Feeding 100% organic without going broke?

[MyNYfarm]

Good morning:

When I started back up with chickens I decided to raise them 100% organically.

It wasn't too expensive on newly hatched chicks. My oldest have switched to grower feed and I'm having sticker shock!

I just bought ONE 50 pound bag of scratch and peck organic grower mash and it was $90/ per bag.
https://www.scratchandpeck.com/product/organic-grower-mash/

I will have about 50 adults and this is simply not affordable. Fortunately most are still on starter crumbles and not eating much, but I need a better solution before they get bigger.

I do want the eggs to be 100% certified organic and I want the meat birds to be certified organic and of course that goes back to food. I also want food without corn or soy.

What is a good quality organic feed that won't make me bankrupt? Thank you

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

I think you might try putting that into the search function and reading some of the previous threads on this subject. Which is a long way of saying I don’t think there is a cut-and-dry answer. You can try to make your own food but it might actually end up costing you more. Are you planning on free-ranging at all?

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

One suggestion I have off the top is that if you found certified organic starter that wasn’t expensive just keep them on that and provide oyster shell on the side when they reach POL. I have no idea if there is such a thing as organic oyster shell though. That’s a different rabbit hole

 

[Penpal]

You can mix your own feed. A local elevator would probably have whole corn, whole oats, whole wheat and possibly sunflower seeds. This is much cheaper than buying commercial chicken feed. However, you have to put the time in to create a suitable mix. How much percentage should be corn? How much oats? How much wheat? You'll want to include a meat. Black soldier flies, worms, mealworms, etc. And greens. If they free range they should be able to get all the plants they want, such as grass and weeds.

If you want to sell the chickens as organic you can contact whatever agency is in charge. My neighbor grows his own corn, hay etc. for his dairy cows and can sell his milk as certified organic. What he earns more than pays for the inconvenience. If you want to sell organic, you have to have organic things to feed them, but if you grew it yourself you might be able to get by with that.

 

[ChaosMom]

Good morning:

When I started back up with chickens I decided to raise them 100% organically.

It wasn't too expensive on newly hatched chicks. My oldest have switched to grower feed and I'm having sticker shock!

I just bought ONE 50 pound bag of scratch and peck organic grower mash and it was $90/ per bag.
https://www.scratchandpeck.com/product/organic-grower-mash/

I will have about 50 adults and this is simply not affordable. Fortunately most are still on starter crumbles and not eating much, but I need a better solution before they get bigger.

I do want the eggs to be 100% certified organic and I want the meat birds to be certified organic and of course that goes back to food. I also want food without corn or soy.

What is a good quality organic feed that won't make me bankrupt? Thank you

@Perris

 

[Perris]

I do want the eggs to be 100% certified organic and I want the meat birds to be certified organic

have you considered the alternatives? They have grown up in response to the excessive cost of and/or dislike of some recent developments around the definition of (and therefore what's permitted) 'organic'

See e.g. https://www.thenewlede.org/2025/01/...offers-alternative-to-the-usda-organic-label/

 

[Altairsky]

It depends on what you mean for "Organic".
Organic can be 2 things

- organic + biodynamic - the true organic way and philosophy.
- piece of paper organic - the industrial kind of organic.

Piece of paper organic is expensive. Chickens eat a lot and processed organic feed is insanely expensive, at least if you're not inside the true industry of organic, where you can benefit of some tricks to keep the price lower.

Organic + biodynamic means that 10 chickens need a bare minimum of 1/4 acre of highly enriched pasture. This means there must be bushes and vines, and fruit trees that attract bugs the chickens can eat. Grape, berries, plums, parsimmon, Crataegus azarolus, wild apples, and kiwifruit for winter feeding and all sort of herbs, strawberries, etc. Every season needs plants that can be the main source of chicken nutrition.
I do this sort of pasture - not organic because I don't care about papers. My flock is natural pastured and natural bred. I recently did some math, I raised my latest batch of chicks with literally 1$ of chickstarter each for the first 2 months, and then sold them for 25$ each, sold out in 24 hours...

 

[rosemarythyme]

It depends on what you mean for "Organic".
Organic can be 2 things

- organic + biodynamic - the true organic way and philosophy.
- piece of paper organic - the industrial kind of organic.

Piece of paper organic is expensive. Chickens eat a lot and processed organic feed is insanely expensive, at least if you're not inside the true industry of organic, where you can benefit of some tricks to keep the price lower.

OP specified certified organic and presumably is in the US (New York I assume?) which would mean "piece of paper" organic to USDA standards, in order to sell eggs as such.

S&P Grower shouldn't be $90 a bag though - is that ordered online or something? Or is it because it has to be shipped across the country to you? If you want prebagged feed I'd start by looking at feed manufacturers/distributors closer to your neck of the woods, OP.

 

[BDutch]

A ‘neigbour’ and I, buy organic feed directly from a feed factory. Need to buy at least 5, 20kg bags at once. They sell /deliver to small farms all over the Netherlands. Its about half the price than the organic feed in the local shop.

I’m not sure about your possibilities. But it might be worth it to investigate this.

 

[Sally PB]

You can mix your own feed. A local elevator would probably have whole corn, whole oats, whole wheat and possibly sunflower seeds.

Those ingredients would also have to be organic.

When I looked into what it would take to call my eggs organic, one thing disqualified me right off the bat: I used treated lumber in the coop and run.