Is this homemade feed recipe complete?

[Chicken love to infinity]

Hi guys, I have 12 chickens (1 Serama rooster, 10 hens), and even though the food I buy is decently healthy and cheap, I would like to make a whole grain feed that could be cheaper. The feed I buy is 40lbs for $15. This recipe would make approx 110 lbs. 6 of our hens are 6 yo, 1 is 7 yo ( she is a bantam frizzle 7yo, yet she lays eggs every day), 3 just turned 1yo, and our rooster is 1. Since the rest of my hens are about to stop laying, do they still need all the extra vitamins? Would this recipe be complete? ( Also, I'm not too worried about calcium because I supplement crushed egg shells to my girls.)
The recipe:
1. Scratch mix: 40lbs, ingredients are milo, sunflower seeds, wheat, and white porso millet.
2. Scratch mix: 40lbs, ingredients are cracked corn, whole milo, and whole wheat.
3. 5lbs of chia seeds
4. 5lbs of flax seeds or meal.
5. 3lbs barley
6. 2lbs oatmeal
7. 5 lbs split peas.
8. 5lbs of quinoa
9. 1 cup of garlic
10. 1 cup of paprika.
Are any of the ingredients unnecessary?

 

[NatJ]

I'm pretty sure that will have too little protein, and the protein it does have will be too low in certain amino acids.

I don't know enough about vitamin requirements to tell if you'll be short there too.

@U_Stormcrow knows a lot more than I do about what chickens need in their feed, and might pop in to give more details if you need them.

even though the food I buy is decently healthy and cheap, I would like to make a whole grain feed that could be cheaper. The feed I buy is 40lbs for $15.

Some ingredients are more expensive than others. The ones that are good sources of protein tend to be more expensive than the ones that are not. The food you are buying is probably cheaper than buying all the right ingredients to make an equally good feed yourself.

How long does a 40 pound bag of feed last your chickens?

 

[ChickenCanoe]

You are missing some essential amino acids and possibly some vitamins and minerals essential for long term health.
It really isn't worth the difference in cost and it may actually cost more than a complete feed.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Hi guys, I have 12 chickens (1 Serama rooster, 10 hens), and even though the food I buy is decently healthy and cheap, I would like to make a whole grain feed that could be cheaper. The feed I buy is 40lbs for $15. This recipe would make approx 110 lbs. 6 of our hens are 6 yo, 1 is 7 yo ( she is a bantam frizzle 7yo, yet she lays eggs every day), 3 just turned 1yo, and our rooster is 1. Since the rest of my hens are about to stop laying, do they still need all the extra vitamins? Would this recipe be complete? ( Also, I'm not too worried about calcium because I supplement crushed egg shells to my girls.)
The recipe:
1. Scratch mix: 40lbs, ingredients are milo, sunflower seeds, wheat, and white porso millet.
2. Scratch mix: 40lbs, ingredients are cracked corn, whole milo, and whole wheat.
3. 5lbs of chia seeds
4. 5lbs of flax seeds or meal.
5. 3lbs barley
6. 2lbs oatmeal
7. 5 lbs split peas.
8. 5lbs of quinoa
9. 1 cup of garlic
10. 1 cup of paprika.
Are any of the ingredients unnecessary?

Without knowing the exact contents of your scratch mixes, I can't run the numbers to give you a nutritional breakdown, but as described, your cost is going up, your feed is protein deficient, very high in fats, likely high in fiber, very low in Methionine, and possibly low in Lysine.

Even if that were not the case, whole grain feeds have a problem of selectivity - birds higher on the pecking order tend to select out their favorites, leaving the rest to birds lower on the order, contributing to dietary imabalance in both.

Unmentioned, some of those ingredients should be heat treated before use - which probably happened during commercial packing, but its something to be aware of. Additionally, you need a non-phytate (that is, not plant-based) phosphorus source equal to about 1/2 of their calcium intake rate if you are building a low calcium feed. No process in nature is 100% efficient - feeding their own eggshells alone won't meet their needs.

Recommend sticking with the commerically compete feed - at this moment, $15/40# is not a terrible price for feed, and is in fact better than many pay at the farm store.

 

[Chicken love to infinity]

Thank you guy so much! I never knew about some of your info!!!

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Thank you guy so much! I never knew about some of your info!!!

Happy we could help you help your chickens. I don't pretend to be an expert - I've only been studying chicken feeding for the last 8-9 months, learned something new looking up an answer earlier this AM in fact, but I can claim at least broad "awareness" of the strengths and weaknesses of some of the more common feed ingredients and several of their closer alternatives.

the more I learn, the less likely I am to attempt to build a feed on my own, and of course, the less likely I am to recommend anyone else attempt to do so either. In my time on BYC, I've seen exactly two "home brew" feed recipes that generally agree with the current state of knowledge re: feeding chickens - Justin Rhode's has a make at home recipe relying on fish meal (as in, virtually any substitution for the fish meal would cause the recipe to fail nutritionally), and one of our fellow posters who has 10s or 100s of acres and heavy equipment has a family recipe they can produce on their own land - but they are basically using the recipes on the 1940s-1970s when recipes were developed thru trial and error as much as the then developing science. Needless to say, most of us don't have the acres, the equipment, suitable land, or suitable climate to duplicate that poster's rather unique conditions.

Do keep trolling this forum, the same common questions tend to repeat, you will likely develop some surface comfort with the subject pretty quickly.

 

[Penpal]

I believe oat groats are better than oatmeal.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I believe oat groats are better than oatmeal.

on what basis??

 

[SandyRiverChick]

I did what I thought was a very good "recipe," and now I consider it playing with fire. Not that you can't or won't get it right but my flock went through a very clear decline in health that just as clearly resolved when I went back to commercial feed as main diet, complimented by free-ranging and seasonal additions (more protien in winer and during molt,) treats, scratch, oyster shells on the side. Also, with my homemade feed, they were selecting ingredients they liked and declining to eat a few of the ingredients you have listed. It was wasteful and defeated the purpose.

 

[Chicken love to infinity]

Thanks everybody but I have decided to go with New country organics and it has been great!!