Home Made Chicken Feed Calculations Spreadsheet - Any suggestions for improving it?

[sanfordchickens]

We've been making our own chicken feed using mostly grains. The only purchased parts are soybean meal and Nutri-Balancer. I have several requests for the spreadsheet I made, so I posted it on my blog:

http://www.montie.com/2021/08/22/make-your-own-chicken-feed/

Please don't hesitate to drop me a PM with any suggestions for improving it.

 

[nuthatched]

@Kiki is it you with all the spreadsheets on feeds?

 

[Kiki]

@Kiki is it you with all the spreadsheets on feeds?

Yes it is me.
I believe my spreadsheet is linked in my signature below.

 

[RoosterBird]

Please gimme its screenshot

 

[Kiki]

Please gimme its screenshot

Are you asking for a screenshots of my Google sheet?


I'm not sure who you are asking what.
You didn't quote or reply to an exact post.

 

[RoosterBird]

Are you asking for a screenshots of my Google sheet?


I'm not sure who you are asking what.
You didn't quote or reply to an exact post.

I am asking for pic/screenshot sheet of feed making whatever it is haha

 

[yestoquail]

We've been making our own chicken feed using mostly grains. The only purchased parts are soybean meal and Nutri-Balancer. I have several requests for the spreadsheet I made, so I posted it on my blog:

http://www.montie.com/2021/08/22/make-your-own-chicken-feed/

Please don't hesitate to drop me a PM with any suggestions for improving it.

 

[yestoquail]

Hi, this spread sheet is so helpful, as I need to find ways to boost the protein in my quail feed. Any possibility that I could get an 'active' copy so that I could add some things particular to quail ? ( just for my own use)

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Recommend not using the offered Spreadsheet. Hardly better than running a single equation thru a calculator. Fat? Fiber? Amino Acid targets? Other Ingredients??? Making feed at home is easy. Making nutritionally complete, quality feed at home is HARD.

This was a day's work, and I consider it to be significantly incomplete - needs key vitamins added, and some other improvements - but its a start on the process. If you are going the home feeding route, I strongly recommend you build your own calculator, as I did. I found the process of researching each ingredient to be instructive, reinforcing the knowledgebase I developed up to that point.

I further recommend that, to the extent practicable, you source all your feed nutrition information from the same location - don't cherry pick data from the source which makes a particular ingredient appear "best". Then, after making what appears to be a "working" recipe with the generic ingredient, add additional lines of ingredients with the information from the guaranteed nutritional analysis of the "Name brand" ingredient you are buying, and recalculate your mix.

Don't leave anything out. Why? OP's 100 pound feed mix looks fine on their website, until you remember that it needs 3# of Fertrell's Nutrimix (60#/ton) and some quantity of Calcium (150# per ton is Fertrell's recommend - not mine) Once those quantities are put in, the OP's feed drops to just 14.77% protein, a quite resonable 3.6% fiber, and a low 2.4% fat. The entire amino acid profile is deficient or borderline, as well - though at least the Fertrell's lifts methionine levels to the low end of the recommended range.

With a better calculator, one could see quickly that using hard winter wheat instead of generic "wheat" and "naked or dehulled" oats compared to whole oats would be beneficial to hitting desired targets, though threonine levels remain below target. A little more work, and one can make a superficially balanced feed that way.