Growing chicken food to replace feed.

I’d be more than happy to hear your plans for if there are shortages. I have small amounts of different grains etc growing at the moment to see what grows best. Trying to gather as much info as possible and see what everyone else is doing to see which parts I can use myself
Here are some of the things I am planning/considering:
1. Mealworm Farming - Fairly inexpensive to set up and can be easily sustained throughout the year.
2. Black Soldier Fly Farming - Again fairly inexpensive to set up but only available when flies are present
3. Earthworm Farming- Again fairly inexpensive to set up but not sure if is sustainable throughout the year.
4. Housefly Maggot Harvesting- Again fairly inexpensive to set up but only available when flies are present
5. Fodder - Can be done year round but may require No. 6 to be sustainable.
6. Vegetable Plot - To grow millet/barley to sustain fodder production. Also include some other veggies they like. Obviously seasonal. This might not be necessary if these grains are available but it wouldn't hurt to be prepared. I haven't tried to determine what size plot would be needed to make this sustainable.
7. Long Term Storage - Purchase commercial chicken feed while it is available over and above what your needs are for your flock and store it in 5 gallon mylar bags with oxygen absorbers. A 5 gallon bag will hold about 25 to 30 pounds of feed and the bags are a bit pricey ...... About $5 per bag and $1 for the absorbers. The bags can be sealed with a HOT iron.

We have a freeze drier (not a dehydrator) so any/all surplus from activities 1 thru 5 throughout the year will be freeze-dried and stored. A dehydrator is MUCH cheaper and may serve the same as a freeze drier for these purposes. Singularly these items will not substitute completely for chicken feed but will, coupled with free ranging, might get one through a shortage/lack of feed.

We live in a very rural environment and as such can implement these without any concerns for neighbor complaints. Some of these may not be suitable for an urban environment.

Hope this helps.
 
Here are some of the things I am planning/considering:
1. Mealworm Farming - Fairly inexpensive to set up and can be easily sustained throughout the year.
2. Black Soldier Fly Farming - Again fairly inexpensive to set up but only available when flies are present
3. Earthworm Farming- Again fairly inexpensive to set up but not sure if is sustainable throughout the year.
4. Housefly Maggot Harvesting- Again fairly inexpensive to set up but only available when flies are present
5. Fodder - Can be done year round but may require No. 6 to be sustainable.
6. Vegetable Plot - To grow millet/barley to sustain fodder production. Also include some other veggies they like. Obviously seasonal. This might not be necessary if these grains are available but it wouldn't hurt to be prepared. I haven't tried to determine what size plot would be needed to make this sustainable.
7. Long Term Storage - Purchase commercial chicken feed while it is available over and above what your needs are for your flock and store it in 5 gallon mylar bags with oxygen absorbers. A 5 gallon bag will hold about 25 to 30 pounds of feed and the bags are a bit pricey ...... About $5 per bag and $1 for the absorbers. The bags can be sealed with a HOT iron.

We have a freeze drier (not a dehydrator) so any/all surplus from activities 1 thru 5 throughout the year will be freeze-dried and stored. A dehydrator is MUCH cheaper and may serve the same as a freeze drier for these purposes. Singularly these items will not substitute completely for chicken feed but will, coupled with free ranging, might get one through a shortage/lack of feed.

We live in a very rural environment and as such can implement these without any concerns for neighbor complaints. Some of these may not be suitable for an urban environment.

Hope this helps.
I am going for insect raising options as well. Im setting up mini grain silos in 55 gal drums with mylar liners.
 
It ain't going to happen. Our price for chicken feed and Pepsi Cola (made with high fructose corn syrup) will keep going up, but the products will not disappear. There is a lot of flexability in how corn is used. The limited supplies will be bought up by those with the most lucrative markets and a customer base with the least price sensitivity. People will not stop drinking Pepsi Cola or feeding backyard chickens because of price and the producers know it.
Sad, but true. :(
 
I'm seriously looking into raising black soldier fly larvae for when I get my birds. (Only getting 9 layers most likely in September when the coop is ready). I'm also already growing/drying/freezing stuff for them as well. This isn't my first go round with chickens, but we have moved to a smaller property in another state now that we are empty nesters. I won't be able to totally replace feed right off the bat, but I am doing as much research as possible.
There are a number of YouTube videos out there about raising chickens on compost (Justin Rhodes interviewed an older fellow named Karl who has been raising 600+ birds on massive compost piles and Edible Acres has a much smaller operation). I will start by supplementing commercial feed and gradually try switching over to BSF larvae/compost/forage/meat rabbit innards/etc and see how it goes. (With feed in reserve if it doesn't go well)
 
I bought a couple one-liter bottles of liquid vitamin/mineral supplement called "chick booster" by Neurovet that is highly concentrated and VERY well rounded nutritionally.
Once their feed is no longer available at the market, I will be adding this supplement to their water and praying they get enough to eat on my fenced, half-acre and whatever table scraps I can muster. The chickens will be easier to feed in that respect than my quail. I can give my chickens meat scraps, but from all that I've read, giving any form of meat to quail is a big no-no. I'm hedging my bets by raising both chickens and quail; we'll see which is easier to maintain once the supply chain for their feed becomes non-existent.
 
