book if you like.

those are the two books I use

Oh yes any good resource is a great help. I have had been the situation of having to mix my own feed, I wish I had found some of the information I am reading now back then... so I decided to start compiling sources and articles not only for my use but everyone’s.

 

[Lauravonsmurf]

What and How to Feed Poultry, by D.E. Hale, 1915

https://www.google.com/books/edition/What_and_how_to_Feed_Poultry/5iFDAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=inauthor:"Dwight+Edward+Hale"&printsec=frontcover

This book is a look at 1915 feeding practices.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I will say, with complete confidence, that the more I read about poultry nutrition, the less I am likely to mix my own feed. I think I can say, without too much ego on display, that I now know more about feeding chickens, after 6 months or so of focus on the subject, than the vast majority of backyard chicken owners - who are even less qualified to make their own. But if I had no other choice - the resources you have gathered here would be helpful, if only modern transportation systems continue to exist to transport most of the ingredients my way.

I will also say that many of these old recipes rely on "meat scraps". Those can't be used in commercial feed anymore, but if you look at these old recipes with a modern understanding of a chicken's needs, and you take the meat scraps out - the recipe falls apart. Deficient on multiple fronts. Which is why J Rhodes make at home recipe relies heavily on fish meal. As do a number of commercial milling offerings, plus porcine blood meal, and similar animal byproducts.

 

[3KillerBs]

and similar animal byproducts.

Every time I saw the Egglands' Best cartons labeled "fed an all-natural, vegetarian diet" I laughed because there is nothing natural about a vegetarian chicken.

 

[Folly's place]

And those old recipies were designed for birds available then, not our larger birds, or any hens producing the numbers of eggs we think 'normal'
Fresh bagged feed is less expensive than anything mixed at home, and better balanced.
Mary

 

[Folly's place]

I had livestock nutrition and poultry science in college, and there's no way I'm mixing feed for the chickens at home!