Great thread
I've been mixing my own for some time, aiming for only natural vitamins (and actually getting there). It's worth doing when you see terrific growth without fatty liver. I reckon the D,L methionine in vitamin mixes is a good reason to avoid them (look up 'methionine and fatty liver' or 'DL methionine and triglycerides').
The 3 things I do to add vitamins to a basic mix to make it complete (as far as my reading goes... I'm no expert but I've been doing it a while and am seeing good results) are:
1. sprout wheat, corn and peas (sometimes sunflower as well). Ratio is somewhere around 6 parts wheat, 2 parts corn, 1 part peas, 0.5 part sunflower. Soaked and sprouted, the vitamins are more accessible and some are enhanced.
2. fresh greens and sunlight. This kills a need to add K, D, and many others. Also adds calcium and enables its absorption. Tractoring will bring all these things, but so does hanging weed greens in an outdoor pen daily. Cod liver oil works for D if there's no sunlight.
3. for chicks and growers, sour milk e.g. kefir. I use cheap dried skim milk, reconstitute it then sour it overnight. It's a daily chore I can easily fit in around cooking for kiddies etc, so I figure it's not a time consumer in itself. Just strain, mix new batch, chuck kefir grains into the mix, then leave on top of the microwave. This adds lots of B vitamins, methionine and other goodies. Unlike brewer's yeast (which is the other easy way to add B vitamins), kefir contains B12, and has a coccidiostat benefit that lets me raise chicks entirely off medications (that, plus graduated exposure from day one).
Chick feeds are either blended in a kitchen whiz, or I might leave out the wheat sprouts, grind up the whole dry corn/sunflower/peas, then add pollard, bran, soy meal, alfalfa, salt, seaweed, and shell grit with kefir to make a daily chick mash. With sunlight and fresh greens like chickweed it's a complete diet and I'm getting early feathering, fast growth and increased muscle mass compared to raising them on commercial feed. Cost wise it's probably a little more expensive overall than commercial feed; the skim milk powder is $7 per kilo (2.4lb), and I use about a bag of this per week between 50 birds (the adult layers don't get much kefir, as milk may reduce shell quality).
You should smell it when I've mixed up the morning feed... If you make up a commercial mash, it smells terrible. When you make up a sprout-legume-kefir feed, it smells divine. The birds love it.
To all diets I also add alfalfa, kelp, salt, shell grit. To increase protein and balance some amino acids I use soy meal (not yet GM over here); if I couldn't use soy meal I'd use meat meal for growers and chicks, but probably raise worms for adult layers (as meat meal above 4% can harm shell quality) or else boil up some peas and sweet lupins. Soy meal makes up about 20% of the ration for chicks, slightly less for adults.
I'd agree with Chris to beware barley and flax with chicks. Follow inclusion ratios, which you can find on many feed company websites.
regards
Erica
