Is this feed recipe healthy?

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higuy1375

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Sep 8, 2021
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Hi all
I am looking into making my own feed recipe for my chickens. I found this recipe online. Is it healthy and good for my chickens? I have 35 red star layers. Let me know if this is good or if it can be tweaked at all. I live in Northampton Pa, so I'd like to grow most of these feed stuffs.


MAKE 3500lbs for 35 CHICKENS

24% wheat
24% oats
24% cracked corn
12% dry split green peas
12% dry brown lentils ???? TOXIC
5% dry meal worms
 
That's it? You'll likely need a vitamin/mineral supplement and I'm not sure how much lysine and methionine you'll get out of 5% mealworms. Those are the limiting amino acids in a grain/legume mix.
The fat content may be right. Make sure the fat soluble vitamins are in good supply. (A, D, E, K)
The following charts may give you a starting point for research.
https://extension.missouri.edu/publications/g8352#two
 
Last edited:
higuy1375 said:
Hi all
I am looking into making my own feed recipe for my chickens. I found this recipe online. Is it healthy and good for my chickens? I have 35 red star layers. Let me know if this is good or if it can be tweaked at all. I live in Northampton Pa, so I'd like to grow most of these feed stuffs.


MAKE 3500lbs for 35 CHICKENS

24% wheat
24% oats
24% cracked corn
12% dry split green peas
12% dry brown lentils ???? TOXIC
5% dry meal worms
Click to expand...
If you are making 3,500# of feed, go talk w/ your local mill. You will (hopefully) find someones much more knowledgeable, able to put together a far more balanced (and likely less expensive) feed.

I've made some assumptions about your ingredients - whole oats, soft wheat, and used some standardized averages from Feedipedia (I really need to change databases at some point).

As fed, that's around:

14.7% protein (low)
5.4% fiber (acceptable)
4.5% fat (acceptable)

Grossly deficient in Methionine. Good lysine. Significantly deficient in Threonine. Grossly deficient in Tryptophan. Non-Phytate phosphorus is negligible, I assume you will provide a seperatre calcium source, and I can't speak to your vitamins and trace minerals at all - except that I am confident they are also deficient. Nor do I mavke any representations about the anti-nutritive properties of some of those ingredients, and how they might be addressed prior to inclusion in your feed. It does have a significant increase in dietary energy over targets. Again, not optimal.

No, I would not feed that to my birds.
 
I agree with ChickenCanoe.

Also, you need salt.

Depending on where you are, also iodine and selenium - if they aren't in the soil, they won't be in the plants. The soils of wide swaths of the world are deficient in one or the other or both. They are usually in vitamin/mineral mixes but check that the mix you select is appropriate for your area.

You should check into the peas and lentils also. Each can be good ingredients as long as the amount is limited enough. However, they are both legumes so I think they have the same reason for needing to be limited percentages. If so, then they should be counted toward that limit together. 25% seems high but it has been a long time since I last looked at that and I don't remember numbers very well so it is something to check with the concept in mind rather than this being the checking of it.

Whether lentils are toxic depends on how you look at it. They have some antinutrients so technically they are. Sort of. There isn't very much and you can select varieties that are lower than most varieties, and there are things that can lower what they do have (heat, for example).

Whoever said to make 3500 pounds for 35 chickens needs the rest of their advice checked and double checked. That would take them well over a year to eat. Feeds should be fed within a couple of months once the seed coat is broken (such as cracking the corn).
 
oh, and the numbers in the link @ChickenCanoe helpfully provided are based on a feed providing 2900 kcal/kg. Not a scale I usually work in, but the conversion is easy. Your recipe above outputs almost 3,500 kcal/kg - 20% above target. That's not a net benefit to your birds.
 

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