Made my own feed

[Kenya Mwangi]

You can buy the bulk of the feed in sacks of whole grains weighing about 20kg / 50lb rather than grow it, as was the norm before the 1950's or thereabouts, when commercial prepared feeds started to appear. This thread gives some of the recipes used then
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/interwar-recipes-for-chicken-feed.1605509/

This is what I do, and the flock is healthier and the feed cheaper than when I bought commercial feed. Details here and here. The results speak for themselves. E.g. this bird will be 2 next week; he was born and bred on that home made feed. View attachment 3872954

Hello I'm glad to see you here. People will listen some day, but not today even when you are here. I'm glad you do not use soy. It is fantastic!

 

[Perris]

Hello I'm glad to see you here. People will listen some day, but not today even when you are here. I'm glad you do not use soy. It is fantastic!

hopefully you can get some use from my articles and threads. If people are not bent on growing their own cereals, they really don't need a lot of land to provide a lot of diverse forage. I only have about 1 acre, for a flock of 20-30 birds.

 

[Kenya Mwangi]

I have 30 acres, some of it set aside as a biodiverse polyculture to help bend the cost curve on my animal keeping. In one of the most productive and forgiving climates here in the US. Zone 7b/8a, averaging about an inch of rainfall weekly (Not the most productive ground, i freely admit, too much clay in the soil). If you think that most people can set aside acres to feed their chickens, and that the clearing and maintenance of those acres is cost free, the annual taxes on that property inexpensive, you are again mistaken.

I spent half a morning this weekend underbrushing another few hundred square feet with a small farm tractor, which has an up front cost, a maintenance cost, and of course a time cost.

Can people engineer an insect farm to suppliment their chicken's diet? Sure. It might even work. But its not a diet replacement, and its not balanced. Some can't even do that. Too hot here for a black fly larvae farm, for instance. 99 yesterday, true temp, not heat index. Sunday too. Today is a cool 97, predicted. There's a commercial cricket farm up the road - maybe I could do what they are doing, if I can figure out how they are doing it. An addition to my acres of weeds - but still not a diet replacement.

Look at the system as a whole - if you are producing your own chicken diet, you are a generalist, enjoying neither the efficiencies of scale or specialization enjoyed by large producers. If you are buying and mixing end products, you are paying layers of retail markup on all your ingredients. EIther way, greater expense.

Good day I do not think people can set aside acres to feed chickens. If you recall, my post said "miniature versions of large containments of insects and plants for chicken feed purposes" Miniature versions does not mean clearing acres of underbrush and maintenants cost.

Insects are not "diet replacements" and alone are "not balanced" as you say, you are correct. Instead, insects are parts of a balanced diet depending on how you incorporate them. But I did not say they are diet replacements or balanced when alone. I have a feeling you word your sentences in a way that changes what has been said in a minor way so that your sentences are factually correct, but do not actually apply to what you are replying to.

I think buying and mixing end products actually is termed wholesale buying, which in fact has reduced cost and no retail mark up, and ultimately is reduced cost. However, in all of these cases, I am not mistaken as you say.

I choose to be in this place to ask questions and to help somebody. However, I think you will not be helped or answer questions in a way that does not fit what you want to say. I think this conversation is not worth my expense if you imply what I think and then answer it for me. Good day

 

[Kenya Mwangi]

hopefully you can get some use from my articles and threads. If people are not bent on growing their own cereals, they really don't need a lot of land to provide a lot of diverse forage. I only have about 1 acre, for a flock of 20-30 birds.

Hello I love to read. I will find your articles. Thank you for these. However, I think you are correct.

 

[Perris]

happy to help. Feel free to ask any questions that arise when you do.

 

[MamaPoult]

Just curios, is it more cost effective to make your own feed? I hate that I'm buying the crappy stuff but stuff is really expensive up here

 

[Perris]

is it more cost effective to make your own feed?

It is for me. This is what I wrote in my 2023 article:

"Quantities and Costs

On average, my flock find about half their daily feed foraging. On average a 20 kg sack of mixed grain lasts about 3 weeks, while a 20kg sack of mixed peas lasts about 5 months, and with about 20 birds, that means they are each eating about 55g of combined grains and peas per day. The supplements I supply, like mealworms, milk products or sardines, add a couple more grams per bird per day. A large fowl is said to need about 110g (1/4lb) feed per bird per day, therefore, averaged through the year, they must each be finding about 50-60g per day by foraging. And if the flock were confined, I would need to buy about twice as much as (and therefore spend significantly more than) I currently do.

It is sometimes claimed that making your own feed is expensive, a claim based on several assumptions, not least of which is that you’ll be trying to do what feed companies do but without the economies of scale that come from making it by the lorry load. This assumption is not applicable if, as in my case, you don’t want to copy what big ag does to maximize egg output from the chickens at minimal expense between the ages of 16 and 72 weeks old, and then discard the chicken and start afresh. Since I’m not making a living from my flock, I am not subject to the same economic imperatives as a commercial egg farm. I am happy to enjoy as many or more eggs over a longer period from hens who don’t suffer reproductive tract disorders brought on by such intensive exploitation, and I aim simply to cover my costs.

