Make your own/Homemade feed?

[Treehill Farm]

I've seen more than one post on here regarding people making their own feed. Do any of you have a recipe you're willing to share?

 

[bairo]

here is my non soy, low corn recipe. it would be equal to a general flock raiser as far as nutrition (20% protein). makes a good grower and starter both (grind for a starter), but you need to add calcium or have oyster shell readily available in another feeder for layers. The most ideal situation is for you to grind it and have it run through a pellet mill.....but hard to do unless you actually own a pellet mill.

what you cant find at a co-op or mill, you can order on the net. This is pounds per 100 or percentage if over or under a hundred



corn 20
field peas 20
flax 5
fish meal 5
oats 20
wheat 20
boss 10

 

[Hawgon]

Thanks Bairo, I am going to try this. What is the cost comparison to store bought feed?

 

[bairo]

depends on what your local mill charges to mix it and or rough grind or pelletize everything. I have seen wildly different price swings across the nation at mills. Generally speaking though the raw ingredients come out about 20.00 per hundred pounds of finished product. If you dont have a mill that will sell it by the pound and mix it for you, then you have to get the raw stuff in 50 lb bags at an initial higher cost and mix it your self. In doing it yourself then it takes a bit longer to see any savings because of that initial cost. here are some links for you...i am rushing out the door but can give you more later. If you do it yourself you also really need to rough grind it in small batches and make certain they have access to plenty of grit.

http://www.lionsgrip.com/nutrition.html

http://www.lionsgrip.com/recipes.html

I had used the above links to start my research and as general info to eliminate soybeans due to the high estrogen forming compounds and the inefficient digestion.
Corn is not a bad ingredient at all (especially non GMO corn)...just that feed companies use entirely too much to lower their cost or increase their profit margin.

 

[Treehill Farm]

Excuse my ignorance but what is BOSS?

 

[ACargill]

BOSS is Black Oil Sunflower Seeds

 

[Treehill Farm]

Thanks! Sometimes I need to be hit upside the head before I realize the obvious....

 

[Erica]

Hi Treehill Farm,

I have a couple recipes on my blog, from old 1940s books (pre-heavy-industrial but used feed trials). Look at the right hand side and scroll down if you want to read them.

However the above recipe looks good enough, with the exception that I wouldn't feed flax to chicks (it can stunt their growth). Peas also probably shouldn't be 20% due to antinutritional compounds (common to many legumes). But still, it may work if they have free range (which covers a lot of sins).

The lionsgrip links above are really useful too, I like them a lot and when just starting out that's where I tended to go for research.

cheers
Erica