I may be growing my own food for the chickens after all, due to genetic editing

[Lazy J Farms Feed & Hay]

Disclaimer, this is all being said in a nice calm voice

Gmos are grown in desolate fields that harm the local fauna and flora, drain the soil from any nutrients and also contributes to global warming, via scorched earth. The plants are heavily sprayed with roundup which makes that soil inhospitable for anyone else to plant if the fields are sold. You have to buy the seed you plant because they're patented.......

And with this puke of misinformation I'm unsubscribing to this thread.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

And with this puke of misinformation I'm unsubscribing to this thread.

I should have tuned out when DailyMail was held up on an authority about much of anything, but I hold out hope for fellow BYCers who might stumble across that poster's comments later, who might be warned off.

 

[raingarden]

And with this puke of misinformation I'm unsubscribing to this thread.

How do you do that? Unsubscribe from a thread, I mean. There are a couple that I'd like to stop showing up in my email (but this is not one of them).


edit to say:...... Oh, never mind.. I forgot you were not listening any more.

 

[Krugerrand]

How do you do that? Unsubscribe from a thread, I mean. There are a couple that I'd like to stop showing up in my email (but this is not one of them).


edit to say:...... Oh, never mind.. I forgot you were not listening any more.

There is an "unwatch" option on a thread you are watching. By default you watch any thread to which you reply. You can change that default option if you so desire.

You can text search for unwatch on the browser and it should turn up.

 

[raingarden]

There is an "unwatch" option on a thread you are watching. By default you watch any thread to which you reply. You can change that default option if you so desire.

You can text search for unwatch on the browser and it should turn up.

Thank you. That was easy.

 

[Adorae]

So reading through this thread, OP, you've identified that you will need iodized salt, and selenium salt. You will be supplying the protein need for the chickens from venison, and that Lambs Quarters is a good product to grow for your chickens. Have you identified anything else?

I remember a reference to fermenting feed to increase bioavailability of the feed, but at the cost of losing fiber. Have you identified any grains that would be beneficial to grow?

 

[saysfaa]

So reading through this thread, OP, you've identified that you will need iodized salt, and selenium salt. You will be supplying the protein need for the chickens from venison, and that Lambs Quarters is a good product to grow for your chickens. Have you identified anything else?

I remember a reference to fermenting feed to increase bioavailability of the feed, but at the cost of losing fiber. Have you identified any grains that would be beneficial to grow?

Yes.
The plan is evolving and unfinished. The current version is to use a recipe from a old (1950's) textbook as a base (as close as I can). Then fills in potential gaps by offering various other things individually. Actually, to offer most of the base as individual ingredients also.

I currently think the best way to allow for not being able to test the nutrients in any of the ingredients is to rely on this research

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/can-the-chick-balance-its-ration.1555475/

where the chicks did balance their rations nearly the same as the feed company did given the same ingredients. I've been finding more evidence, here and there, that this will work at least under certain circumstances. Also, some evidence that it needs certain circumstances to work well - I'm still working on that part, too.

Then allow a wider margin of error by offering more options. That is where the Lambs Quarters come in. Also in that category are purslane, nettles, floribunda rose hips, buckwheat, and teff. All but the teff are already growing well on my land or the adjoining land. I don't know anyone in the area who has tried teff but the descriptions of where it grows well indicate it should grow well also. The ingredients in this category are likely to change a lot as I look up the nutrient profiles of more of the plants already growing well on my land. And as I learn more about how I might harvest and store them.

My textbook has a section for "mixing-mash." This is intended to be mixed with some combination of corn, wheat, and oats. Possibly, sometimes barley or other grains - they were on different pages but makes sense overall. Basically, their "mixing-mash" is what I know as "the concentrates" portion of a ration.

One example is 800 pounds of the following to be fed with 1200 pounds of grains
Crushed wheat 4.25%
Soybean oil meal 32%
fish meal 12.5%
meat scraps 12.5%
dried whey 15%
dry alfalfa 12.5%
steamed bone meal 8.5%
salt 2.5%
a few more vitamins and minerals that I will cover by feeding the salt as trace mineral salt

There are versions with different ingredients - I'm still working on which combination is most likely to work best. I'm not planning to buy soybean oil meal but I could grow soybeans or another kind of bean and either see about pressing at least some of the oil out or adjusting something else to allow for leaving the oil in, or adjusting other things to not need much soybean oil meal.

