Homemade Chicken Feed?

[MarthaTheRooster]

Hey Y'all! I recently scrolling through Pinterest and found a post about making your own chicken feed. I have a lot of questions regarding this subject, as I have never heard of anyone doing this before. How do I go about making sure the feed is nutritionally balanced? What is considered nutritionally balanced diet for a chicken? What types of grains/seeds/supplements should I use and avoid? What portions of those ingredients should I use?

My flock already gets a huge assortment of "treats" like corn on the cob, cabbage, tomatoes, leafy greens and more, but my thought is anything homemade has to be better than premade feed we buy at the store. I am very new to this idea of making chicken feed at home so any little bit of information you can offer me will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[paneubert]

my thought is anything homemade has to be better than premade feed we buy at the store.!

Explain what this means to you a bit more. One one hand you may be able to claim you used higher quality or fresher ingredients (maybe). But on the other hand you have teams of PhD level animal nutritionists who developed the feed formulations for the commercial feeds you buy. Educated people who are paid a living to formulate feed and know about the tiny variations in all the vitamins and minerals needed. Some folks will claim that those PhD people are paid to find the cheapest way to meet the minimum to keep an animal alive. There might be some truth to that.

The problem you will run into, and the common problem you will find if you read some of the dozens of other threads on this site about homemade feed is that you will not be able to source the vitamin and mineral concentrates at a cost effective price unless you are feeding hundreds of chickens. The vitamin and mineral concentrates are expensive, and come in volumes that are meant to be added to literal tons of food. So it would be hard to even measure a small enough amount to add to a smaller volume of feed, such as 50 or 100 pounds that you might be making at one time.

My knee jerk reaction whenever I see someone post about wanting to learn to make their own feed is to just yell NOOOOOOOOOO!! Especially when it includes the key word "Pinterest". Just being honest here.

 

[rjohns39]

Feed is a very complex subject. But if you have the ingredients you need near you it can be done. I am a huge fan of fertrell, their nutri-balancer is the vitamin base used by many feed mills. A 10lbs bag is $40 on their on-line store. But if you can find a local dealer you can eliminate freight. Most recipes call for 60lbs to a ton. A five gallon bucket is about 25lbs. That said, fertrell customers have access to their nutritionists. I trust their products and things like fish or crab meal are what I consider to be high risk products.

Premier 1 sells a nice back yard hammer mill for small scale production (not cheap). A cheap electric cement mixer will do a fairly nice job of mixing feed.

The polyface farms recipes call for nutribalancer, oats, corn, whole roasted soy fish meal and limestone.

I would not recommend monkeying with a commercial feed unless you know exactly what's in it and in what quantities. Different ingredients have limits that if exceeded will prevent the birds from being able to absorb the nutrients in the feed. There are simply too many variables that can cause issues. In the scraps and what not you give them, the general rule of thumb is not more than 10% of their diet. What they forage while they're free ranging doesn't count.

 

[Perris]

you will not be able to source the vitamin and mineral concentrates at a cost effective price unless you are feeding hundreds of chickens. The vitamin and mineral concentrates are expensive, and come in volumes that are meant to be added to literal tons of food

I too see where you are coming from, and do not diss the abilities of specialist nutritionists. But as a backyard chicken keeper I (and I suspect the OP) am not looking for concentrates nor a cost effective price; I seek the vitamins and minerals in the form nature provides them, in plant and animal stuffs. And since they and chickens co-evolved, they often come in the right size packages naturally; the trick is to identify and then supply them, if they are not already in the environment and/or the chickens can't free range adequately.

 

[MarthaTheRooster]

I am so confused, to make my own feed or to not? I free range my girls on a few acres and then they have a huge amount of farmland to go an explore. Should I be feeding them layers crumble, should I mix it with other goodies, can I just make my own feed?

I understand that premade food is made with a lot of attention to detail but what if I just want to make them my own feed? Cost doesn't really concern me I just want happy and healthy girls.

 

[Parront]

This seemingly simple question can become complex. I like a book by Harvey Ussery, "The Small-Scale Poultry Flock" has a lot of great information on this subject. The feed we get keeps going up in price, and some question the quality.

 

[chkva]

I completely see where your coming from here. Maybe I could use my normal feed as a base and add some other goodies to it???

This is what I do... I add split peas, seeds, oats, barley, and a few other things then I stir it all up. My chickens and chicks love it, they are very healthy too. I give their egg shells with oyster shell on the side for a calcium supplement. They also get scraps at dinner time, but that's after they've eaten their feed and foraged all day.

 

[MarthaTheRooster]

This seemingly simple question can become complex. I like a book by Harvey Ussery, "The Small-Scale Poultry Flock" has a lot of great information on this subject. The feed we get keeps going up in price, and some question the quality.

Added it to my amazon "to read" list, thanks!

 

[Parront]

I think that the best thing is what you are doing, let them have lots of pasture and find their own food along with getting plenty of exercise and sunshine. The protein is the expensive part of the feed from the store, and they are able to get that from ranging. You might find your feed bill is lower in summer if you have enough range for them. Put a dish of oyster out with the layer pellets, so that they can get that calcium if they do not eat enough pellets.

 

[Acre4Me]

Could you please give me a ratio that you follow please?

That poster hasn’t been on since January. You can click on a posters name to see when last on. Try searching this forum for homemade feed-there have been several posts with formulas in the past.