Homemade Mash for my girls?

spankarelli

Chirping
6 Years
Jan 30, 2013
13
1
65
I've been looking in to some sort of homemade mash for my girls since I haven't been able to let them roam as much as I'd like lately, being 9 months preggo myself. Tossing a bowl of scratch and laying pellets has been my hubby's daily doings lately. They also get all our scraps (except for chicken bones that go to the poochies). He's been so busy around the place that he can't keep an eye on the birds so they haven't gotten to forage. We live in the Daniel Boone Nat'l Forest so needless to say we have a lot of hungry varmints around craving chicken and hawks galore and a heavily trafficked road out front that seems doomed to attract the chickens to it. That's why I like to make sure I'm outside with the girls when I let 'em loose for a couple hours before dark. Anyway, I've been noticing that the yolks aren't as lovely orange as they used to be and our egg production has gone down by a couple eggs a day here and there. We lost one to who knows what, I found her dead on a nest. Can an egg get stuck?

I'll admit right now that I don't know much about chickens at all, but I'm trying to learn. I've been all over these forums finding great info. Anyway, I had some as a kid that my dog ended up eating so that was the end of that back then, and now our girls have grown up and been laying good. They turned 2 in March. We had a bout of cannibalism 2 years ago with some australorps we got from McMurray, and lost like a dozen to what we presume was an opossum. After buying 50 straight run barred rocks, black stars, and australorps as 3 day old chicks, we are left with 2 roosters (gonna be 1 shortly if I can figure out who is crowing at 3am), and 11 hens. I won't ever buy from McMurray after the bout with devil-birds. We have been making sure they get plenty of calcium from the rocks and stuff in our driveway and oyster shells and protein to not have anymore cannibalism. The funny thing is the half of the chicks we bought locally at the co-op never had a problem with cannibalism and were fed the same as the ones that did, bagged chick starter. Would a chick starter mash have possibly helped that problem? We have not set any eggs for incubating yet, as we haven't wanted to get in over our heads before we learned more about the chickens' needs. Probably next year if I can find or make a reasonably priced incubator.

I am going later today to the mill up in Somerset to get some scratch and oats. We want to try feeding mash to help offset some $ since we don't have much and because I've read about it being so much healthier for the girls. Of course, I know I need to let them forage several times a week at least to let them eat all the ticks they want. We certainly do not have a shortage of them in our yard. Anyone have any good "recipes" for a mash that would be ample enough protein and calcium? And is it really better to mix up small batches (like in a 5 gal bucket) at a time and let it ferment/sprout the grains? If so do the grains need to be ground or will whole do? I've searched the internet and found many but just am not sure what grains are the most important to make sure they are getting a well rounded diet. We also don't have all the dough in the world to buy grains we can't get locally. Ideally, we need this to cost at least a little less or at least about the same as what we are feeding them now. I just want to make sure they are as healthy as possible. It broke my heart to find that hen dead on the nest. Makes me wonder if there's something more we should do. That's why we started looking into other avenues of healthy feed. Also, some recipes call for fish meal- can I use fish emulsion like I use on my garden for the same purpose, or is there some specific goop in the fish meal that is different? I mean is it just ground up fish or what?

Thanks for any input or advice you can give.
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Here's a recipe I found and plan to use:

6 cups wheat
3 cups oats
3 cups barley
2 1/4 cups greens/veggies
2 1/4 cups lentils or split peas
3/4 cup plain yogurt
3 tbsp molasses
3 tbsp trace mineral salt

I believe all ingredients should be ground coarsely before being mixed. Recipe said it makes 7.5 feedings for 24 chicks, but I haven't gotten my chicks yet so I can't verify.
 
Thanks for the recipe. I already have most of that on hand around here so I will have to try it out. :)
 

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