Grow my own feed?

[Jeff Cooper]

What are some garden plants I can grow to feed my chickens without buying feed? I am looking for a balanced diet.

 

[Perris]

I recommend grass and red clover, in quantity.

 

[TheFatBlueCat]

Peas, sunflowers, clover (different seasons for different clover), grass but keep it shortish (not lawn short, 2-4 inches long), chicory, brassicas (kale, bok choy etc), spinach. Pretty much anything green they will eat.

 

[rosemarythyme]

Are you looking to supply 100% of your own feed, or looking to supplement commercial feed? It's nearly impossible for most folks to be able to grow a nutritionally complete diet without any supplementing at all.

 

[Jeff Cooper]

Are you looking to supply 100% of your own feed, or looking to supplement commercial feed? It's nearly impossible for most folks to be able to grow a nutritionally complete diet without any supplementing at all.

Looking to supply 100% of the chicken's diet.

 

[3KillerBs]

Looking to supply 100% of the chicken's diet.

This is nearly impossible with modern, production-type breeds.

If your local area supports a year-round population of feral chickens it might be possible, but difficult OR if you have a diversified farm with garden, field crops, and other livestock where the chickens will have free access to all areas it might be possible but your production levels will not be up to modern expectations.

This book from 1938 https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/poultry-for-the-farm-and-home.1443907/ talks about how to achieve a profitable 100 eggs per hen per year -- from LEGHORNS. Modern chickens are so much improved in productivity that the Brahma in my avatar, the worst layer in my flock, did better than that in her first year.

@U_Stormcrow can point you at the detailed information on chickens' nutritional needs.

 

[NatJ]

What are some garden plants I can grow to feed my chickens without buying feed? I am looking for a balanced diet.

Most garden crops contain water, fiber, some vitamins and minerals, and relatively small amounts of energy (calories) and protein. If you are making your own feed, some amount of fresh produce is very good for the chickens, but a diet of ONLY fresh produce will cause your chickens to die of starvation (they just cannot eat enough of it to get their calories and protein each day.)

Chicken food is usually based on grains (especially corn) and a protein source (usually soybeans or meat), plus other ingredients to get the right balance of nutrients.

Depending on where you live, you can probably grow corn. It is a very good source of calories, and also a good source of certain nutrients, but very bad in some others. Chickens like to eat it, and it is easy to store, and fairly easy to grow.

You might be able to grow soybeans, which must be cooked before they are fed to the chickens. Or if you raise or hunt animals for meat, you might be able to grind the parts you don't want to eat, and use that as the protein supplement for the chickens. Bugs & worms can help too, but it's hard to get enough, and some kinds of bugs have enough fat to cause problems.

Getting the right balance of other ingredients is more complicated, and you might still need to buy a vitamin/mineral supplement.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Jeff, its not happening.

I'm unsure where you may have gotten the idea from, who may have led you astray, but accept that its not happening.

Supporting a modern chicken requires a complete diet that is almost impossible to make from purely plant sources - and even if you could, the likelihood that you have a property which would allow you to grow (in quantity, and cheaper than available commercially) corn, a cereal grain like hard winter wheet, one or more seeds (sunflower, white proso millet, etc), and legumes (soy, winter peas, field peas) in the ammounts needed to support your chickens, dry and store them for months when they aren't in season, and provide the necessary enzymes and treatments to reduce their anti-nutritive properties is near 0. Even then, your feed would be deficient in a number of key amino acids for your chickens to thrive.

Most "make at home" mixes worth a damn (and I've seen three of them on BYC in the past six+ months) make up the difference with a bag of fish meal. Is your property also on the coast, or you have access to a large and well stocked body of water? Barring that, you could use "meat scraps" from the turn of last century recipes - meaning there is some other animal(s) you are supporting, which you routines slaughter to meet the chicken's dietary needs.

I have one of the most tolerant growing climates in the US - zone 8a - a large pasture, and poor soil (because all the good soil is already being used for farming, as is all the average soil, with the addition of lots of fertilizers). I also live in an area with relatively steady seasonal rainfall - we average 4" Jan, 4" Feb, 5" Mar... and avg 58-62" (depending on source) of rainfall annually. I've deliberately seeded that pasture with a mix of grains, legumes, grasses, herbs that are perrenial, self seeding, and suited to my climate - so I don't have the expense of maintaining heavy equipment for conventional modern farming. Best I can do is bend my feed curve - about 15% right now (maybe less) while everything is out of season, and close to 35% thru late summer and early fall as things come into season.

Last month, we recieved less than 1" of rain, and are already 4" low on the year. My pasture is hurting. My chickens likely ate most of the pounds of fresh seed I added to try and establish new crops for their diet as result. Even when you do everything right, when you live this close to the land, Nature can still kick you where it counts.

A location in your profile would help us help you. But your stated goal? That needs to be reassessed.

/edit for clarity of tone. This is not meant to suggest that you can't do it better than I. To the contrary, I'm in my second half century and have largely worked desk jobs all my life. Nor is my wife in a condition to assist much, physically. I would expect you to do better than I, in similar circumstances. Rather, its to suggest that even with most every natural advantage, its still extremely hard (if not actually impossible), and that their are conditions beyond your control or likely ability to compensate for.

 

[Jeff Cooper]

Guys, thank you for your answers but my question remains largely unanswered although a couple came close.

Please let me rephrase it: Can a balanced diet for my chickens be obtained by plant materials alone?

I have 320 acres of winter wheat in the ground right now and will be planting that back after harvest with milo. I also own 160 acres that is sitting idle at the moment. I own the machinery to farm most grains, including corn and am already producing cracked corn. My neighbor processes my cattle feed next door.

I just want to know if there are plant based proteins I can use to make a balanced diet for my chickens. Soy beans come to mind and I already have the equipment to grow and harvest them.

If so, does anybody have a good recipe using plants alone?

Thank you if you can help.

 

[Jeff Cooper]

Never mind ..... I found a recipe using soy beans and split peas for protein. Now to
figure out how to grow the peas.