Home Feeding Ideas and Solutions Discussion Thread

[Chemguy]

If you're thrifty and brew your own beer using grain, you can give the spent grain to your chicks. It's depleted, but still has some of the vitamins (B-vitamins), carbohydrates and protein. It is a bit high in fiber...so watch out! I wouldn't use this as a primary source of feed, but rather as a compliment to other feed. I have not done this myself. I stopped brewing years before I had chickens and I'm not about to start again. But, I do have a friend who feeds some spent barley to his small flock and swears by it. And, yess, they do look very healthy and vibrant.

 

[henney penny]

I have the bucket that I put all my kitchen scrapes in, in the morning a few times a week I mix in oatmeal and canned blueberries(bent cans that were thrown away at a plant so got them for free)and my homemade yogurt and hot water and mix it all togather and they have a warm breakfast.I especially do this on cold lmornings like this morning it was 3 below 0.It is so cute they know what they going to get and I have all these necks strectching upwards trying to see what I have to give them.Can you tell I like my chickens?LOL

 

[CluckyJay]

I use a lot of weeds. Chickweed makes up a large portion of what my chickens eat. Also, whenever I drain my cooked meat, they get the fat from the pan.

I use the deep litter method and there are plenty of little bugs living in it. The chickens love gobbling them up.

My husband has been fishing and I am feeding a lot of huge rock fish to the chickens. They love them! All of our scraps go to the chickens. With three people, we have a lot of scraps each day.

A twenty pound rockfish is a common catch and that feed the chickens for a couple of days.

I have found the neatest thing about slippery elm, my chickens/goats seem to be doing really well when I feed them a lot of the soup I make from boiling the limbs. I mix this into their oats, everyday. I have the trees on my land so its free.

We also have the mealworms and black soldier fly larvae. This year they will make up a goodly portion of their food.

Free ranging the chickens cuts back on a huge portion of the food bill, too. Just have to expect losses to predators. Haven't had any losses since we got the goats though. Guess they are chasing the predators off?

Also, growing vegetables and fruits is a huge money saver. As long as I mulch everything really well and use my own compost, cost of growing is nearly nothing!

I LOVE thread like this!!!

 

[SueBaby]

I'm somewhat hesitant to post here because you all sound like you really know what you're doing. I've had my 7 chickens for about 9 months and am still learning, learning, learning.

My biggest question is this: With free-ranging (2-3 hours a day), supplementing with scraps, mealworms, and garden extras will chickens that have access to layer crumble at all times eat less crumble and be satisfied or will they continue to eat the same amount of crumble and get fat? I have always been "frugal" (AKA cheap) and I don't like things to go to waste. I would love to reduce my dependence on purchased feed, but am not really ready to do restricted feeding/rations or whatever you'd call it. Are chickens like fish that will eat themselves to the point of sickness if allowed? I don't get the feeling that they are, but I would love to have some of you knowledgeable folks chime in on this.

 

[CluckyJay]

One thing I quit doing was free-feeding their purchased foods. Now they get a measured amount and I check them often to make sure they aren't losing weight. That saved A LOT of money.

 

[Kassaundra]

I raise Dubia Roaches. My chickens love them!

How long have you been raising dubia's? How much do you feed out?

 

[Kassaundra]

I'm somewhat hesitant to post here because you all sound like you really know what you're doing. I've had my 7 chickens for about 9 months and am still learning, learning, learning.

My biggest question is this: With free-ranging (2-3 hours a day), supplementing with scraps, mealworms, and garden extras will chickens that have access to layer crumble at all times eat less crumble and be satisfied or will they continue to eat the same amount of crumble and get fat? I have always been "frugal" (AKA cheap) and I don't like things to go to waste. I would love to reduce my dependence on purchased feed, but am not really ready to do restricted feeding/rations or whatever you'd call it. Are chickens like fish that will eat themselves to the point of sickness if allowed? I don't get the feeling that they are, but I would love to have some of you knowledgeable folks chime in on this.

I supplement a lot but still have pellets out free choice 24/7 we modified the feeder so there is almost no waste. I have not noticed them getting fat they do eat less pellets when they have more goodies. We have 10 chickens per coop (2 coops) and go through 1 50 lb bag of pellets in the winter every 1.5-2 months and in summer over 3 months (for each coop)

I would measure, but our feeding system is a no thinking fill it once and let it go type set up, we put the bag of pellets in when it's empty (it fits a whole bag) and don't worry about it until it's empty again.

 

[poularde]

I really enjoy this thread. Thank you everyone for discussing this. I have played around a bit with feed. I feed a whole grain diet to my birds and I am happy with the results. I plan on trying different things with raising my birds this year . Love this video. Thank you for posting.

I also wanted to share some other relevant links.

The first discusses the Korean Natural Farming method of feeding, which I find interesting and which my own current approach is based on:

http://kimcschang.blogspot.com/2010/11/natural-farming-chicken-feed.html

The second is an article by Harvey Ussery that I found particularly insightful and useful (he always writes great articles):

http://www.themodernhomestead.us/article/Making-Poultry-Feeds-1.html

Enjoy!

 

[skunknchatter]

Seems like most of us have a scrap bucket in the house for foodstuffs. My chickens will eat just about anything. I hear you shouldn't feed them this or that but my grandma fed her chickens ANY food scraps and never had a massive chicken death episode.

I get partial bags of grain from the feed store that have been broken open and they are dirt cheap. I use this rather than buying comercial scratch. I also get boxes of the outer leaves of lettuce and other greens from the super market. They give them (and bruised veggies and fruit) to me for free. They're just happy not to have to dispose of them.

In the summer they get stuff from the garden and when we start putting up corn we throw the cobs to them after we cut the kernels off. We don't do creamed corn so there is still a lot of "meat" on the cobs. Also everyone in the family knows to save fruit and vegg scraps for our chickens and meat and bones for the dogs.

 

[galanie]

Once again, I want to warn people against raising regular housefly maggots to feed their chickens. You do run a real risk of them dying from botulism poisoning due to the medium that maggots must be grown in. A contributor to BackYard Chicken magazine, I think it was Harvey Usary but I could be wrong, wrote on the rewards of doing so years ago. He ended up losing a lot of birds to botulism poisoning and has since changed his tune. Apologies to Mr. Usary if I have the wrong name.

Black Soldier Fly larvae though, are a completely different thing! I only wish I could have gotten my "farm" off to a better start. I had some going but there were just too many other types of flies around and I ended up with a housefly maggot bucket that had to be buried. Talk about a gross mess. I suppose it's our climate, too hot or something to get them going well. Darn it.

FYI Black Soldier flies look more like a small wasp than a fly and their larvae look nothing like what we call "maggots" though they are called that sometimes. They are very, very nutritious and safe for animals to eat.