Growing chicken & fowl feed?

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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.
 
Joyfillednomads said:
How did our grandparents and great grandparents do it??
Click to expand...
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.
 
Plant some scratch grain, greens like kale, and legumes like peas or clover. Make sure the chickens have access to new ground where they can get a good amount of insects. Get a protein, vitamin and mineral supplement like Fertrell ‘s for mixing your own poultry ration. Lots of organic producers do this. It will not be cheap because you have to buy fish or crab meal but you will learn how rations are formulated. I use a protein supplement for poultry and mix it with grain to make a custom ration. You could also feed a high protein ration of about 20% and add 30 -40% grain and end up with about a 16 % ration overall. Take it slow. You have to do some work to get there and you find out the ready made ration is a lot easier. Nevertheless I have learned a lot by doing some of it myself. This topic is not new . Check out the feed shortage thread that recently discussed all this.
 
Rangergord said:
Plant some scratch grain, greens like kale, and legumes like peas or clover. Make sure the chickens have access to new ground where they can get a good amount of insects. Get a protein, vitamin and mineral supplement like Fertrell ‘s for mixing your own poultry ration. Lots of organic producers do this. It will not be cheap because you have to buy fish or crab meal but you will learn how rations are formulated. I use a protein supplement for poultry and mix it with grain to make a custom ration. You could also feed a high protein ration of about 20% and add 30 -40% grain and end up with about a 16 % ration overall. Take it slow. You have to do some work to get there and you find out the ready made ration is a lot easier. Nevertheless I have learned a lot by doing some of it myself. This topic is not new . Check out the feed shortage thread that recently discussed all this.
Click to expand...
Thank you.
I believe it is entirely possible to scale down the feed mills recipe and make our own feed.
We have to be able to do it on our own if we have to.
Thank you
 

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