Everyone, post your best homemade chicken feed recipes!

[MeepBeep]

Great Feed Price for organic feed found at:

IMO $60 for 48 lbs (even organic whole grain) is not that great unless there is no local suppliers and you are forced to ship feed in... One has to also consider your usage, feeding that feed to my flock would run me about $22,000+ a year, way more than I could ever justify, while someone with only a few birds might very well be able to justify it...

Also unless you are fermenting or sprouting whole grain feeds can cause a lot of waste as the bird picks through it for the desirable grains ignoring or wasting the rest, this can be a problem for anyone mixing their own feeds without a mill...

I have recently been mixing my own pigeon feed since we recently adopted a lost Racing Homer and locally I can only purchase pigeon feed in 50lb bags, way too much for a single bird... With that said we have to ration out his feed morning and evening or else he will sweet pick the grains he likes and ignore or waste the rest of the grains... From my experience chickens and other fowl acts the same way if presented a food they can pick and choose...

 

[Venumfire]

What is in your own mix of pigeon feed? What is the cost (location to purchase), ingredients, and crude protein percentages?

 

[MeepBeep]

What is in your own mix of pigeon feed?  What is the cost (location to purchase), ingredients, and crude protein percentages?

I plan to actually tailor a better mix later after I order in some of the more 'exotic' seeds that I was unable to source locally... Since the lost pigeon literally landed in our laps and I needed food ASAP that day I had to use what was local and easy to obtain that day... I picked up a higher protein higher end all whole grain wild bird feed that was void of corn and 'grain byproducts' or any other type of pellets at the store (***Edit I located the bag, it was Pennington Select Birder's Blend) then I hit up a grocery store an picked up some popcorn, lentils, wild rice, dried whole peas and barley... I had whole oats and some Diamond V XP food supplement on hand...

I did the math based on what I had on hand using the entire bag of wild bird feed as a base and using as much of the rest of the other stuff as I could to come up with a give or take 15% protein mix and then dusted it with some Diamond V XP...

Sorry for not being more specific on the actual blend but I honestly didn't pay that much attention... I started the math based on dumping all the stuff I had together then reworked it by subtracting a bit of the lower protein or higher protein individual grains/beans until the protein hit that 15% sweet spot I was aiming for...

The pigeon is given a tablespoon of feed in the morning and a tablespoon in the evening, he generally eats everything but the peas, lentils and popcorn immediately, but by the next feeding time he will almost always eat those initially neglected items as well... Thus the need for rationing to force him to eat everything, trust me I would much rather just fill up a bowl and let him go to town, but it's clear this would be a waste...

Own and BTW we for clarification we didn't 'steal' the pigeon, he was banded and we tracked down his owner, he was on his first race from Indiana to Michigan a due North race, but this guy went due North west and ended up on the other side of Lake Michigan at our place in Illinois... When I contacted the owner he said that out of the 300+ pigeons in the race, less than 100 actually made it home so a bad day for their club... Since they won't fly across the lake and chances are slim he would ever figure out how to get home, the original owner asked us if we could adopt him...

***With the edit and finding the bird seed I started with I can pretty much recreate the recipe I used...

The bag of bird food contained:

White Proso Millet, Sunflower Seed, Safflower Seed, Wheat, Milo, Calcium Carbonate, Vitamin A Supplement, Vitamin D-3 Supplement, Potassium Iodide, Vegetable Oil

It was a 7 pound bag that started at 10% min. protein

I added (note I just quickly searched out the protein values, they might be off as I didn't double check them for this post)

1/2 lb popcorn @ 11%
2 lbs lentils @ 26%
1 lb wild rice @ 15%
2 lbs dried whole peas @ 25%
1 lb barley @ 10%
1/2 lb whole oats @14%

and a dusting of Diamond V XP food supplement...

That puts me at about 15% protein overall, and fits my recollection of what I mixed in...

 

[AnnaGraceD]

I really like Garden Betty's homemade chicken food recipe. A little pricey, but still a good mix. She also has a corn free recipe on her site.

http://www.gardenbetty.com/2012/06/garden-bettys-homemade-whole-grain-chicken-feed/

 

[westes]

What are some typical macronutrient ratios of protein, carbs, and fat that should be fed to chickens at different stages of growth? I have seen ratios for protein only, suggesting around 20% for chicks and 17% for mature chickens, plus or minus a few percent either way....

If you feed the protein through live insects like black soldier fly larvae, you get a lot of fat with the protein. If you make a custom feed mix that includes a lot of seeds, you get a lot of fat added in the seeds.

I get the feeling that chickens are omnivores and will tolerate a pretty wide range of carbs and fats, but there must be guidelines.

 

[MeepBeep]

What are some typical macronutrient ratios of protein, carbs, and fat that should be fed to chickens at different stages of growth?

I don't now if you will find specific ratios as there are multiple ratio levels that will work to provide the necessary energy and nutrient levels in the food... Amino acids are generally the limiting factor in production and growth that is why you hear so much about proteins...

These give decent overviews of the nutrients needed...

http://www.merckvetmanual.com/mvm/p...ltry/nutritional_requirements_of_poultry.html
https://www.nap.edu/read/2114/chapter/4

 

[weidnercharm]

After someone mentioned my homemade mix sounded like a good fermenting mix, i started fermenting. The chickens LOVE it!!!

 

[westes]

After someone mentioned my homemade mix sounded like a good fermenting mix, i started fermenting. The chickens LOVE it!!!

What is your actual recipe for that? You are scooping out the fermented grain and serving it to chickens wet?

 

[westes]

I don't now if you will find specific ratios as there are multiple ratio levels that will work to provide the necessary energy and nutrient levels in the food... Amino acids are generally the limiting factor in production and growth that is why you hear so much about proteins...

These give decent overviews of the nutrients needed...

http://www.merckvetmanual.com/mvm/p...ltry/nutritional_requirements_of_poultry.html
https://www.nap.edu/read/2114/chapter/4

The nap.edu reference is superb!!! Thank you.

 

[happyfeet24]

I have created an all purpose feed that the goats cows ducks and chickens eat the feed mill specially mixes it for me and I pick up 500 lbs at a time less than 100.00 it's non gmo cracked corn whole oats wheat bran molasses and split peas