How do I make homemade feed?

[RoninComputing]

Yes they can....
They pick out what they like best first, then work their way down the preference list to the items they like least....
not sure just where my grape vine leaves came in that order but they stripped em bare, along with most of the rest of the garden plot when they found(made) a hole in the fence.
I have 11 goats of varying ages from kids to old billy the patriarch... and I think he was the ringleader.

Martin

 

[ScaredOfShadows]

Here is what my neighbor does to feed his diverse birds and even goats :

some bags he gets in 50# and uses half the bag in 2 seperate barrels :

50 gal foodgrade barrel

1 50 # bag of flock raiser
about 25# of wheat or oats
25# black oil sunflower seeds
about 10 #s of dry split peas and sometimes a mix of other dry beans
50# deer corn he gets for like 4$ from a guy up the road who sells it from his corn crops.
(he grinds up egg shells, a bag of oyster shell, DE, and bones from fish or deer in his grinder for calcium every week and adds a cup or so to his bucket every morning as well )

we have a little store here that sells split peas and other beans by the pound cheap and so my neighbor goes there and buys their old beans every month to split between the fowls and his hogs (also he gets this places scrap fish and meat scraps for them as well - but hes goes fishing all the time and adds the left over bits of fish and stuff when he fishes to the animals as well - so free protein)

he mixes all this up a bit out of each bag at a time, mixes it, adds a bit more out of each bag, mixes it with a boat oar, adds, mixes, etc...until the barrels are full.

He does sometimes mix other things up into it just depends on if he finds it and such, and the pricing. He's very old school farming type and he's all about making the most out of his meat roosters and his laying hens and not having to split around going back and forth getting different foods out of barrels to haul in a 5 gal bucket in the mornings, so it saves him trips and he free ranges his birds as well.

His chickens are doing great, they had been penned up for awhile cause we were quarantining other birds and such so some of his girls do look mighty rough right now between the coop pecking order and the randy roos.

For my neighbor its cost effective for him so he doesnt have to buy so many different feeds for all his animals as well as the fact he has 4 large garden plots, fruit trees, ect in the summer and he hunts and fishes and he has connections to allow him to get stuff alot cheaper than many people can get it. So I dont really know how cost effective the mix would be to someone else. This is something he's been raising his animals on for years and his chickens lay very well, have a very nice look about them, and are getting a more diverse diet.