Growing chickenfeed?

[carolinacooper]

Wow!Those are very interesting machines!Thanks for posting that link!

 

[RubberChickenLubber]

Here a site that has packs of amaranthus for $0.75 a pack.

http://www.parkseed.com/webapp/wcs/...page&scChannel=Gate 1DollarSeed&OfferCode=V1H

 

[CHICKENHEAD]

How hard is it to harvest Amaranthus and make edible for chickens?

 

[beaker]

Quote:
I have been looking into growing chicken feed, and this textbook from 1915 ("Poultry Keeping" by Harry R. Lewis) says you can grow oats and "Canadian peas" (perhaps field peas?) together, then just cut it down before the seeds start falling out and store it like hay. He says the chickens can forage around in it for themselves and it provides a nearly complete ration. I am going to grow a plot this summer to try it out - I like that it requires no threshing or grinding. We'll see if the chickens like it.

 

[CHICKENHEAD]

Interesting, I would like to try this also. I am having a hard time finding a place to buy nekkid oats locally. I wonder what kind of peas to use.

 

[hooligan]

Austria Field Peas should be good. They are cheap and sold in bulk at my feed store.
They have them with the grass seeds.

 

[TheMartianChick]

My parents house is surrounded on 2 sides by a corn field. The field was rented by a someone that my mom worked with. He gave us permission to walk through his field and glean the feed corn that his harvester missed. We would take burlap feed sacks with us and half -drag, half-carry them back home. The best places were where the harvester had to turn the corner... The cornstalks would just get knocked over and they would still be loaded with corn. We would spend our winter weekends watching tv and shucking the corn into 5 gallon buckets by hand. It wasn't really that hard once you got the rhythm of it, but we did build up callouses on our thumbs!

 

[CHICKENHEAD]

they have some kind of machines that shuck the corn, it still takes time but a lot easier on your hands.

 

[digitS']

(I have trouble keeping track of things here on BYC. I'm always looking for this subject over in "Feeding Time" and here it is in "Everything Else" . . .

Back on the family farm, we grew oats and vetch for hay. I went on to work for outfits that grew barley and oats and milled it themselves for cattle feed.

Years ago, I bought wheat for the hens and it turned out that I nearly shut down their egg production feeding too much. So, it's been commercial feed ever since but with lots of greens and such from the garden.

I've had wheat and fox tail millet in the garden the last few years so as to make a few wreathes during the fall. They've just not been used for chicken feed . . . but these are a cinch to grow and just need more ground to amount to something. I've saved seed year to year and have sufficient to plant a larger area. And, field peas can be planted amongst them.

The variety is just "Alaska" peas and came with a seed order last week. They are a smooth-seeded type that is sometimes grown in the home garden for a very early shell pea.

The sprout people (& other sprout people

have hulless oats. They also have lots of other seed and I may try a little variety since that must be important in a chicken's diet. Prices are quite low for seed going the sprout route . . . .

Steve

 

[FarmerKae]

Corn shellers and corn grinders could be found on many old farms. My granddaddy had both. I love thrift/junk stores and I see them pretty often. I'm in WNC so where ever in NC you are you can probably run across them. Good luck.