Does anyone mill their own grains for feed?

[416bigbore]

I was just curious to see if anyone goes through the effort to mill their own feed ?

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Was your plan to make a nutritionally compete feed or just mill grain?
And do you know how you would mix in the amino acids, vitamins, minerals and fats required?
And assay it to see that it contains the nutrients they need?

 

[TomCahalan]

No, the feed that I buy from the store is costs far less than anything that I could make.

 

[416bigbore]

Was your plan to make a nutritionally compete feed or just mill grain?
And do you know how you would mix in the amino acids, vitamins, minerals and fats required?
And assay it to see that it contains the nutrients they need?

My plan was to substitute a percentage of the commercial feed we buy with natural grains. Depending on the type of grain, it contains many vitamins and minerals already.

 

[416bigbore]

With the understanding baby poultry need a special diet while they are growing. Once they have grown and devolved into a healthy mature bird that same special diet isn't that critical for an adult bird. They still need to eat healthy but can be given different foods to do the same thing. For example 50 lbs of commercial feed at our local feed store is around $15.00 with tax. A 50 lb sack of feed corn grown and sold by the farmer down the road only $6.00. If I can buy different grains locally from the farmer and save money in doing so and still give our poultry a healthy balanced diet, win, win in my book. I understand this might not be an option for some and was curious to see if any members might be doing this for their poultry?

 

[de kippendame]

We've been grinding our chicken feed for a few years now. The local feed store sells a poultry feed base pellet meant to be mixed with added grain. We grind in corn and there is a ratio on the tags of the 50# bags to know how many pounds of corn are needed to hit a certain protein %, i.e. grower/layer/meat, etc. There is a ratio for soybean meal as well, but we use corn. It is called "Home Grown Multi-Purpose Poultry Supplement", it's not on the shelf, so likely you'd have to ask. We buy the corn from our neighbors and we usually get it at whatever the market price is at the time we buy it.

Oyster shell can be mixed in with the feed and the ratio for that is also on the tags, but I'm also feeding roosters, chicks of various ages, ducks & guineas, so we just leave that out as free choice. We also add in a 40# bag of BOSS to the mix, the seeds are really just peppered in there, so it is more of a treat. I have also added in Probios granules(for feed not the water disbursal kind), but haven't done that the last few grinds simply because I didn't get it ordered by the time we needed feed.

The bags of base feed aren't terribly cheap compared to a 50# bag of say Flock Raiser, but considering the price of corn(super cheap) and how much is ground in the end it is cost-effective.

I do still raise chicks on Flock Raiser to start, partly because it is at a higher protein needed for growth than what I have ground, but also for the crumble. I give them both for a while when they are about 4ish weeks and they empty out the ground feed before the Flock Raiser. It is not at the correct protein, but they don't seem to care.

 

[416bigbore]

Hello de kippendame, great information, thank you for your post.

 

[de kippendame]

I might add, the base pellets start at 36% protein & adding in grain brings it down to the desired %. Starting with a base of already balanced feed & adding in grain could put your protein a little low though I'm not in any way an expert.

 

[416bigbore]

I might add, the base pellets start at 36% protein & adding in grain brings it down to the desired %. Starting with a base of already balanced feed & adding in grain could put your protein a little low though I'm not in any way an expert.

Would you consider sharing some of your Mixing percentages ?

 

[de kippendame]

Well, I could probably give you some of the info off the tag? Would you be wanting it for chickens or ducks or both? I generally grind it at the recommended ration for laying hens & all the other fowl I have eat that ration with no ill effects. There is a different ratio for turkeys, game birds and waterfowl if you have only those specifically.