Home Feeding Ideas and Solutions Discussion Thread

[Lacy Blues]

What if someone wanted more than 5 of 10 gallons? I just found out that there is a brewery about an hour away from me. If I could get a whole lot of grain, it would be fantastic. Any ideas how I would go about doing this? I'm wondering about transport and storage of wet grain. I would like to get as much as possible as I certainly cannot afford to drive an hour one way very often.

How do you guys do it? (those who do, of course)

Nobody has any ideas?

 

[Kassaundra]

Nobody has any ideas?

The closeset brewery to me is about 1 hour drive and down an expensive toll road ($5 round trip just about) so I don't have experience w/ it, but storing wet food for very long in large batches I know of no other way then in ferment water, and that I only store as I'm using it no more then a month or so at a time. Have you put pen to paper for time and gas, I would bet it would make the whole thing cost prohibative. If you had others in your immediate area that were interested and could difer costs in the group and use the larger amounts maybe????? But transporting large amounts of wet food (heavy) would cost sooooo much in gas(actully desil probably) Sorry I really don't have an answer to your question other then when I considered it found it to be way to cost and time prohibative for me.

 

[Mrs. Fluffy Puffy]

I figure this is the best thread to post my question. : )

I am needing a recipe that will work both for chickens, waterfowl, and gamebirds. Does anyone have any ideas? There is a feed mill about two hours away, if I had a recipe that would cover all the protein, etc levels, that would be great. Thanks for any ideas.

~ Aspen

 

[JulieNKC]

I figure this is the best thread to post my question. : )

I am needing a recipe that will work both for chickens, waterfowl, and gamebirds. Does anyone have any ideas? There is a feed mill about two hours away, if I had a recipe that would cover all the protein, etc levels, that would be great. Thanks for any ideas.

~ Aspen

I feed gamebird grower to everyone I have. I mix it with scratch and oats for the geese, ducks, and chickens (turkeys too when I had them). Babies get theirs mixed with rolled oats, unless they are poults or something who need the protein. I use it because I usually have a few ducklings around, and I prefer gamebird for them instead of chick grower, so everyone gets it.

 

[Mrs. Fluffy Puffy]

I would love to be able to buy gamebird feed for everyone, but it's too high in protein for the waterfowl (it'd be fine for the chickens and gamebirds), and it's way out of my price range, not to mention super expensive. Glad it works for you though.

~ Aspen

I feed gamebird grower to everyone I have. I mix it with scratch and oats for the geese, ducks, and chickens (turkeys too when I had them). Babies get theirs mixed with rolled oats, unless they are poults or something who need the protein. I use it because I usually have a few ducklings around, and I prefer gamebird for them instead of chick grower, so everyone gets it.

 

[Pozees]

All the billions of pounds of chemical fertilizers and insecticides going to grow those vegetables and soy they eat does more harm to animals than any meat eater possibly could.
You're both spot on. These people are lost. How on earth did people live this long without those crazy diets? And some have even lived to be 100!

I know I'm late to this party, but RIGHT ON! I have been saving this thread for reading and finally dug into it, for the obvious reasons - only have 7 hens right now, but I am weighing the possibility of expanding in the early spring for myriad reasons, not the least of which the issues you have all been raising. I don't see us doing everything discussed but using even some of the strategies you have shared will greatly enhance the health and economy of any endeavor with regard to keeping chickens. Tonight DH looked around and said, "If you had 100 chickens you would have to hire a chef!"

 

[Pozees]

Yes, that's the problem with a lot of these homefeeding ideas. They often don't scale up very well. 10 chickens is easy, 40 is one thing, but when you get up to 100+ things like homegrown feed mixes and cooking things and such start to become a little unwieldy. Hence the popularity of grain-based feed I suppose--it's storable, portable, edible raw. Unfortunately it's often expensive in small quantities and/or not available locally. But the beauty of it is that there's no reason to hew to a "one size fits all" approach. Even on a commercial scale, too. There's no sense to that! It's about being practical and farsighted and figuring out what makes sense according to scale and local region, and finally, unique circumstance, because not everyone is raising fowl for the same reasons or has the same resources. It's as silly to use a backhoe to plant a tomato as it is to use a shovel to dig a swimming pool--if you get my drift...

SO keep the ideas comin'!

Speaking of appropriate feeding methods on the commercial scale, I was unable to follow up on or confirm this but I read in Harvey Ussery's book about a company called Vermont Composting that kept a flock of laying hens fed nothing but what they could find for themselves in and around the giant compost piles, which of course is lots and lots of bugs, mainly. And the company sells the eggs as a side business, at what one assumes must thus be virtually 100% profit. And what tasty eggs they must be! Now there's the sort of clever and resourceful localized approach we'd like to see more of!

I recently read Patricia Foreman's "City Chicks" in which she describes the operation wherein chickens are fed solely on compost materials accepted by this operation - think it was 1200 chickens? She says the operation was put out of business by big disposal companies influencing County Commissioners to make the operation illegal. The possibilities ...

 

[Pozees]

I am definitely in the wrong business. I would have shipped you some duckweed (Lemna spp.) just for the cost of postage.

Can I interest you in some string alga?

Still have any duckweed?

 

[JulieNKC]

I would love to be able to buy gamebird feed for everyone, but it's too high in protein for the waterfowl (it'd be fine for the chickens and gamebirds), and it's way out of my price range, not to mention super expensive. Glad it works for you though.

~ Aspen

Gamebird is expensive, but scratch and oats are cheap. The ducks and geese get one smallish scoop of gamebird, one scoop of oats, and once scoop of scratch or corn, about 1 part gamebird to 3 parts grains so they aren't eating that much gamebird (or turkey grower, depending where I get it).

 

[RaZ]

Still have any duckweed?

My duckweed has been gone for about a month now. We had an early cold spell.