I have books on making nut milks that also explains how to press soybeans. I've seen other books on how to press oils to make salad dressings. It isn't as far fetched as it might look. But since I've only read about it and not tried it - I'll probably look at adjusting other ways first.

I won't be mixing a ton at a time, so I'm playing with the idea of a couple of versions of the concentrates with different percentages of ingredients (especially salt) to allow for not being able to measure precisely enough. Hm, if I can't. I haven't done the math yet or experimented with actually doing it yet. It just seems like 2.5 pounds per ton would be hard to scale down enough. My scale does a gram, though, so maybe it would be doable.

And, I'm hoping my haylage experiment goes well. My books don't cover silage type feeds for chickens. So, I'll look for some newer textbooks (1960's maybe or early 1970's) that should cover something about it. Or just look up more of the research on using it for chickens. I don't know, yet, how that will fit in.

The biggest downside I can see so far to feeding this way is how many feed dishes it will take. That includes the time and hassle to fill them individually, too. Most likely, I'll start with seeing if some kind of gutter-style feeder will work. It shouldn't be too hard to add divisions to that. If it seems worth it, I probably could see what they normally eat of which things, then mix at least somethings in those proportions to simplify feeding them.

Anyway, this is as far as I've gotten so far. I haven't looked at fermenting much yet for this project. I followed the big discussions on it from five or ten years ago on this website, I think it might be worth doing but is less important than getting close without it. At least to start with.

Oh, and I checked with the local feed mill - they sell the trace mineral salt by the pound ($0.25 per pound) so I don't have to buy the 25 pound bag other places have. The feed mill has both the standard version and the selenium version for the same price.

They also sell quite a few versions of deer food plot seed mixes. Some of those could work well for my chickens also. A lot of them have radishes and chicory and clover, for example, which have been likely additions.

 

[saysfaa]

Paper napkin figuring.
Meaning, the first, very rough idea of how much space to allow for growing grain for the chickens.

4 hens x quarter pound of feed per day = 1 pound per day. 365 days per year.

Plus a generous margin and to make the math easier, 400 pounds of feed per year.

About 1/2 to 2/3 of that might be grain. If I figure all of it is grain, I'll have a very, very generous upper limit.

Yields per acre in my climate:
Corn: about 150 bushel, 56 pounds each
Wheat: about 80 bushel, 60 pounds each
Oats: about 60 bushel, 32 pounds each
Barley: about 50 bushel, 48 pounds each

And not a grain, but to save looking it up later when I get to other parts:
Soy: about 50 bushel, 60 pounds each

To get the square feet needed to grow one bushel:
There are 43,560 sq ft per acre.
43,560 divided by 150 is about 290
43,560 divided by 80 is about 545
43,560 divided by 60 is about 725
43,560 divided by 50 is about 870

If I figure up to half corn, up to half wheat, up to half oats, up to a quarter barley:
200 pounds of corn is 4 bushel
200 pounds of wheat is 4 bushel
200 pounds of oats is 6 bushel
100 pounds of barley is 2 bushel

If I have 100' rows, that is
12' of corn
22' of wheat
45' of oats
18' of barley

So, about 100' x 100' for all the grains.

Not that I will plant them all in the same plot. If I don't plant a whole field of one of them, I'll put a strip of it at the end of a field of something else. Or maybe do both ways to see how it goes.

And not that I won't have other grains, too - teff, rye, sorghum, etc... but added them means needing less of these. It should still be in the ball park. And, I'd plant only a little of them, at least the first year, because I haven't grown some of them before.

 

[Adorae]

I see that you added fish meal to the mix, are you going to buy that, or source from nearby lakes/streams? I'm interested in this, because there's a lot of prey fish that are grown for predator fish that people keep inside their homes. It's something I have thought about too, for adding extra protein to chicken feed that is lacking an animal source.

 

[saysfaa]

I'm thinking of going fishing for it locally.