Is the price for organic feed right?

[speckledegg]

That's what it will costs me for organic soy and corn free starter and layer around here. I'm new to raising chickens so I haven't priced anything else out yet. I only have 3 girls though so we won't go through it as fast and I can justify the cost.

 

[kizanne]

mine for soy free - non GMO corn certified organic is $27 and that's a bargain the other store is $35

 

[chickensbythesea]

Quote:
MA is closer, but OP is on Martha's Vineyard, and everything is incredibly overpriced there, because it's a pretty out of the way island, and a pretty captive market. I grew up on cape, and it wasn't as bad there, but the cape and islands are a totally different economic environment than the rest of the state.

I don't think that's unreasonable given what I saw at a store in Barnstable the other day. I don't usually have the option at my feed store.

 

[triplepurpose]

If we were to get rid of the federal subsidies on conventional and GMO crops, the pricing would be competetive. Subsidize Organics instead, and the price point would be reversed. It has nothing at all to do with the actual costs of things. Organic farming has less input costs and less costs in collateral damage to health, the economy, and the environment--but the ag subsidies distort that.

BTW I live in Hawaii (another island

) and I pay just over thirty dollars these days for a THIRTY pound bag of organic feed. But buying non-organic is not an option for me. There's no way I'll be eating eggs and chicken raised on GMO corn and soy. And it's worth ten dollars to me to know that I'm not complicit in the destruction that those practices are unleashing on the world. If I could I would refuse to pay my portion of the ag subsidies that perpetuate this, but unfortunately if you refuse to pay your taxes around here you go to jail...

So I use that feed as a base ration, but I horde it and use it very economically--a lot of what I feed is garden veggies, larvae and insects, kitchen scraps, fruit, coconuts, and other things I've grown or scrounged for them plus what they can scavenge on their own, and I'm always working on new ideas of how to close the circle more completely. They are better off on insects and scraps than on corn and soy anyway--those crops can supply protein and carbs for them, sure, but they are far less than ideal sources of feed. The wild jungle fowl don't eat soy meal for protein, they eat insects, just like free range farmyard birds always have...

 

[teamsunbelt]

Basic organic that I use is only about $2 more per 50 lb. I like the thought of organic and at only a couple dollars why not. My current 9 hen flock has consumed almost all of a bag in a little more than 3 weeks.

 

[Tommie D]

Now that the government just voted to get rid of the $6 billion ethanol subsidies, maybe the feed prices for organic and non-organic will head south.

 

[Cindy in PA]

Quote:
Ethanol subsidies are precious little in the scheme of things, just a talking point. Now maybe they will get rid of the subsidies for big oil & others and all will be well.