Growing your own

[PatriciafromCO]

I want to grow my own food for birds.. They love to graze, they love to eat out of the hay animals hay, I don't feed them everyday once they are adults so they will get out and go find their own during the spring and summer months. Winter I stock up on bag food. Be nice if I was more self sufficient beyond the bag..

Anyone have favorite thread links to share.
would love to see and hear about your garden /grow set ups
Am starting earth worm areas, a little section each year to improve our drought damage land.
Ideas on fodders and sprouting...

Thanks

 

[humblehillsfarm]

I've got a nutrition calculator to help you formulate your own feed here:
https://humble-hills-farm.com/2020/...nd-cost-calculator-for-homemade-chicken-feed/

But I'm gonna tell you, no matter how I crunched the numbers and searched for bulk grains, or supplemented by growing my own, I couldn't get the price of homemade feed to be less than what you could buy at the store. Plus, there will always be that chance you're missing key nutrients in the feed when you mix your own. Commercial feed is down to a science.

 

[HellerFarm]

I've got a nutrition calculator to help you formulate your own feed here:
https://humble-hills-farm.com/2020/...nd-cost-calculator-for-homemade-chicken-feed/

But I'm gonna tell you, no matter how I crunched the numbers and searched for bulk grains, or supplemented by growing my own, I couldn't get the price of homemade feed to be less than what you could buy at the store. Plus, there will always be that chance you're missing key nutrients in the feed when you mix your own. Commercial feed is down to a science.

This is the most intense spreadsheet - i'm so excited to find this!!!!

 

[humblehillsfarm]

This is the most intense spreadsheet - i'm so excited to find this!!!!

Glad you were able to check it out! I'd still like to think that maybe I'll grow and supplement some of my own feed someday..... but probably not.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I have acres of forage - mix of everything I could get (thus far!) to grow and self seed here without much effort on my part. Bent Grass, Perennial Rye, Kentucky Blue, some Fescue, Panicum/"Panic Grass"/Switchgrass, Millet, Cudweed, Deer Tongue, Flax, Wild sawtooth Blackberry (f'n thorns!!!!), Purple Passion Fruit vine, domestic muscadine grapes, cilantro/coriander, fenugreek, rosemary, goldenrod, white mullien, phlox, ragwort, bermuda grass, sedge, dogfennel, rabbit tobacco, horseweed, primrose, lobelia, ponyfoot, sagewort, bogleaf, bluets, gayfeather... Yes, i tried EVERYTHING (except creeping thyme, my order has been cancelled, twice). Even have a few coffee senna.

/edit I forgot white, yellow, and red clover. MAYBE rape. I put down a lot of seed last year fall, but saw little evidence of it come spring. Same with the various radish.

My birds love to graze. Free range eagerly. The goats, too, now that we have them.

My feed bill looks largely unchanged.

I have the acreage I could attempt to grow grains commercially, but there is no way feeding my birds would add up to anything like the cost of maintaining and operating the heavy equipment needed to do so.

 

[humblehillsfarm]

I have the acreage I could attempt to grow grains commercially, but there is no way feeding my birds would add up to anything like the cost of maintaining and operating the heavy equipment needed to do so.

Exactly. And to try it by hand would be a full time job! I was thinking this year of growing more of my own heritage soy and dent corn so I could at least switch my meat birds to my own home grown feed for the last week of their life. I'd mix in a few more local organic grains for nutritional variety and probably still use some of regular poultry feed, but its fun to think about having a more "local" and "heritage" product from our meat birds. Still though, just harvesting a quart of soy beans took me 45 minutes of porch sitting.... that's a long time! Let's not talk about the corn......

 

[U_Stormcrow]

<== all man powered labor here. My time isn't worth much, but it is worth something. Thus my "low maintenance" efforts.

 

[humblehillsfarm]

<== all man powered labor here. My time isn't worth much, but it is worth something. Thus my "low maintenance" efforts.

So far I've done everything by hand too. With the exception of the neighbor breaking the initial ground for my garden, it's been hand raked and hoed every since! Truly a labor of love to be a DIYer that's for sure.