At May 2023 prices in my area, 20kg quality mixed grain (c. 80% wheat) costs £11.49 and 20kg mixed peas £14. A sack of bran for the mealworms costs £14 and lasts about 6 months. The veg trimmings supplied to the mealworms, and the occasional tin of sardines, dairy product or banana supplied to the chickens, are of negligible additional cost to the family grocery bill. A tin of sardines in sunflower oil, for example, is about 55p for 120g/4ozs (was 40p before recent price hikes). If it is legal to feed meat where you are, note that wild animals usually eat the organ meats of their prey first because they know they are the most nutritious bit of the carcass, and since humans prefer the muscle, offal is usually cheap, so that’s a win-win.

I sell surplus eggs at £2 per carton of 6. Over the course of the calendar year, income from surplus eggs laid by my flock of heritage and rare breed birds – who lay fewer than production breeds in their first full year of laying, but who may continue to lay well until they are at least 6 years old (as with my eldest) – covers my expenditure on the flock. And selling is trivial; I have enthusiastic regular customers, and a waiting list of would-be customers. My flock’s eggs are not like shop eggs in appearance, in flavour, or in nutritional value, and my customers can tell the difference without a lab report (but see Hammershøja and Johansen 2016 if you want one).

That apart, most chicken keepers on BYC seem happy enough to spend a great deal of money on their coop. So why penny pinch on the feed? Such a spending pattern seems to me to put the cart before the horse."

The whole article is here https://www.backyardchickens.com/ar...eat-tears-a-calculator-or-deep-pockets.78655/
and this year's update is here
https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/wholesome-homemade-feed-2.79307/

Of course it matters what is available locally to you and prices fluctuate with weather, world events, and capitalists' speculations etc.. Currently I can buy 25kg sacks of whole wheat grains for £8, and do when I happen to be passing the place that sells it, some 30 miles away. Otherwise I have to pay £11 to buy a different brand I can source closer to home. The difference in quality between the two seems negligible, and all nutritional figures are based on averages of samples anyway.

What I know for sure is that real recognizable food is better value for money than a homogenized feed whose ingredients are a mystery to all but the manufacturer, and whose length of time in storage is a mystery to most too (thanks to a deliberately opaque way of referring to the date the stuff was bagged up, which is employed by some manufacturers in the US; obvious e.g. 'Best Before' dates would be more user friendly).

 

[Shadrach]

Start with the chickens, then the keeping conditions and then worry about what one feeds them.
A hen that lays 300+ eggs a year for 3 years requires a different diet to one that lays 150 eggs a year for 6 years.

Next look at how the hens are kept. Hens that range from dawn to dusk will make all those carefull balanced feed calculations completely pointless. You'll have no idea what such hens eat during the day, even if you spent weeks carefully watching them and snatched each beakfull of whatever they ingest off to a lab for analysis.
Even if the hens are let out to forage for two or three hours a day ones carefully calculated feed profile will no longer represent the ingested nutrients and again, the carefully balanced feed calculations are wasted.

If one keeps commercial layers in commercial conditions (fully contained 24/7), which is what the vast majority of feeds are designed for, then trying to match a commercial feed profile may be worth the effort.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Just curios, is it more cost effective to make your own feed? I hate that I'm buying the crappy stuff but stuff is really expensive up here

Not for me - but depending on where you are in AK, you may have no other practical choice. Or you may have to consider expecting much less (egg quantitiess, rapid weight gain) from your birds. Or you might consider an alternative protein source (rabbits, anyone?). Or some combination of the three.

Close you eyes. Imagine your local feed store, farm store, whatever. Now empty the aisle of all commercially blended bagged feed.

What's left? Corn? Wheat (if its coming from Washington state area, good chance its selenium deficient, FYI)? Oats? Barley? Are there any dried peas (preferably yellow, fewer tannins)? Beans? Do you have soy meal, alfafa meal, or another processed legume product as a low fat high protein source? What else might be used as potential chicken feed?

Price it all out per pound.

Do the same with your current chicken feed.

If the price per pound of your lowest cost ingredients (typically corn, oats) are close to the cost of your commercial feed (as it is for me, and for most), you can stop there - the cost of making your own will exceed the cost of buying, and will be less certain nutritionally as well. Unless there is some cost you can almost completely remove by producing it on your own (admittedly unlikely).

If the numbers are in the right area on cost, let us know what you have available, and at what pricing. Also your current feed, and its pricing (so we have a target). Maybe we can kick the tires, come up with something acceptable to your situation.

 

[saysfaa]

Hello One thing possible for you to do is to find a completely different group of people that don't rely on shelf feed in bags and ask them how they do it.

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.

...You don't have to catch fish if you raise them. Minnows can be raised in a stock tank.

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.

If you think chickens can't eat a combination of natural foods to meet their physiological requirements ...

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.