How to feed chickens without buying feed

[RainbowBirds_of_a_Feather]

Hey all,

I love and utilize all your suggestions. However, there is one thing that we often throw away that chickens will love to eat. LEFTOVERS!! Yup, that is right we throw out so much leftover food that that can be consumed by our birds. But make sure you cut it to edible size. Certain foods are not recommended when you google it. But I feed them anything that I got. They are my disposals. But they actually like the treat and they do not get it all the time only when it is ready available. But it does relinquish the cost of feed to a degree. Also allowing them to free range will help that feed cost to lighten. I hope this is helpful.

 

[Pet Duck Boy]

Quote:
I have had plenty of reptiles in the past, so I've bred quite a few feeder insects. Crickets were the worse experience. I'm sure the same would count the the wild field crickets and the brown house crickets at petco. Oh, and before I ramble on, all you need is a cup of water inside your roach bin to keep humidity up. You can buy water gel crystals at plant stores, and these work best. From egg to adult, it can take anywhere from 2 to 3 months depending on how warm and humid they are kept. The problems with that is these things are highly cannibilistic, if you don't water them one day you'll end up with several half eaten the next. It's even more so for wild crickets. Adult crickets also need an egg laying site which they can access. A yogurt tub filled with potting soil (unfertilised) works fine. Keep them in there for a week, and take it out or else the adults will dig up and eat the eggs. THEN you need to incubate those at 85-90 degrees for 2+ weeks. The soil MUST be moist during the egg laying and incubation. Yet another thing, crickets STINNNNK. Ugh, I can't stress that enough. They also seem to die for no reason. A single cricket dead for a day will stink the whole bin up, and ventilation and weekly cleanings are a MUST. They are also LOUD. Roaches do not stink depending on what you feed them, make no noise, do not bite (Yes, crickets, especially field crickets, can bite), require weekly feedings, YEARLY cleanings since dropping do not stink, are very hardy, fast producing, and I'm missing a couple hundred more reasons.

Otherwise, scraps you can get from grocery stores, resturaunts, and vegatable stands are perfect supplements.

 

[Organics North]

Quote:
I do not know? What you are doing sounds fine.. Maybe some free choice calcium too?
(Good thinking with the store bought egg in the nest to test for predators!)

OK back to feeding without buying feed. Here is what comes to mind:
1. Improve the range, with composted manures. Get what free range you have just bursting with life.
2. Buy, collect excess seasonal fruits and vegetables. (Where I am apples and pumpkins are plentiful and free. I freeze them for winter, in a hot climate you could dry them and rehydrate later.
3. Get the word out to people cleaning out their freezers that you want old meats, and other foods. Get the word out during big game hunting seasons try to get trimmings from those people too.
4. Restaurants, old age homes, schools will have left overs.
5. Get some kind of insect farm going. Maybe black solider fly if your poor range season is a warm season. If your range is poor when it is cold out then maybe meal worms in the house.

6. I know it can be hard on the budget, but buy in bulk when in season. Whats the local crop grown?. When they are harvesting it get out there and buy a ton!

Good Luck
ON

 

[Tdub4chiks]

Quote:
Any idea how many mealworms it would take to supply an average laying hen with a good amount of protein for the day? It would not be the only protein source, but to be worth doing, it would have to make a big impact.

I'm not sure how many they would need to supplement their protein intake. My girls are 16 wk RIR (4 of them) and I give them around 100 for a treat once a week. But that's just a treat.

As far as raising crickets, I have tried but was not successful. It seems once they would hatch, they would only last a day or two. It was real hard to keep them alive. I have the same problem when I buy adults from the petstore. And they smell terrible.

Mealworm containers seem to only get stinky when there are too many dead beetles. I clean the beetles out of my containers every few months, not hard to do.

Also, with crickets, you have to have a heat source, with mealworms, you don't.

 

[halo]

Have you checked to see if theres any feed mill (not feed store) anywhere? Flock Raiser is pretty expensive. I found a mill 60 miles from me; layer feed is $15 per 100, which is half what I can find here in Ocala. Its milled right there with local grains. I make that drive once a month and it saves me a lot of money.

