Growing your own feed

[NeoHomesteader]

This is not a fully 'hatched' out plan, i'm just 'scratching' out the details. I will 'peck' and choose what works best for me.

Problems with store bought feed.

'Spensive.+++
Attracts flies!! (new to me)++
Smells bad. (Actually I think most of the bad odor of a flock can be attributed to the feed)++
Lots of left over bags, and me with out a shed that needs a wrap.+

Problems with not buying store feed.

Chickens die ---------
Chickens are malnourished----
Chickens dont lay enough--

More pluses or minuses indicates severity.


So I live in Jersey, sandy loam soil. Slightly acidic water. Lots of pine on property.

Laid off our flock for the last two years and came back hard this year. 50 new chickens (~15 weeks, our 4 year old lady just passed last week), 2 turkeys, 3 guinea (4 months) and a dozen keets and 5 Muscovy white adults ( last year addition) and now about 30 Muscovy ducklings (half from ours, half from the brown muscovy guy down the road) with one Peking duck and uh the black one. Cov something (19?) EDIT: Cayuga maybe? Chick is black not green.

I read about compost feeding. But that requires getting trash from local organic restaurants/ grocers etc. We don't make enough garbage to feed our army. I tried throwing a compost pile in our new pasture. Chickens tore it apart before it had a chance , and we just threw a F350 bedload of straw and bedding back into the woods because WTF.

So I thought. I have some cleared land that isn't being used by our flock or us. Just an empty field. What If I grew some corn (cause, hey fattening food, makes cows taste yummy). Simple, low maintenance. Could probably just knock it down and let the birds go at it. Till it all up in to the soil and let it fertilize itself for next year. (no idea not a farmer)

Then I thought, we have been looking at protein levels, and vitamins and crap for the ducklings, gotta maintain certain protein levels for the turkeys to bulk up, not too much for the ducks so they don't angel wing, enough niacin so they don't i don't know pigeon foot or something. Combine that with indian growing.. Corn, squash and beans. so they compliment each other. Then hey beans are vegetable protein sources...corn has some fat in it, and "winter" squash is high in... salt. (well potassium, a salt)

So beans can provide the protein levels. Corn provides fat content. "Free ranging" provides niacin and other vitamins as long as we keep chicken separate from other flocks. Since chicken are more scratch and destroy.. no matter how much area you give them, it becomes dirt. You put food in a bowl and they scratched down to bedrock 10 feet around that bowl....

Okay then I think... BYC is so smart they have probably already thought about this. ...

So.. homesteaders, tinkerers, farmers... what ya got?

TIA

 

[NatJ]

Beans need to be cooked before you feed them to livestock (or to people.) There's something poisonous in them, and cooking destroys it. So that's another detail for you to work into your plan.

 

[centrarchid]

Acreage available for free-ranging and for row crops? Assume poor crop yield for calculations. How feed per bird per year? Consider backing off on number of birds.

Growing up we could keep about 50 birds on 10 acres without using feed. They were kept with a combination cattle and horses that were grained with ear corn and oats respectively. The larger animals were also provided a lot of hay during winter. The larger animals spend a lot of time outside the 10 acres foraging, but came back daily for grain and water. When they came back they brought back nutrition through feces collected in large part by foraging outside the 10 acres. The chickens consumed a fare amount of the feed that fell to ground. The chickens also made heavy use of paddocks left fallow and fence rows.

 

[NeoHomesteader]

Gawd, Forgot about the bean thing. Yikes.
Okay so no direct access to crops.
Looking at the Indian garden still. Corn gives the fattening carbs, beans the protein and squash the other vitamins and nutrients. Considered to be a complete diet.
So I will have to prep the beans to avoid the phytohemagglutinin poisoning.

I have 6 sheets of 18 sq ft glass I could maybe make some type of solar powered cooker. with...


@centrarchid

50 birds on ten acres! heehee. Im trying to do it one 1-2 acres cleared. Eventually I will get the rest cleared. Lotta cedar on my property and want to be able to utilize it. We only have poultry at the moment. Would like to do a couple of steer each year but not ready for that yet. We do have horse farms all around though, from small to medium.

 

[centrarchid]

Gawd, Forgot about the bean thing. Yikes.
Okay so no direct access to crops.
Looking at the Indian garden still. Corn gives the fattening carbs, beans the protein and squash the other vitamins and nutrients. Considered to be a complete diet.
So I will have to prep the beans to avoid the phytohemagglutinin poisoning.

I have 6 sheets of 18 sq ft glass I could maybe make some type of solar powered cooker. with...


