Everyone, post your best homemade chicken feed recipes!

[Iherb]

I only feed about 38. It is a lot of work- I'm out of wheat right now so I have some steel cut oatmeal and just soak them about an hour. Still a lot of work with that many chickens.

 

[mg15]

Hi, am also looking for a soy-free replacement for layer pellets: either to purchase (havent been able to find any) or to make. usual homemade recipes seem way too overwhelming for me and my small flock. if i could buy in bulk instead of needing to get a 50lb bag of everything, maybe i could cope. the recipe listed sounds good. what about iodized salt? what about meat & bone meal? (i'm looking at a recipe from a book i have) this book also lists herring meal?? where does the protein come from in your listed recipe? from the sunflower seeds? - also, would crimped oats or steamed/flaked corn work (these are things i buy for my horses) - i give my chickens beef suet in the winter. will that provide protein? as you can tell, i'm pretty clueless. keep the posts on this topic comming!!

Hi,
I have found Scratch and Peck. I get it through Azure Standard with the other things I buy. The Scratch and Peck I buy has NO soy or corn. The fish meal is natural NOT from aquaculture farmed fish fed with soy.

 

[dlg4742]

 

[Silkiebirdlover]

There's a great chapter in the Storey's chicken book about this as well.

Mudhen, I'm going to give your recipe a try. Looks good enough for us to eat. Sort of a savory granola. Well, okay, maybe not. But I bet the chickens will love it.

So, do any of you folk's birds just love tomatoes. Mind are particularly fond of the little grape tomatoes just when then get a little raisiney. You know, just when they start to wrinkle a bit. I throw 10 or 12 into the run and it turns into a chicken brawl in there. One grabs one and runs, and the others take off after her. . . then they notice there are more. Then it's like a shark feeding frenzy. I'd throw more in but I like them myself. The only thing I can compare it to is when I throw a mess of crickets in with them.

Mark

My chickens love tomatoes too!

 

[octopii5]

I just literally got 11 chicks a day ago. The previous owner gave me a buckets of mix, and I told him I had a fruitless mulberry tree. He said the leaves are great fiber for the chicken and if you feed it to them when they are young, they will get use to it and will provide great protein for them. So what I did was a blended some of the cut up leaves, along with the actual chicken feed. And of course they gobbled it up. Any comments or concerns with this mix? I get double the amount of food with the grinded up leaves.

 

[jessbe]

Ok there are so many recipes.. What about something simple like corn, wheat, flax, and kelp and I'm going to grow herbs again next year (none of the seeds I planted this year grew..) to add more vitamins and what not. Do any of you do this?

 

[redsix]

I'm growing some yellow field corn and fox tail millet this year. I've never grown millet before. I'm afraid the birds may harvest the millet before I do, we shall see.

 

[Sidhe13]

I have been playing with the idea of making up my own poultry feed. After some investigation into different ingredients and their nutritional value I have come up with a recipe with 17.8% protein. Free feed grits and calcium will be provided and I will also look at adding some high-grade mineral salts to the mix. I am working on a free range garden area in the new enclosure and run we are building in the next couple months.

Any comments or input are more than welcome! The kg/g is based on a standard Australian 20kg bag.

Alfalfa Pellets: 10% 2kg
Brewer's Yeast: 1.5% 300g
Corn: 30% 6kg
Flax Seeds: 4% 800g
Kelp Meal: 0.5% 100g
Lentils: 6% 1.2kg
Mealworms: 10% 2kg
Oats: 8% 1.6kg
Wheat: 30% 6kg

The crude fat is sitting at 7% which I understand is rather high. Most of that number comes from the mealworms and the flaxseeds. The flaxseeds provide Omega-3 oils but I am questioning whether they are necessary. They are beginning to seem like more trouble than they are worth.
If I remove the flaxseed and replace the extra 4% with lentils, I end up with 5.5% fat and 17.7% protein.

 

[jessbe]

You can plant some of this. It's an forage that has some omega 3 in it. And you can leave out the flax seed.
http://www.groworganic.com/omega-3-chicken-forage-blend-irrigated.html

I have been playing with the idea of making up my own poultry feed. After some investigation into different ingredients and their nutritional value I have come up with a recipe with 17.8% protein. Free feed grits and calcium will be provided and I will also look at adding some high-grade mineral salts to the mix. I am working on a free range garden area in the new enclosure and run we are building in the next couple months.

Any comments or input are more than welcome! The kg/g is based on a standard Australian 20kg bag.

Alfalfa Pellets: 10%       2kg
Brewer's Yeast: 1.5%    300g
Corn: 30%                       6kg
Flax Seeds: 4%              800g
Kelp Meal: 0.5%            100g
Lentils: 6%                      1.2kg
Mealworms: 10%           2kg
Oats: 8%                          1.6kg
Wheat: 30%                     6kg

The crude fat is sitting at 7% which I understand is rather high. Most of that number comes from the mealworms and the flaxseeds. The flaxseeds provide Omega-3 oils but I am questioning whether they are necessary. They are beginning to seem like more trouble than they are worth.
If I remove the flaxseed and replace the extra 4% with lentils, I end up with 5.5% fat and 17.7% protein.

 

[Sidhe13]

Good advice! Thanks!