Does anyone feed organic? If so, do you make your own?

[freerange freaks]

I'm not sure if this will help or not. This website gives a few recipes for poultry feed www.fertrell.com

 

[skatcatla]

Quote:
My local feed store in Orange County had organic feed in the last time I was there because someone has special ordered it. It was in crackle form and I use pellets with my girls, so I didn't get it at the time. If you want to give the feed store a call and see if they still have it, they are:

Midway City Feed Store
14941 Jackson St.
Midway City, CA 92655-1252
(714) 893-2613

Midway City is an unincorporated area near Huntington Beach and Westminster, right off the 405 Fwy.

Edited to add: I think the 50 lb bag was close to $20, so it wasn't cheap!

I'm going to be following this thread because I'm interested in pursuing this as well.

Thanks for the tip! I probably could get my local Centinela Feed Store to order and carry it for me too. And $20 doesn't sound bad at all, considering I pay almost twice that for a 35lb bag of all natural dog food!

My concern about ordering feed though is that it inevitably has to be shipped from somewhere, which means the carbon fuel cost offsets the point of the organic feed. I try to get all my foods from local sources (hence the point of getting my own chickens) so I figure their food should be "local" too.

I'm going to try to go the route of whole foods and see how they do. Really the commercial feed I figure is just more convenient of course; but if I am determined to walk my own "organic, local" talk then I guess I should expend a little effort!

 

[Backyard Buddies]

Quote:
Is that where you're getting your feed, at Centinela? I have one of those right around the corner from me (close enough to walk to - tho I'm not sure I'd do that carrying a 50 lb. bag of feed!) and would love to not have to drive to Midway City to buy my feed as I don't like contributing carbon fuel to make the trek to buy feed, either. Like you, I find that it is somewhat counter productive considering the goals here.

I think we are in a tough situation where we live. With homes stretching from the LA Mountains all the way to San Diego (with pretty much only a break for Camp Pendleton) it makes it hard to even GROW the grains locally let alone find locally grown ORGANIC grains. I do know that there are a few feed processing plants in the LaHabra area and then out in the Lake Perris area. I suppose that is technically "local" although I'm not sure any of them carry organic feed or grains.

On the other hand, I think that where we live is fabulous for local foods. With our wonderful weather, it's possible to buy quite a few locally grown foods. And, we can get many of them year round! Unfortunately, with the land value being what it is, it seems that only those truly dedicated to the cause are willing to put their money into growing locally grown organic produce. So, when I find one, I really try to give them my business!

I have found such a place and even at 5 miles from my home, I try to only go there when I have other errands in the area because I figure that fairly local foods trucked in one large truck to my local Henry's Market (close to my home) has to be weighed against me making multiple longer trips for the more locally grown foods.

Do you grow your own veggies and fruit? I'm having pretty good luck with that.

I'd really like to figure this out, but I wonder how difficult it will be. If you come up with anything, please post back. I've subscribed to this topic so that I can follow the discussion and really hope we can come up with a solution.

 

[4myHennyPenny]

I've been feeding my gals organic (they're 9 1/2 wks old now), but it's EXTREMELY expensive to have it shipped. Knew I was going to switch to making my own at some point, and that point came a couple of weeks ago when I opened the last bag of feed and found it infested with bugs. (Recognized the bugs as those I'd seen in college and we'd had to have our apt. fumigated. DEFINITELY not going to do that again and would completely defeat the point of going organic anyway if my house was toxic.)

Anyhow, there are loads of recipes out there. Here's a link to the recipe I chose to use right now:
http://www. greenerpasturesfarm.com/chickenfeedrecipe.html

They also have links to chick starter recipes, too.

Unfortunately, I can't find any feed stores anywhere in the region who carry organic feed or are willing to order it for me. Pretty ridiculous when you consider I live so near Boulder where the focus of everything is organic!

Best of luck to you

 

[Shrader]

Quote:
Hey skatcatla, I'm smack in the middle of Los Angles as well!
Getting my 9 girls organic feed has been expensive.
I order it from McMurray's at about $50/ 50 pound bag!
Have you found any local resources since your search began?
There's a store in Glendale that has "mostly organic" feed (whatever that means).
I'm in Silver Lake.

Best,
Shrader

 

[greyfields]

A 50# bag of organic layer or starter costs are $18 where I live, too. You can usually get a 10% discount at most feed store buying by the ton or half-ton. Some even let you buy the ton, then come pick up bags as needed.

Your subject line raises an excellent point. You can make your own chicken feed. For organic, there are considerable savings to be found as well. There are lots of books with appendixes on how to do this. Basically, you need to find what grain and seed meals are going to be cheapest in Southern California (phone feed stores). Once you have those two elements figured out, buy them in 50# bags. It's almost always a combination of seed meal and grain (protein % of each to give yourself a weighted mass with the target protein % for the final feed) you are set.

Then, you just need to find a supply for the mineral feed starter for chickens. Since minerals are natural products, you need not find a specifically organic source for these - HOWEVER - you do have to check that none were Hexane extracted as that would violate organic requirements.

Once you get good at this and understand the math and relative costs of items, you can even start getting your mineral custom ground for you. For those of you who also keep cows, sheep, pigs, etc. do you know that loose mineral you leave out for them? You just need to add that loose mineral to whatever bulk grain and seed meal is cheapest and you can make your own grain. My loose mineral is custom formulated for my farm based upon soil analysis, so using it as a feed base I know I'm doing the absolute best for my animals.