Desperately searching for a less expensive, healthier way to feed my little flock. I live in Northern In. I am actually surrounded by feed mills and chicken warehouses (that is what I call the local egg growers) Does anyone have a recipe for non-GMO Feed I can make??? It needs to be simple like 25lbs of this and that, not very good with percentages.
There is no "one size fits all" cheap feed that will likely satisfy what you seem to be looking for. There are far too many variables to consider like: are you raising meat birds or egg layers - or dual purpose; rooster should really get a different diet than laying hens; what is the age of the chickens; climate, winter or summer, etc, etc.
But here are some ideas to consider - if you haven't already:
You can search your area Craiglist "farm & garden" page for locally grown non-GMO feed. You can do a similar search on
Ebay, and other websites. I found a guy on Craigslist in my local area selling 16% feed for $9.00 for 50lbs bag. He works alot (apparently) so I have to wait on his schedule to go and get it and it could be 3-5 days sometimes.
You have other options and I have worked with many of them.
Harvest from nature what you need. This requires more work but it works. In the fall I gather acorns and beechnuts, weed seeds that I know are safe for my chickens and the insects that come with them. I collect crickets that try to get in the garage, grubs that I dig up from the garden and beetles that fly here and there. In early summer you could set up a Japanese Beetle trap up in your yard (most of these cheap bag-type traps keep the bugs alive) and feed your bird the bounty from that.
Chickens like it if a certain percentage of their diet is grass and other herbs that grow wildly; if fact a friend of mine that has a bagger on his lawn mower tosses the entire contents of it in his chicken run and claims that it is gone in 24 hours - and I believe it. I need to get a bagger for my lawn mower.
You can take old logs, half rotten and falling apart, and toss them in a pen and let the chickens peck and scratch the grubs and beetles out of it. That gives them something fun to do as well and helps to accelerate the composting of said log.
Obviously everything that you find in nature will be GMO free.
Another option is to
grow your own. Any available land that you do not have tied up otherwise should be planted in something that you can feed your livestock. What I do is grow non-GMO soybeans to help to regular the protein of wild-gathered foods that they are combined with. I don't know why soybeans get such a bad reputation, aside from the image that people have of mass-production farming. There are not only non-GMO soybeans available, there are also heritage soybeans available. BUT if you simple hate soybeans and feel like you have to avoid them for whatever reason, then you can grow some other type of easy-to-grow bean, crowder peas, lima beans, or even peanuts which would probably still do pretty good in northern Indiana.
Above all it would probably help you to 1) always combine raising chickens with growing a garden - they just compliment each other, they just do. I mean, you clean out the coop and have have free fertilizer, you clean out the garden and you have free chicken feed - whether you are pulling weeds or tossing excess vegetables.
2) Find out what grows well in your area and craft you plan around that information. This includes wild-grown foods and home-grown. I mentioned acorns and beechnuts earlier - if something else grows in your area that gather the seeds of whatever it might be. Every growing plant produces a seed of some kind - everything that a chicken eats is either an insect (free) or a seed from some plant (potentially free). So make that work your advantage.
Maple trees drop "helicopters" - seeds and chickens will eat them and they are safe.
With regards to the comment that chickens eat insects and they are free - I encourage to
also explore insects as a good option in chicken feed. There are several videos online about people raising mealworms and how to do it. Although most of them are raising mealworms to feed pet lizards and other exotic animals,
Tractor Supply regularly stocks their shelves with bags of dried mealworms for chicken treats. They are absolutely a chicken favorite.
There are alot of other ideas on how you could get non-GMO feed for your chickens and I could go on for pages about it - I could probably write a book on how to do it - but most of the basic ideas are included above. What you have to bring is your adaptation of my ideas above, based on what grows or crawls in your "neck of the woods".
What you can count on is that anything labeled "non-GMO" is not going to be cheap - not in today's market; and anything cheap is not going to be non-GMO unless you explore the ideas above. If what I have mentioned is too much work for you, then
you can either go cheap or non-GMO but not both. If you can find non-GMO for cheap - please let us all know!!!!!!!!
Good luck.
