Made my own feed

[MrsWinterWheat]

One of these days my soil will be in better shape and I'll be able to use my tractor to hopefully grow some grains. Appreciate you pointing out the opportunity cost of doing so. To which I'll add the maintenance costs on the equipment (Just finished routine service on my small tractor - about $550. WOuld have been more if I hadn't done it myself. Thankfully, looks like I will only need to do it every 16 - 18 months, and diesel costs have come down a little, too.

That is definitely great you can do the servicing yourself! Maintenance and purchasing of the equipment is some times a hard pill swallow. It makes my stomach turn to see the costs of when we have to buy a new tractor, seeder, or combine. Those are some hefty loans…
If we wouldn’t already be in grain we probably would just be feeding only commercial feed.

But is amazing to see the crops grow! I hope you get to the point you can grow some grains.

 

[Sally PB]

It also takes a lot less land to grow enough cereal grains for a family or a small flock than most people think it does. Think garden rather than fields. And no special tools for that amount.

Can you elaborate? I would love to grow my own oats.

 

[saysfaa]

Can you elaborate? I would love to grow my own oats.

I left my book on it at home. I plan to be home in two or three weeks or a little longer.

There are other sources but this book is well worth reading anyway. It is concise, humorous, and quite complete.

Gene Logsdon
"Small-Scale Grain Raising: An Organic Guide to Growing, Processing, and Using Nutritious Whole Grains for Home Gardeners and Local Farmers"

In the meantime, a net search says he says one bushel of raw oats makes about fourteen pounds of rolled oats. You can grow five bushel on 1/12 of an acre, which is 60×60 feet. That's enough for a year's breakfasts for most families. I think I figured a 10x10 or less plot would produce all the oats I might want to give my four or five hens but my memory for numbers is really bad.

Prep the soil in the fall, plant very early in the spring (or fall further south). So, there is time to find out more before the next planting season.

He gives details on how to do it with tools you probably already have. He also gives details on some tools options like scythes.

He also covers all the common grains and several uncommon ones. And buckwheat and beans.

 

[Kenya Mwangi]

I have found two in real life that do and I have asked them several times over the years.

One feeds straight cracked corn (maize) and whatever foods that a vegetable market and a cafeteria would otherwise throw out. A lot of french fries (chips in Britain) are common from the cafeteria. He also throws dead animals to them - including their flock mates that predators killed but didn't carry off. This year, he has started throwing road-killed deer carcasses in to the chickens. His chickens also free range an open area, a woodlot, and edge of a pond. None of his birds live very long - rarely through a second year. To be fair, it is usually because of predators rather than diet.

The other person said said people in his village feed corn (maize) and nothing else unless they keep chickens for cockfighting. Then they feed vitamins too. That is in a tropical climate and the chickens roam free, sleeping in the trees - except the most prized cocks which are tethered. Possibly, he said, the tethered birds are fed other things but he'd never been very interested in keeping fighting birds and doesn't know what besides vitamins.

I don't find either very helpful.

Have you done this? What do you feed them?

A quick netsearch found info on doing this for fishing bait. So far, all the sources say to feed fish flakes. I don't see a great deal of difference between feeding chickens chemical-saturated feed or feeding chickens fish that was fed chemical-saturated food. Especially since the chicken feed is meant to be part of the food chain for people and the fish food is not.

I'm interested, though. I've looked into raising larger fish in tanks. That idea is in a lot of homesteading information sources. Frankly, I'm not interested in eating (or feeding my chickens) the species that can survive in that environment. Minnows seem likely to be different in that regard.


I think it can be done. I think very, very few people who try it manage to do it. And even fewer do so at less cost.

Hello Well I think this. A chicken is a bird and birds do not normally survive on corn. Corn is a carbohydrate and gets stored as fat in the chickens body. These people might be feeding only corn to fatten and flavor the meat. For longevety of the chicken maybe some other feed is better.

Fish flakes are dried ground up fish. They are part of the human food chain. They eat themselves as ground dried feed. This is the same as trout or bass eating minnows to grow into the fish you catch and eat. If the fish was raised without the chemicals and you dried it and ground it into flakes it would be without chemicals. Minnows are going to eat what is fed to them but more importantly they eat algea and decaying matter. Decaying matter is free if you have animals or a yard with plants or trees and dead leaves. Then you can begin your cycle from free decaying matter to minnows to chickens to eggs. Or decaying matter to minnows to dead decaying minnows to fly larvae to chickens to eggs or meat.

I have not done this, but these are what I think. Joel Salatin I think could do this. I learned young that I am an optomist. I am not discourged by negative nancy or the laughing hyenas that produce nothing. I will try. I will fail. But maybe I will succeed and I will strive for succeeding.

With grit and ideas and friends ideas and encouragment instead of discouragement, less cost is managable, possible, and for me, inevitable.

 

[AGeese]

While I would love to get into aquaponics with shellfish, red wigglers and all that, I just haven't pushed myself to getter done yet. Depending on season and weather, I spend a lot less on feed during the spring and summer (outside of mini droughts) soon the girls will be hunting grass hoppers. It's fun to watch.

I just wish they'd stop catching toads... I try to tell Lady, no... those are the good guys they eat skeeters, but she doesn't listen.

 

[saysfaa]

...

Fish flakes are dried ground up fish..

Fish flakes are not flaked fish like layer pellets are not pellets made up of laying hens. With the difference that fish flakes have some fishmeal in them for the same reason that some brands of layer feed has fishmeal in it.

Fish flakes are what people feed their aquarium fish and what fish farmers feed their smallest fish. Bigger fish are fed the bigger forms like pellets.

