We mix our own grains because it is cheeper for us. We grow grains and feed our animals the screenings - the stuff cleaned out of the clean grains. Our birds seem to prefer our mix over store bought crumbles. Last year we feed more store bought feed but Also fed whole grains - we didn't grind any until this year. Our birds were sweet tasting. We get, "wow this is good" When we feed the chickens to others. We find that corn isn't the best to fatten animals with. Corn is high in protein but they say barley makes better meat. We feed yellow field peas, wheat, oats, a little corn and barley. We find that the birds like it better if it is not ground fine, like a small cracked. You need to make sure they have lots of grit with the grain. We also add a little bit minerals to our feed. Our fat cattle get the same as we give the chickens and they taste so good.
I was smelling a bag of feed today - meat bird feed - and I turned my nose up at it. What do they add to that? My husband says I have to feed up that bag no matter how bad it smells, LOL
We've been feeding whole grains to our laying hens, plus some laying pellets, for a whole year and our birds are beautiful birds. They might be a little fat but they always lay. We only had a slight drop in production when the temps dropped to -30.
If you do feed grains make sure you get enough protein.