@centrarchid

50 birds on ten acres! heehee. Im trying to do it one 1-2 acres cleared. Eventually I will get the rest cleared. Lotta cedar on my property and want to be able to utilize it. We only have poultry at the moment. Would like to do a couple of steer each year but not ready for that yet. We do have horse farms all around though, from small to medium.

See if you can find information on how small farms used to operate before 1900. What I imagine you are trying to do will not work unless you import (from off property) a lot of feed and hay. You are restricted by ecology.

 

[NatJ]

50 birds on ten acres! heehee. Im trying to do it one 1-2 acres cleared. Eventually I will get the rest cleared. Lotta cedar on my property and want to be able to utilize it.

Chickens can forage just as well in the woods (sometimes better), so do take advantage of that space too. There will be some amount of bugs and worms (protein!) in the dead material under the trees, along with plenty of shade and options for dust-bathing. And compost piles do just fine in the shade, too.

Of course, for row/field crops you do need cleared space.

Also consider fruit trees and bushes in your plans. If you don't bother to pick the fruit, many kinds will just drop it to the ground where the chickens can get it. Try for ones that drop at different times. For example, mulberries have small fruit that ripens earlier in the year, apples have bigger fruit that ripens later in the year, both have leaves/branches that other animals can safely eat too. Cherries have poisonous leaves/branches (shouldn't hurt chickens, may be a problem if you get other livestock.) Raspberries and Blackberries have thorns and spread if you give them the opportunity, but some people manage them by just brush-hogging the entire patch every few years (instead of trying to prune every year.)

Fruits are certainly a source of calories; and if any bugs/worms are attracted to them, that would be a bit of protein as well. And it's much easier to have a mulberry tree than to harvest corn and store it until next June!

 

[centrarchid]

I am a big advocate on free-range keeping, and have done it a lot for quite some time now. You cannot just let the birds out into the woods to feed. The food bottleneck will be during the winter and fruits from season before will not be sufficient. The discussion is going to quickly change over to predators. People, to a large degree, used to farm within the limits of their land. We appear to have lost common sense somewhere along the line.

 

[NatJ]

You cannot just let the birds out into the woods to feed.

You have to protect them from predators, and there are only so many bugs to be found--but they will not be scratching up your planted crops as much if they're hanging out under the trees instead. Of course you'll still have to give other food too.

The food bottleneck will be during the winter and fruits from season before will not be sufficient.

True, but the fruits can provide some calories before this year's corn gets ripe, after last year's corn is gone. On a per-acre basis, I'm sure corn is more valuable than fruits. But a few fruit trees IN ADDITION to the corn can be useful. And you can often have a tree somewhere that you cannot grow corn (like in the chicken pen, or next to it: places where chickens would kill any corn plants, but won't hurt a big tree. Or on sloping ground.) I am assuming that a given fruit tree provides "some" calories for a few weeks each year, maximum. I am also assuming that tree requires no care at all after it's established.

The discussion is going to quickly change over to predators.

Either predators, or how to harvest all the food and bring it to the confined chickens!

 

[centrarchid]

You have to protect them from predators, and there are only so many bugs to be found--but they will not be scratching up your planted crops as much if they're hanging out under the trees instead. Of course you'll still have to give other food too.



True, but the fruits can provide some calories before this year's corn gets ripe, after last year's corn is gone. On a per-acre basis, I'm sure corn is more valuable than fruits. But a few fruit trees IN ADDITION to the corn can be useful. And you can often have a tree somewhere that you cannot grow corn (like in the chicken pen, or next to it: places where chickens would kill any corn plants, but won't hurt a big tree. Or on sloping ground.) I am assuming that a given fruit tree provides "some" calories for a few weeks each year, maximum. I am also assuming that tree requires no care at all after it's established.


Either predators, or how to harvest all the food and bring it to the confined chickens!

@NeoHomesteader is going to hit a hard wall trying to keep a confined flock fed off what comes from such a small patch of ground. Number of chickens too high.

 

[iwltfum]

What If I grew some corn (cause, hey fattening food, makes cows taste yummy). Simple, low maintenance. Could probably just knock it down and let the birds go at it. Till it all up in to the soil and let it fertilize itself for next year. (no idea not a farmer)

Unfortunately corn doesn't work like that. You can't just till it in and expect it to fertilize itself. Most of the nutrients it takes from the soil will end up in the kernel, which is why most farms rotate field crops on a multi year rotation. Corn is what they are wanting since it is the most lucrative, but you have to rotate in other plants in off years to get the soil back to a place where the corn will grow full and healthy and get a good harvest off of it.
Corn (one year)
Oats (one year)
Legumes (two to three years)
Pasture mix with hoofed animals ranging(one year) and then back to corn is one standard rotation schedule.