Homemade feed for my hens?? Better than commercial feed? More affordable? I need the truth!

[Mother of Chaos]

The Omnivore's Dilemma? Excellent book. I will read anything that Michael Pollan has written.

I had picked it up a few years ago but wilted under all the corn bit. Read it for real last fall semester for my agriculture class.

I've cooked from scratch (not cooked chicken scratch, lol) for years, so it was to a large extent preaching to the choir, but an excellent presentation.

 

[Altairsky]

Yep I grow my own vegetables and I have farmer friends who sells me meat of all kind. I spend nothing at the grocery store and I cook everything from scratch. I ferment my own food, make cheese at home, and feed my chickens locally farmed seeds and locally butchered meat, and leftovers from my dairy products. I can't ask for anything better.

My chickens don't even have a run. Their run is my whole property which isn't super big, but it's highly enriched with many wild herb and fruit trees.
2 Acres of just grass is worse than 1/4 of an acre of orchards forest. What matters in free ranging is biodiversity, not raw space.

 

[CabritaChicks]

Yep I grow my own vegetables and I have farmer friends who sells me meat of all kind. I spend nothing at the grocery store and I cook everything from scratch. I ferment my own food, make cheese at home, and feed my chickens locally farmed seeds and locally butchered meat, and leftovers from my dairy products. I can't ask for anything better.

My chickens don't even have a run. Their run is my whole property which isn't super big, but it's highly enriched with many wild herb and fruit trees.
2 Acres of just grass is worse than 1/4 of an acre of orchards forest. What matters in free ranging is biodiversity, not raw space.

Same here—I only make goat cheese from milk sourced from a local farmer who, quite literally, defines "free range." But that is the extent of the 'cheese or dairy'... haha. He walks his goats all over the island, letting them graze as they go, basically mowing people’s lawns for them.

We don't have a lot of butchered meat as the island is only a little less than 8 square miles (you cant count rocky submerging bluffs)- so we dont have a lot of livestock. But neighboring islands do.

I’m in the process of growing a multi-acre food forest—it’s a work in progress, but right now we’ve got around 60 edible species, including exotic fruits, heirloom specialty vegetables, herbs, flowers, and tea plants like chamomile and moringa, etc. I’m a huge advocate for this kind of holistic system and even give lectures on the subject.

The real issue arises when people aren’t honest about what they can actually provide their flocks nutritionally. Just because hens are still laying doesn’t mean they’re healthy. In my research, I ran bloodwork on a number of chickens and, unsurprisingly (or maybe very unsurprisingly), many had multiple deficiencies and underlying health issues.

So I’m raising my girls a bit differently. They free-range through jungle forest and coral reef beaches—where calcium is naturally abundant, by the way, and their kidneys are in great shape. They also get kitchen scraps. Since I cook everything from scratch, there’s always plenty to go around—from cooked salmon skins to raw peppers and fruits.

I’m obsessed with fodder—but honestly, I can’t grow it fast enough. I’ve also integrated pollinator-friendly flowers like echinacea, etc, which have added benefits. Totally worth the effort just to see how happy and healthy the flock is.

 

[Shadrach]

Before I returned to the UK I looked after freerange chickens for 10 years on a smallholding in Catalonia, Spain. Very rarely had sick chickens apart from the health problems close to death at ten and eleven years old. I did supply commercial feed at various feed stations around the property on an eat and pick up feed after each tribe ate what they wanted. From Spring to Autumn they ate very little of the commercial feed compared to the quanties eaten I read about here on BYC.
What gets overlooked in the myopic view of feed is it's not just about what gets fed, it's the excercise the chickens get by foraging that helps to keep them healthy.

 

[CabritaChicks]

This is Isla- I pick her up all the time to bring her back up the mountain- but 'george' the Ibis (he lives in our salt pond) is around and it spooks her- LOL.

But on either side (and behind) of her is jungle forest- they are all getting used to the critters that move none-stop- haha.

Edit: (I took these moments ago as rain is coming and I had to move their temporary coop due to the construction of a extra building on my property.

 

[Sic]

accept that your experience and situation is at an extreme end of the bell curve. BYCers in Illinois, Nevada, Nebraska, even Central Florida aren't so fortunate. Their nutritional needs remain the same - some of us just find them easier to meet with local resources than others.

