Well,
as per ChatGPT...
A good, cheap homemade chicken feed recipe balances grains, protein, minerals, and vitamins. Here's an affordable mix:
Basic Cheap Chicken Feed Recipe (per 50 lbs)
- 25 lbs cracked corn (main energy source)
- 10 lbs wheat or barley (adds variety and nutrients)
- 10 lbs oats or rice bran (fiber & additional protein)
- 3 lbs soybean meal or dried peas (protein boost)
- 1 lb fish meal or meat & bone meal (extra protein & minerals)
- ½ lb crushed eggshells or oyster shells (calcium for strong eggshells)
- ½ lb mineral salt or livestock salt (electrolytes & essential minerals)
Optional Additions (if budget allows)
- Black oil sunflower seeds (BOSS) – adds healthy fats & protein
- Molasses – boosts energy and provides minerals
- Brewer’s yeast – improves digestion and egg production
Instructions:
- Mix all ingredients thoroughly in a large container or barrel.
- Store in a dry place.
- Feed about ¼ to ½ pound per chicken per day.
This mix is cheaper than store-bought feed and keeps your chickens healthy and laying well.
Thoughts?
My thoughts are that you shouldn't trust ChatGPT for medical or health advice - ChatGPT is only as educated as the average user of social media (not very). When taking about chicken feed, its their health on the line.
That's not cheaper, its not healthy, and its a list of ingredients that many can't pick up off the shelf in their local farm store.
Best case, after correcting for likely water content, that's about 12% Crude Protein (way too low), about 4.5% fiber, around 3.5% fat (those are both fine). it will be slightly low Lysine, and inadequate levels of Methionine, Threonine, and Tryptophan. It doesn't have enough calcium to support even the maintenance needs of adult non-laying hens. Mineral Salt and Livestock salt provide the sodium, sure, but no guiarantees of trace minerals - that's mostly formulated for cattle.
Wheat and barley aren't directly interchangeable. Subbing in barley, apart from adding some additional antinutricive concerns, dropps crude protein slightly, improves lysine (slightly) and threponine (slightly), and further reduces tryp. Soybeans and Peas aren't interchangeable, either. Dried peas have about half the priootein of soy meal, more antinutritive factors (tannins, particularly also lectins, less than half as much Methionine, slightly more than half as much Lysine, roughly half as much Threonine, and less than 1/3 as much Tryp. Meat and bone meal has less protein, more fat, and is significantly lower in key AAs acruss the board - more than its Crude Protein difference alone might suggest.
Make all the suggested substititons and the feed calculates closer to 11% CP, 5% fiber, 3.5% fat, and offers only about 2/3 of the needed Met, Lys, Thre, half the Tryp.
In spite of that, largely because of the corn content. that's a moderately high energy feed - meaning if the birds eat until their crude protein levels are met, they are consming far more energy (think "calories") than they need, and increase you feed rate of consumption.
Typical feeds are formulated to provied a specified amount of energy and certain nurtitional targets, on eht easumption that a productive hen will eat 1/4# per day (roughly).
At your local feed store (assuming you aren't in a high priced area - NYC, Chicago, much of California, Seattle, the "tri-State area",etc) you can likely pick up a bag of nutritionally adequate feed for between $18 and $23 per 50#, providing an assumed 200 hen days worth of food.
The above recipe's cheapest ingredient is corn. $10-13 / 50#. That's half the recipe content. Wheat? cheapest I can find in bulk is about $23/50#, or $0.46/lb. Oats? $30-38/50#. Soybean meal, highly variable - $19-32/50. Fish meal is $4-5 per pound. I'm going to assume the oyster shell is free, and your livestock mineral adds $0.20 to the cost of the mix for 1/2#.
Best case, that's $16.81 / 50 lb, which sounds very competive on a cost basis compared to the nutritionally superior "shelf stuff". Only the crude protein is about 3/4 the mimimum. Your birds will have to eat
at least 33% more to make up for that (
and get fat!). $16.81 x 1.33 = $22.34/50lb. More than I pay for a 50# bag of 20% CP All Flock type feed with vastly superior nutrition.
Obviously, if you pay any shipping at all on those ingredients, or have to buy at more than best price, it becomes even more unaffordable.
Once again, the crowd (ChatGPT in this case) has managed to produce an inferior product at inflated price.
