Feeding Chickens for Free

[Paula321]

I have chickens living in our sustainable permaculture food forest and I would like to grow them free chicken feed. A usual hen eats 1/4 pound of feed per day if required to stay in a coop and run all day. Without the food forest and lake supplementing their feed, they would be expected to eat almost five pounds of feed per day. My 19 hens are currently eating less than 1 pound per day total. There are 19 hens and 4 chicks (5 weeks old). All of their chicken feed and yard found food is sustainable organic and the lake is spring fed and surrounded by state forest.

For the hens, we currently feed New Country Organics without wheat. We currently put out a pound of feed and the hens do not finish it by nighttime. For a hen that is hard molting, I provide extra protein to help her rebuild feathers quickly. I also put out black oil sunflower seeds (BOSS) mixed with dried bugs in the morning. I use this mixture wherever I want them to work in the front yard. After placing that down, the chickens will dig in that area all morning. This year was a transition year for the hens as I put out less and less feeds and moved to planting sustainable items and lake products.

Other free chicken feed in our Florida sustainable permaculture food forest that are always available:
- Black Soldier Flies
- Sorghum grains/seeds
- Papaya
- Seminole Pumpkin ripe fruit, seeds and leaves
- Blue Plumbago
- Clover, Stinging Nettle, Sunflowers, Grasses and grass seed
- Tadpoles in the spring
- A large variety of fruit that is in season all year

Other items I provide from the lake almost daily:
- Duck Weed
- Minnows (cast net)
- Food processed fish parts of Bluegill (summer) and Crappie (winter)

 

[ChickenLeg]

Nice set up! I saw a youtube vid of a guy who collects all the food waste from the local schools and has a huge mound of it, all his chickens scratch through the food to eat as well as the bugs that start living in the mound. He then uses the decomposed food and chicken waste as a compost he sells to the public. He was able to sustain around 100 or more layers if I remember correctly with no added food! I wish I could find the video, but anyways great setup! Its awesome being able to feed your chickens with minimal store bought feed!

 

[Red-Stars-in-RI]

I built a 4th hay bale compost unit this week.

I pick up 15-20 5 gallon buckets of food scraps from a local food pantry twice a week. The chickens eat their fill and the rest composts. The chickens help turn the compost and eat lots of worms and other critters too.

I still supplement with layer pellet, but they eat a lot less of it then they did.

 

[Paula321]

Nice set up! I saw a youtube vid of a guy who collects all the food waste from the local schools and has a huge mound of it, all his chickens scratch through the food to eat as well as the bugs that start living in the mound. He then uses the decomposed food and chicken waste as a compost he sells to the public. He was able to sustain around 100 or more layers if I remember correctly with no added food! I wish I could find the video, but anyways great setup! Its awesome being able to feed your chickens with minimal store bought feed!

I absolutely love that guy!! Edible Acres. He is so zen!! His ideas are really sound and you can really tell he loves his chickens.

 

[Red-Stars-in-RI]

I absolutely love that guy!! Edible Acres. He is so zen!! His ideas are really sound and you can really tell he loves his chickens.

One of the things I like about Edibleacres is that he doesn't claim to be an expert. He preaches experimentation, continual improvement, and that failure is OK...and it looks like he lives it, too.

I use a lot of his chicken-raising approaches - feeding food waste, compost in the chicken run, some use of seeds for sprouting, lots of worm snacks for the chickens (I do supply layer pellet at all times for my flock).

 

[Red-Stars-in-RI]

So, had an exercise in "free protein" today. I'm in Rhode Island, and it's one week before Christmas. When it warmed up to 37 degrees this morning and there was a break in the sleet, I headed out to the chicken run.

I've been in the process of migrating the contents of the 14' x 7' composter I built last October into the four hay bale composters I built this fall. I've got probably 2/3 of it migrated.

I took a pick ax to some of what's left in the pile today to break it up so that it'll be easier to move over the next few days.

The amount of worms I uncovered in a half dozen whacks of the pick-ax was downright absurd. The flock was going to town, but they couldn't eat all the worms.

A crazy worm feast. In Rhode Island. In mid-late December.

 

[Paula321]

One of the things I like about Edibleacres is that he doesn't claim to be an expert. He preaches experimentation, continual improvement, and that failure is OK...and it looks like he lives it, too.

I use a lot of his chicken-raising approaches - feeding food waste, compost in the chicken run, some use of seeds for sprouting, lots of worm snacks for the chickens (I do supply layer pellet at all times for my flock).

And he gets out there and interacts with the chickens. It’s not all about how many eggs they can give you. My yard is an absolute food forest with incredible abundance and it’s all from the little ladies working hard turning the dirt and depositing nuggets of gold.

 

[WIchickMama]

All of you are inspiring. I hadn't heard of Edibleacres but it is on my list now. My goal this year is less commercial feed and more organic living for the girls. I love the hay bales for compost, never would I have thought of it. For those with that, do you get mice/rats? That is my own post fear here, yuck.

 

[Red-Stars-in-RI]

All of you are inspiring. I hadn't heard of Edibleacres but it is on my list now. My goal this year is less commercial feed and more organic living for the girls. I love the hay bales for compost, never would I have thought of it. For those with that, do you get mice/rats? That is my own post fear here, yuck.

You should definitely check out the Edible Acres channel…lots of great info and he’s low cost, low tech, and low intensity. Some of the homesteading YouTubers are too intense for me, and when I see them working with brand new materials and shiny, expensive tools, it just cries “fiction” to me.

I’ll keep folks posted on how the hay bales work - so far so good. Low tech and easy, I wouldn’t want to know how many pounds of hay I’ve moved this fall, though.

As far as rats/mice…I’ve seen the occasional mice near my food barrels in the shed, but no evidence of mice/rats around the compost piles. I’m not sure why…maybe I’m just lucky. I do have very fat squirrels, though.

 

[Paula321]

All of you are inspiring. I hadn't heard of Edibleacres but it is on my list now. My goal this year is less commercial feed and more organic living for the girls. I love the hay bales for compost, never would I have thought of it. For those with that, do you get mice/rats? That is my own post fear here, yuck.

I use deep hay or straw as part of the Ruth Stout method of mulching. He uses them to keep his hoop runs and compost making machine the right temperature. I would think any compost and hay will attract rats as it is a nice bedding for them but the same goes for any chicken coop litter.