Sure, different environments provide different food sources, my point remains the same. Chickens do not need grains. Here in the winter food sources are scarce. What you might find interesting is that my chickens eat the same thing as the grouse depending on the season. Winter time they eat the leaves (needles) of spruce and hemlock and the buds of blueberry, huckleberry, salmonberry, raspberry, alder and willow as well as lichen and some mosses, and on the beach they eat kelp and eel grass that washes up on shore. Late spring, summer and fall, food sources are more plentiful, being opportunistic feeders as they are, they're feeding on amphipods , arthropods, mollusks, leaves, berries, roots, tubers, fungi, sedges, flowers and seeds. I make a decent effort to wild harvest all available food sources during the growing seasons and dry/ freeze-dry and canning, to provide feed through 5 months of winter season here, that includes a plethora of seafood, and venison organ meat. Most galliformes are opportunistic feeders, if you know what your local galliformes in your area are eating, you have a pretty good place to start. Formulating your own feed is not for the faint of heart, it is neither easy, nor cheaper, as it will cost you time and/or money, I consider it time well spent, others will not. This year I purchased organic non-gmo chick feed as my time is limited. Is it expensive? Relatively, yes it is, organic is likely to always cost more, but to me it is money well spent. I'm not opposed to commercial feed, or to feed containing grains, however, just like their jungle fowl relatives, and many other galliformes, it isn't needed or required in the diet... anyway, I'm out

 

[Jmcintosh23]

Hello all, I have 11 hens (6 are pullets) and I want to make them a home-made feed but I want to be sure that it is balanced. All of my hens are used for eggs, not meat, and I want a feed that does not include calcium in the recipe because I want to be able to feed it to my pullets when they reach 8 wks of age, and to the older hens who aren't laying anymore. I will provide calcium sources in another feeder for all my layers. Does anyone have any recipes that have worked for their flock? I give them black soldier fly larvae as a treat a couple times a week and they have a large run with a compost they can eat bugs from. Also, is homemade feed generally more affordable than commercial feed?

Just comment if you need any other info about my flock

How do you do the black soldier flies larvae?

 

[ChickenShepherd_6116]

How do you do the black soldier flies larvae?

I get a bag from TSC and I just sprinkle a small scoop of them into the run every so often. When they are free-ranging, I can call them back by shaking the scoop with the larvae in it, they hear it and come running.

 

[gtaus]

Well, I will share my truth pertaining to homemade versus commercial feed as requested in your header.

When I first got laying hens, about 5 years ago, I looked into making my own homemade chicken feed. I went to our local grain feed elevator and got their recipe mix for the various types of chicken feed they sell. For my small flock of 10 hens, there was no way I could mix my own at their price without buying in quantities of feed far in excess of my storage capabilities. I gave up on that project before I even got to the point of added calcium, vitamins, etc...

My strategy for healthy feed at lower cost is to buy my commercial feed when it goes on sale at our local Fleet store. I can usually save about $2.00 per bag. I transfer my feed into 5-gallon buckets with airtight lids to give them extra life in storage. I label and date all my buckets, using the oldest feed first. If I time my requirements right, my supply of commercial feed is nearing the end when a new sale on chicken feed comes around. For me, that is maybe 4 months. My feed is still fresh in the airtight 5-gallon buckets when I open them.

Another way I save money on feed is buying open "Oops" bags at our Fleet store. These are bags that may have ripped open during handling and our store sells them at a discount, even though little or no feed may have spilled out. They just cannot sell it as a "new" complete bag of feed. I take advantage of open bags as often as I can, storing the feed in my 5-gallon buckets.

Our Fleet store sells Gift Cards once or twice a year, usually around the Holidays, for 10% off. I pretty much know how much feed I will buy in a year, so I will buy $500.00 worth of Gift Cards for $450.00. That means every bag of feed I buy with a Gift Card has an additional 10% discount.

For the time and effort required to make homemade feed, my truth is that it was better, and less expensive, for me to buy commercial feed, especially when I can take advantage of sales, open bags, and Gift Card discounts.

 

[Dokdream]

Hello all, I have 11 hens (6 are pullets) and I want to make them a home-made feed but I want to be sure that it is balanced. All of my hens are used for eggs, not meat, and I want a feed that does not include calcium in the recipe because I want to be able to feed it to my pullets when they reach 8 wks of age, and to the older hens who aren't laying anymore. I will provide calcium sources in another feeder for all my layers. Does anyone have any recipes that have worked for their flock? I give them black soldier fly larvae as a treat a couple times a week and they have a large run with a compost they can eat bugs from. Also, is homemade feed generally more affordable than commercial feed?

Just comment if you need any other info about my flock

I use Dumore and Kelly's feed mostly. I treat them daily with dried meal worms or scratch grain -- a small part of their diet. I regularly string up ears of corn from Walmart. I run a skewer through the cob so it dangles and my girls play a rousing game of "teather corn." They also get sweet potato peels, celery, and other veggies. Sometimes we trade eggs for arugula, which they adore. I recycle their eggshells. First, I boil them with drain opener (lye) to hydrolyze the residual protein. Then I rinse throughly and run them through a blender to make "sand." I transfer to a tray and dry in the sun. Then, I blend it with the treats. Yes, much of it ends up on the ground, but the girls get a lot of calcium anyhow. My hens seem to like pellets better than crumbles, so that is what I standardize on. And, "no," they are on our "farm" as pets, egg layers, and entertainers. They do all three jobs so well.