Is it possible to give flock to many earth worms?

[NinjaGamer2022]

Just out of curiosity, are you starting the wlrm farm with the main goal of creating your own chicken food or being self-sufficient in that respect?

Both. Feed is getting so expensive and scarce if me and my family don't find ways to make feed cheaper we will be forced to cull birds.

 

[NinjaGamer2022]

It's alright for the chickens to find and eat earthworms themselves, but I personally wouldn't supply them as feed.

OK, I would rather to be safe.

 

[NinjaGamer2022]

What about crickets as a large part of their diet?

 

[cluckmecoop7]

Both. Feed is getting so expensive and scarce if me and my family don't find ways to make feed cheaper we will be forced to cull birds.

Do you have the option of free ranging? It could help reduce feed costs greatly.

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

People do make their own feed but I'm not sure how much more cost effective it is. Free ranging will cut down on feed costs and you can grow plants specifically for your chickens but you would still have to provide a dry feed of some kind I believe. Let me see if I can find a good article here for you.

 

[NinjaGamer2022]

We have are

Do you have the option of free ranging? It could help reduce feed costs greatly.

Our oldest chicks are in a makeshift chicken tractor we move once a day. WE are planning to move most of the other chicks outside this week as well.

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

https://www.backyardchickens.com/ar...odder-tower-with-dollar-tree-dish-bins.75190/

https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/techniques-in-feeding-your-flock-off-the-grid.74595/

Start with these but I am sure there are more in this section to get you some ideas

 

[NinjaGamer2022]

People do make their own feed but I'm not sure how much more cost effective it is. Free ranging will cut down on feed costs and you can grow plants specifically for your chickens but you would still have to provide a dry feed of some kind I believe. Let me see if I can find a good article here for you.

If I can find a way to make our chick feed I hope to be able to produce most of the ingredients ourselves (vegetation and bugs) and some with bulk ordering.

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

Cool! That will be great and I'm sure your chickens will love it!

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I'll come back to this tonight.

The quick answer is: You CAN NOT economically compete with the economies of scale enjoyed by commercial producers by making your own feed at home. Even if you had a good recipe (start with Justin Rhodes') because you can't assay your own ingredients, you can't know the final nutritional values, you can only guess based on published averages which may (but probably won't) approximate your inputs.

Earthworms, after addressing the moisture content, are high protein (and good AA balance) but high fat. Same with crickets. Both have decent amounts of calcium. I'll see if I can find the most recent earthworm discussion and link it later.

Absent the ability to farm at scale and store, its unlikely you can produce even a single ingredient of your mix, much less have the land and climate to produce all of the ingredients (or all the vegetable ingredients) in a complete feed recipe. Most of us don't have land suited for growing corn and wheat and soy, plus a few other things, to try and build a complete feed - and even then, you are going to want some of Fertrell's Nutribalancer, and likely some of their Fish Meal too.

What you can do, if you are fortunate enough to have a chunk of land and good climate, is "bend the curve" on feed costs, as I do with my acres of weeds. But its not a quick solution. I'm two years in, and still experimenting to find what works and what doesn't. I invest about $100-$150 a year into it - which is one month of feed for me.

You can also accept that your birds can survive, but not thrive, on a less than optimal diet - but your ability to get eggs and meat from them - and their ability to withstand environmental pressures (disease, mostly) will all suffer.