They may have once been made primarily of just fish. They are not now.

Source
".. fish feed has economic significance. In aquaculture, the fish feed can represent over 50% of the operational cost. As feed costs remain high, finding quality feed at a reasonable price is becoming a challenge for many...

Since 2007, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have been working on ways to reduce their dependence on marine fish as a source of aquaculture feed...

Sources of protein are typically fishmeal ... legumes such as soybean....

Carbohydrate is an economical source of energy for fish. It helps to reduce feed costs. It can be useful as a binding agent when manufacturing feed, especially for feed that is designed to float. Carbohydrates make up 20-30% of many commercial feeds....

Another source
"...ingredients already in use include proteins from soybeans, corn, peas, and wheat, and oils from soybean, canola, and flaxseed. .., fish-based ingredient use for Atlantic salmon has declined from 90% in the 1990s to 25% in 2020."

Edit to delete what doesn't make sense and probably isn't helpful to anyone Even if I could get it to make some sense.

 

[Perris]

Fish flakes are not flaked fish like layer pellets are not pellets made up of laying hens. With the difference that fish flakes have some fishmeal in them for the same reason that some brands of layer feed has fishmeal in it.

Fish flakes are what people feed their aquarium fish and what fish farmers feed their smallest fish. Bigger fish are fed the bigger forms like pellets.

They may have once been made primarily of just fish. They are not now.

Source
".. fish feed has economic significance. In aquaculture, the fish feed can represent over 50% of the operational cost. As feed costs remain high, finding quality feed at a reasonable price is becoming a challenge for many...

Since 2007, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have been working on ways to reduce their dependence on marine fish as a source of aquaculture feed...

Sources of protein are typically fishmeal ... legumes such as soybean....

Carbohydrate is an economical source of energy for fish. It helps to reduce feed costs. It can be useful as a binding agent when manufacturing feed, especially for feed that is designed to float. Carbohydrates make up 20-30% of many commercial feeds....

Another source
"...ingredients already in use include proteins from soybeans, corn, peas, and wheat, and oils from soybean, canola, and flaxseed. .., fish-based ingredient use for Atlantic salmon has declined from 90% in the 1990s to 25% in 2020."

Regarding "human food chain": I agree fish is generically in the human food chain as in people eat fish. I meant food that is intended for human consumption is allowed the possibility of containing more contaminants than food that is known to not be intended for human consumption.

that's interesting (though the last para doesn't read as I think you intended and I'm not sure what you mean there) and another good reason to feed our chickens real fish, not something processed that is called fish-something. If it's mostly made of plants, it is not going to be supplying the proteins one assumes it is supplying because one assumed it was made of fish.

 

[Kenya Mwangi]

Fish flakes are not flaked fish like layer pellets are not pellets made up of laying hens. With the difference that fish flakes have some fishmeal in them for the same reason that some brands of layer feed has fishmeal in it.

Fish flakes are what people feed their aquarium fish and what fish farmers feed their smallest fish. Bigger fish are fed the bigger forms like pellets.

They may have once been made primarily of just fish. They are not now.

Source
".. fish feed has economic significance. In aquaculture, the fish feed can represent over 50% of the operational cost. As feed costs remain high, finding quality feed at a reasonable price is becoming a challenge for many...

Since 2007, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have been working on ways to reduce their dependence on marine fish as a source of aquaculture feed...

Sources of protein are typically fishmeal ... legumes such as soybean....

Carbohydrate is an economical source of energy for fish. It helps to reduce feed costs. It can be useful as a binding agent when manufacturing feed, especially for feed that is designed to float. Carbohydrates make up 20-30% of many commercial feeds....

Another source
"...ingredients already in use include proteins from soybeans, corn, peas, and wheat, and oils from soybean, canola, and flaxseed. .., fish-based ingredient use for Atlantic salmon has declined from 90% in the 1990s to 25% in 2020."

Regarding "human food chain": I agree fish is generically in the human food chain as in people eat fish. I meant food that is intended for human consumption is allowed the possibility of containing more contaminants than food that is known to not be intended for human consumption.

Hello Yes, fish flakes are dried ground up fish. Because dried ground up fish is fishmeal. If layer pellets were made of real chickens they would be called chicken nuggets.

 

[Perris]

Hello Yes, fish flakes are dried ground up fish. Because dried ground up fish is fishmeal. If layer pellets were made of real chickens they would be called chicken nuggets. View attachment 3874397View attachment 3874398

just copying and pasting what someone wrote online is not enough, as anyone can write anything and a lot of stuff online is wrong/ outdated/ misunderstood etc. Saysfaa provided links to reliable websites to support what she said, and you should read them. Then you need to link to the website(s) you copied in your last post, so people can check its credibility, if you want to convince people that what you say is correct.

 

[Kenya Mwangi]

just copying and pasting what someone wrote online is not enough, as anyone can write anything and a lot of stuff online is wrong/ outdated/ misunderstood etc. Saysfaa provided links to reliable websites to support what she said, and you should read them. Then you need to link to the website(s) you copied in your last post, so people can check its credibility, if you want to convince people that what you say is correct.

Hello This is not something someone wrote online. My pictures are my questions to deepai.org the artificial intelligence website. I think Microsoft is the owner. If you feel that it is incorrect anyone can look up online that fishmeal is dried and ground up fish leftovers and that fish flakes main ingredient is fish meal. Google will say it too, vecause thats what it is. I do not wish to debate or convince, people are grown, they can research their own. I only wished to share and collaborate and make friends. It seems people only have one idea here and no other ideas can exist. I think this is not the place I was excited for.