Making our own food, how much of each ingredient should we add for a balanced diet?

[Agronauts]

Your mother, with respect, is long on erroneous assumption and very short on both facts and the relevant knowledge base.

Simple math.

If the peas plus the lentils add up to 25#, they you are looking at 200# total weight of nutritionally deficient feed. At mthe mill I use, I can have a vastly superior mix for $16.45 x4 = $65.80 or the actual blend I use for $58.80 for 200# of feed. Locally, my TSC is selling the Purina Layer for $24.49/50#, so basically $100 for 200#. BOSS pricing varies wildly, but I'd guess you have between $20 and $40 invested in that bag. Corn should be under $10/bag right now, though I've seen it as much as $13, depending on where you buy. 50# of wheat? $30-60 dependning on source. Oats? $23-38. Grocery store frozen peas, bulk almost $1/lb, dried lentil about $1.5/lb.

My guess is that you have at least $85 in ingredients, and maybe closer to $120 in ingredients before accounting for the peas and lentils. Remembering that the known quality and nutrition Purina Layer is right at $100 for 200#. Your mom's 175# of BOSS, Wheat, Oats, Corn is (my guess) close to the same price, and (before reductions for moisture content), coming in at 11.7% protein (way too low), 7.8% fiber (high), 10.1% fat (way too high) and deficient in Methionine, Lysine, Threonine, and Tryptophan, as well as most vitamins and minerals based on published averages for those bulk ingredients.

If she wants to make a BYC account, any number of us can provide some of the relevant information - but the simple truth is, you can't touch the economies of scale the commercial mills enjoy. You can't even get close. Particularly when some of your ingredients are coming from the (human) feed store.

Can I make a top notch dining experience at home for my family buy buying bulk and raw ingredients, then preparing my own at lower cost than prepackaged? ABSOLUTELY. Can I do the same for my birds? Not even REMOTELY close.

Thank you. This is really helpful. My hubs was musing over "making" our own, but your math proves out my intuition that animal feed outfits are more reliable at gauging adequate nutrient content.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Thank you. This is really helpful. My hubs was musing over "making" our own, but your math proves out my intuition that animal feed outfits are more reliable at gauging adequate nutrient content.

Happy to have been of use. There's a lot of belief out there, now that so many of us have spent so long away from the means of food production as a culture. Some of it is good and useful. Some of it is very circumstantially beneficial. Some of it... should probably be relegated to the dustbin of history.

Hard to know which is which without study, science, and (sometimes) some math.

 

[Kanekoded]

Becky doesn't know....
Becky's recipes are monstrously fat heavy, low in critical amino acids, and she pulled her numbers out of a hole in the ground. I can't find a source for the nutritional composition of her recommended ingredients which will output her numbers, most sources (and yes, there is some variation) have her mixes coming out far less balanced than the figures she publishes.

Using the nutrition figures from Feedipedia, before correcting for moisture content, this is Garden Betty's Basic Feed:

View attachment 3292506

Her No Corn, No Soy recipe is even worse.

Neither is it cheaper than an off the shelf commercial feed of even average quality (which, nutrionally, is better quality than either of her recipes.) If you are going to mix at home, start with Justin Rhodes recipe, please. It outputs much better from any calculation using average feed nutrition values, and it has a lot more experience behind it.

Thanks for the tip.

 

[Al Gerhart]

The average individual is never going to come up with a more complete feed than the feed mills that have spent millions over decades in conjunction with the commercial poultry producers. It is fine to supplement feed with scraps, or making plans for home grown feed if things continue like they have the last two years, but until commercial feed is either too expensive to feed or impossible to get the chickens are going to be much better off with a balanced ration.

Kind of like working on my Ford Explorer, I can, but at what cost as i fumble around and break thing that a seasoned mechanic has learned to avoid?

 

[Ital]

Cracked corn is whole corn that is dried and broken. That is it. It has exactly the same things in it (except the amount of water, at least sometimes - whole corn can be dried and still be whole corn). The same amount of oil, the same amount of everything else.

I'm willing to listen alternative ways of doing things. I'm sure I am wrong about some of the things I think I know and would like to correct them.

But if she has that most basic thing that far wrong.... I don't think she knows what she is talking about on other things either.

Ha ha, Oh dear.. I’m attempting making my own quail feed and removed polenta from the recipe after realising it’s just processed corn and about 3% lower in protein than whole dried. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken this project on, I assumed the lower numbers were a result of the processing.
I’ve found a lab I can send samples to for nutritional analysis so I’ll soon find out if I’ve been successful in my attempt but after reading this I’m not feeling especially confident.
Thanks to all for the sage advice in this thread, if I could find commercially available gluten and oat free organic premixed feed then I’d just buy that instead but I don’t think it exists, so I’ll be going ahead with it anyway and hoping for the best.
If I have any luck I’ll share the results on here.

 

[Kiki]

Ha ha, Oh dear.. I’m attempting making my own quail feed and just removed polenta from the recipe after realising it’s just processed corn and about 3% lower in protein than whole dried. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken this project on, I assumed the lower numbers were a result of the processing.
I’ve found a lab I can send samples to for nutritional analysis so I’ll soon find out if I’ve been successful in my attempt but after reading this I’m not feeling especially confident.
Thanks to all for the sage advice in this thread, if I could find commercially available gluten and oat free organic premixed feed then I’d just buy that instead but I don’t think it exists, so I’ll be going ahead with it anyway and hoping for the best.
If I have any luck I’ll share the results on here.

https://reedyforkfarm.com/organic-soy-free-gluten-free-layer-feed

 

[Ital]

Thanks for posting this it’s not even got oats in it which had me really excited but then I noticed it’s in $ (I’m in the U.K.) and also it’s only 17% protein which isn’t enough for quail or their chicks. I’m aiming for a starter with 28% and breeder mash with 22% which with my very limited understanding I’ve got as close to as I can so am spending £200 on lab tests to find out how close I got and to see what else is missing.
They’re gonna be the most expensive eggs I’ve ever eaten but you just have to get used to everything being more expensive if you have to avoid gluten.

https://reedyforkfarm.com/organic-soy-free-gluten-free-layer-feed

 

[Kiki]

Thanks for posting this it’s not even got oats in it which had me really excited but then I noticed it’s in $ (I’m in the U.K.) and also it’s only 17% protein which isn’t enough for quail or their chicks. I’m aiming for a starter with 28% and breeder mash with 22% which with my very limited understanding I’ve got as close to as I can so am spending £200 on lab tests to find out how close I got and to see what else is missing.
They’re gonna be the most expensive eggs I’ve ever eaten but you just have to get used to everything being more expensive if you have to avoid gluten.

I do feed my young quail a 28% protein feed but ALL of my older quail eat 16% layer feed. And by older I mean I switch them over to the layer feed at 6 weeks of age.

 

[David61]

% crude protein, % of fat, %fiber...
Now i beleave what ever you feed, it should not be more than 50% of their daily intake. Your home made feed, brand name crumble\pellet,free range... all should add up to their daily intake. One should be the only source.
i use two different brands of feed. each say it meets 100% of their needs. purina flock raiser and a local brand 10 way grain complete feed. A bad bag or production run of one feed is not all they are getting each day.
so even if i make my own feed, it will only be half of the feed they get that day.
but thats my opinion.
Now I stayed at a holiday inn last week. I think kids should believe in the Easter bunny and Santa Claus and Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone, so....

 

[EmmaRainboe]

Now I stayed at a holiday inn last week. I think kids should believe in the Easter bunny and Santa Claus and Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone, so....

What does this mean?