 

[kristen2678]

Is there a Whole Foods near you? There is a woman who picks up veggies for her compost and I know of some other folks who pick up less than perfect greens for their animals weekly. they are pretty good about that stuff I think.

 

[linben]

I agree with previous post in looking for cheaper feed. I can get 50 lbs for 9.79 at the local mill.

You might also post on Craigslist or freecycle for any grass clippings or leftovers. People around Austin will post anything.

Go fishing.

You all have great ideas-interesting thread.

 

[missy_cbell21]

I'm not sure if there are black soldier flies where you are but they are a great protein source. Simple to raise and harvest.
Also not sure how it would work out but I raise rabbits and when I clean out the hay and manure under the cages there are swarms of crickets, maybe if you make a low pile of goat manure and I'm guessing you have extra bedding/hay? Water it and let it sit for about a week, turn the chickens loose on it, they will go crazy!

 

[fl_deb]

Caution this post may provoke cookie tossing.

There are a couple of kinda gross ways to feed your chickens that I do not think anyone has mentioned. There are some risks to the health of your birds in doing these methods as well, so maybe only use as a last resort as limberneck and loss of flock members has been reported by the original advocator of method 2 specifically, and flies are known to be carriers of bad things in general for chickens. So depending on your ability to stomach these methods, here goes:


1. Collect bagged cut grass from anywhere you can find it. Open bags up on a sunny warm day and wet down with water throughly sooaking grass. Leave the bags open to allow flies to come and lay eggs in the grass for a few hours then seal bags back up for a few days. When you open them up they should be full, literrally more maggots than grass. Allow chickens to scratch through a bagful or two a day and it will boost their protein intake.

2. Take 5 gal bucket, drill many holes in sides, but not too close to bottom. Put in any freshly dispached animal (predators freshly dispached are always good) or any parts from cleaning a specimen. Put lid on bucket. Hang bucket in run. Flies will be attracted to freshly rotting meat and lay eggs. Maggots will climb out holes and soon the chickens will gather waiting for the next one to fall down as their high protein treat.


Good luck. I know times are difficult for everyone, so I hope you are able to find ways to feed your birds without having to revert to such drastic measures or having to eat your own birds.

 

[Ariel301]

Thanks for more ideas!

Sounds like crickets are not going to work. I don't know about mealworms either, for that many birds, it would take an awful lot of mealworms to really make any difference in their diet...I've seen the maggot raising idea before, and I've been doing so a little bit with my brewery mash when I have it, the stuff seems to get loaded with maggots, then I feed it to them and they love it. That's unfortunately a bit seasonal, since we don't have flies in the winter. I think I am going to utilize this better next summer by building a bucket maggot-breeding device like I've seen in some articles online.

As for grass clippings...no one here has lawns. If you drive through town, every house has a yard full of either gravel (in nice neighborhoods) or trash and poisonous weeds (poor neighborhoods).

I do have a good sized manure pile. For some reason I can't get the birds interested in it. I don't know if a predator scared them over there or what, they won't go over there unless I do, and when I leave, they leave too. They do like to go in the goat pens and scratch through the bedding though, and around the hay stack.

We don't have a Whole Foods or a feed mill within 100 miles. The nearest feed mill is in California!

I'm starting to think I know my non-laying issue's cause. I have about a dozen big greedy roosters who hate to free-range. They literally lay around the feed trough all day waiting for me to fill it with something good. I think they may be gobbling up everything nutritious so that the girls are not getting enough, all they can get is what they find free-ranging. We will see, after the roosters are butchered this weekend.

I have a good source for bulk grain and seeds, so I am going to plant a couple of raised garden beds with chicken food items--a "grass" mix of alfalfa, wheat, oats, and bermuda grass, also soybeans, peas, spinach, chard, collard greens. That should help some, we have a good long growing season, and if I build it right with a plastic cover, I should be able to grow year-round.

I'm going to keep working on places to get waste food. My next try will be schools, daycares, and nursing homes.