Does anyone have homemade or custom rations they'd like to share? I'd love to get away from feeding high priced by-products in a bag. I'm sure I can do a much better job and provide a more nutritious ration for the same price or less. Besides, the feed has to be teehee if I grind and prepare small batches at a time. I don't mind buying a vitamin/amino mix but I'd love to mix up the grains myself. Have you read the ingredient list on your chicken feed? It's worse than the cheapest of the cheap pet foods. Nothing but by products. Really, fresh, homemade foods have got to be better. I know how to use a Pearson's square but I'd like to have some sample rations that are tried and true so that I have an idea of how much of each ingredient works well. I'm not worried about maximum production in either my layers or broilers, just healthy chickens, tasty eggs and tasty meat. If I get a few less eggs or keep the broilers a couple more weeks I'm ok with that. I do give them pasture, they have tons of bugs and alfalfa hay. We have year-round pasture except for a few weeks when I'm establishing the winter rye/clover. I also provide more produce scraps than they can finish most days. I'm looking for a bread source for stale bread. I may have found one, which would be great. I'm also going to try to get all the cheap pumpkins after Halloween and check my produce market for throw aways.
I stick with a nice organic feed from Countryside so the ingredient list isn't too horrendous but your post had an awful lot of non or low protein items. You need to make sure to keep the protein up. You could grow your own mealie, dubias, black fly larva or such to help with that. Sorry I don't have a mix to give you.
