Yes, home grown would be even more difficult than buying already harvested grains. People do supplement with sprouts, and that is easy enough if you have a small flock, but actually growing their entire ration would use a lot of space and time. Supplementing with sprouts is more useful in winter time when vegetation is low, IME, unless you are not able to free range at all at any time of the year, in which case it would be a good supplement throughout the year.
I was feeding Flock Raiser but decided to switch to pellets to save on waste, though I use a crumble starter in the fermented feed. They get fermented feed in the am and pellets are available almost all day except when they are free ranging since then I want them to focus on eating the bugs and vegetation instead of being fat lazies hanging out by the feeder. The pellets I buy are a 20% meat bird pellet, nutrition is near identical to flock raiser, and they are mini pellets since they are designed to be fed from 3 weeks on. I get them from my local Southern States dealer. I pay $11.95/50# bag, tax included. I also have a small two compartment trough in the run and one side has grit and the other side has oyster shell.
In my fermented feed I use a 28% game bird starter and cut that to 18-20% using a low-corn scratch grains mixture. Cutting and fermenting alter the nutritional value of both components, but they also get to free range daily and get some scraps so their nutrients are not being solely met by any one source anyway. Why do I also give them fermented feed? It stretches my feed further (I have ~70 birds at any given time though I constantly hatch and sell so it fluctuates), I like that they get some whole grains, they really seem to like it, and it is supposed to have great nutritional and gut health benefits.