I'm seriously looking into raising black soldier fly larvae for when I get my birds. (Only getting 9 layers most likely in September when the coop is ready). I'm also already growing/drying/freezing stuff for them as well. This isn't my first go round with chickens, but we have moved to a smaller property in another state now that we are empty nesters. I won't be able to totally replace feed right off the bat, but I am doing as much research as possible.
There are a number of YouTube videos out there about raising chickens on compost (Justin Rhodes interviewed an older fellow named Karl who has been raising 600+ birds on massive compost piles and Edible Acres has a much smaller operation). I will start by supplementing commercial feed and gradually try switching over to BSF larvae/compost/forage/meat rabbit innards/etc and see how it goes. (With feed in reserve if it doesn't go well)
I follow edible acres too.😎
Im going to do crickets and maybe BSF too, i can raise bugs year round in my greenhouse.
 
If you can compost in your run, it adds not only the original food scraps, but also bugs and worms, sprouts, and who knows what else to your flocks diet. I don't replace 100% of my flocks diet with this method, but it's probably about 50% in the summer time.

Most of the invasive species around me are tiny and therefore hard to collect, but there's some real opportunities out there if you live someplace with larger invasive fish or mammal species.
 
Hi, I live New Zealand, I have just 10 chickens, all laying I have been very concerned about food prices,



My concern for chicken feed options has been ongoing for 5 years. our pellets have gone from $24 to $36 for a 20kg sack in the past year, our weather has been messed up since Autumn (June) with very little sun, most days are overcast and or raining.

I have half an acre if land and an growing a food forest.



I call my chickens compost makers, I live alone and enjoy their company and comical ways. Anyway I'll explain what I have learned.



1st. Find out what grows best in your soils, and what your chickens like to eat. And grow it.



2. I found they love Daikon radishes and their stem with seed heads, and hard skin pumpkins in winter just smash in half, and they will eat all the inside, Sunflowers, I put the whole sunflower in their pen once mature, and they pick the seeds out within about 20 minutes, multi coloured corn cobs, again I put the whole cob in their pen and they peck the seeds out, a new one that I found last year is Buckwheat, I threw some parrot food mix on an area of The Food Forest and the buckwheat grew very quickly like about 8 weeks from sowing seed until harvesting seed, and each plant takes up very little space, and each seed produces about 25 seeds, so with 2 or 3 harvests in a summer it doesn't take long to get a good supply of seeds,

Eg, 25 seeds to start x 25 x 25 = 15,625 seeds.

When I went to plant the seeds again this spring I thought I better check that the chickens would eat them, and they certainly did the whole seed without having to crush, and hand harvesting it very easy.



they are Frost tender, but also seeds drop from last seasoned sprouted up in spring



Comfrey, I was taken to hospital in the middle of Summer and the chickens didn't get fed for 3 days, the confrey, was the only thing in there pen because they didn't really like it except sometimes of the year, when I came home they had the grudgingly eaten it, and ever since they love to eat it, so much so that the plants I had growing in one end of the coop they chewed that down so much over the coming week ate every leaf as it popped up, and the conference is actually died out I guess because the roots starved.



3. I also give them all the overgrown weeds they have gone to seed and The Food Forest and although sometimes they don't like the actual plant insects come up From Below and start feeding on the decomposing plants and the chickens scratch the plants around and eat all the insects and worms.



4. Mealworms I didn't find them as success although the chooks love them they just take too long to grow, do a decent sized worm or pupa.



5 I put very deep pine sawdust when I say very deep I mean just one wheelbarrow next to the other, in their pen, they happily scratched it and I had to put the flea sprinkler in there a few times over last summer when it was so hot, then after about 3 weeks I put very deep wood chips or actually arborist mulch which is the branches twigs and leaves from cutting down trees and their pen, and put the weeds on top of that let them scratch, eat and poop, until their heart was content.

Remove wheelbarrowfulls of their beautifully made compost which I use as a mulch in my vegetable garden and around trees in The Food Forest.





Cos I also use the arborist mulch in The Food Forest of spread over 100 cubic metres both in their pen and the around my whole sections, a year later I have hundreds of thousands of earthworms, sometimes I let the chickens out into The Food Forest and they scratch up large areas looking for some of those worms.



6. I have until now been feeding them fermented pellets just as a top up before dark, and people are going to think that I'm crazy, but I get so many eggs from my chickens, that are in that breaking at least three quarters of them and mixing them shells and all back with the fermented food eating their own eggs give them a good lot of protein.


about once or twice a week I also mix in a good handful or two of Diatomaceous Earth, just in case they have any internal parasites although I've never seen any evidence of that.


7, I would be quite happy if the chooks laid 1-2 eggs a day, as long as they kept up their eating of other food, scratching and pooling. I'm almost at the stage now where I can start selling their compost.

and I'm looking at getting 30 or 40 cubic metres of fresh sawdust this coming winter, but I have written too much now.
 

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