Ideas For Saving Money On Feed?

[FireTigeris]

The Brewer thing, Genius- free feed as replacement for "normal" feed... there's three our four breweries in town.

I get scraps form local -mom and pop- restaurants, sometimes for free, sometimes for a doz eggs a week.

Anytime I do yard work as I use no pesticides or fertilizers and give everything to the birds (except known toxins, azalea, any nightshade plant, stinging nettle ect).

Any dog food, cat food crumbles I give to the birds, I let them eat spilled seed form my captive doves too.

 

[feathersnuggles]

Quote:
My birds eat the small red ripe nightshade berries (late summer) - in fact, they are absolutely crazy for them and have stripped those vines clean for 3 years! Also, they eat lots of stinging nettles during early spring. Otherwise, yeah I think azalea might not be good as my hens skip over any attempt at eating rhododendrons & azaleas. They also don't like lily-of-the-valley.

 

[Marcymom3]

Just a suggestion, but have you tried your local school? They throw away tons of veggies and stuff they can't reheat anymore.

 

[feathersnuggles]

Quote:
I forgot to mention that, when whole crab is on sale at our market, the fish dept. has LOTS of customers requesting "cleaned" crabs. This means there is a pile of discarded soft innards which I can get for free, b/c nobody wants them. No need to cook these either, as they are already cooked. I just toss this stuff to the chickens and they clean it up. Freeze up any excess for another day.

 

[ravenvalor]

Thanks to all for the great posts. I have alot to think about and look into here.
I am going to first look into the roaches and mealworms and then into the agroponic idea.
Anything having to do with growing plants will probably not work because we are in a drought here in central NC and are on a shallow well. This means that even with some 55 - gallon drums to catch the rain water from the roof we still run low on water every summer for gardening.
I'll let you know how it goes.
Thank You,
JB