Growing chicken & fowl feed?

[Joyfillednomads]

Anyone not buy any feed, and 100% grow your own?
Where do you order plants or seeds?
We must trim actually eliminate feed bill.

Living Traditions Homestead recommend rare heritage seeds from
Baker creek
https://www.rareseeds.com/store/whole-seed-catalog/2022-the-whole-seed-catalog

https://m.facebook.com/groups/traditionalist

 

[Weeg]

How did our grandparents and great grandparents do it??

By growing plants, eating seeds grains snd forage. The exact same way your talking about.
The question is, what were you great grandparents chickens like? Definitely not the crazy high production breeds we have today. Those chickens laid way less, and were much closer to their wild ancestors then the breeds we have now. The breeds that exist today need much more nutrients to keep up with there excessive egg laying, and other evolutionary traits.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

How did our grandparents and great grandparents do it??

Their other animals ate grains and the chickens ate from the poop and spilled grains of those animals.

Their birds also didn't grow as large or fast or lay as much as the birds nowadays do

 

[JacinLarkwell]

You'd almost certainly still have to buy minerals and vitamins even if you got plants/insects that had the right fat/protein/calcium ratios

 

[Silexian]

Unless you are already farming and processing grain. I don’t see how you can eliminate buying commercial chicken feed. At least not in a cost efficient way. Our chickens free range on multiple acres consisting of pastures and woods. They get all the past prime vegetables and fruit from our gardens and orchard. Plus all the byproducts of preserving our harvest. All of which add variety and supplement their diet, but does not replace a good quality feed. To keep them healthy and productive.

 

[3KillerBs]

How did our grandparents and great grandparents do it??

By accepting the fact that it would take hard work and attention to careful maintenance and feeding to get 100 eggs per hen per year ...

From Leghorns.

Check out the latest Ag science from 1921: https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/poultry-for-the-farm-and-home.1443907/

The Brahma in my avatar, the worst layer in my flock, did better than that.

 

[DickMidnight]

how much food are you going through? a 50lb bag is only like $15

 

[Coops Dad]

Consider talking to a local Mom n Pop restaurant about leaving a 5 gallon bucket for food scraps. Pick it up every day/every other day and exchange it with an empty one. It can't replace a healthy balanced feed but it could help defray feed costs. My chickens love leftovers from our meals, and we have a local donut shop who occasionally gives me a big box of leftover donuts for my chickens because we give them a dozen eggs now and again. The chickens love the donut treats.

Have you thought about selling extra eggs? That can help with net feed cost, too.

 

[Coops Dad]

We give away a lot of eggs but my wife sells probably 5 or 6 dozen a week for $3/doz. We have somewhere north of 50 hens, ten roosters (7 are in bachelor camp, getting fat for Freezer Day), eight BBW poults and about 25 chicks. An extra $15-20 a week comes in handy for all the feed we go through.

 

[Joyfillednomads]

How did our grandparents and great grandparents do it??