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

[Pghelp]

Most chickens won’t over feed with a hanging feeder. They will eat as much as they need. If your mom is really worried about that you could try fermenting feed, and dishing it out. It doesn’t decrease the amount of feed you need for them, but the bacteria in the fermented feed makes it more digestible.

You can definitely supplement with oyster shells for your chickens. For a free calcium source just feed crushed egg shells back to your chickens.

I would second fermenting the feed. My girls love it. I use a grower feed because I have a mixed flock of layers and pullets. They waste a lot less feed doing fermenting which is way easier than it sounds. I would also add that I am very picky about what my hens eat. I’m eating their eggs after all. I will only buy non-gmo or organic feed which, granted, costs more than some of the recommended feeds here. My feed of choice is Scratch n Peck and the girls love it because it has lots of seeds and grains but is nutritionally balanced. As they say on every bag, “You are what your animals eat!”

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I have a friend that raises laying hens and has been mixing her own feed for years, she also free ranges. Her chickens appear to be very healthy and active with little to no issues. She pointed me to "Becky's Homestead" which is the exact recipe she uses. Currently, I feed mine a whole grain organic feed that is uber expensive which is why I have also considered mixing my own. My thought was to use "Becky's Homestead" recipe along with some additional ingredients found in my organic feed and then following the percentages listed on the bag of my feed. I haven't gotten around to trying it yet though. My perception is, as long as you're not starving your chickens, they look happy, active, and they're healthy then you're doing something right. There's nothing wrong with experimenting a little, you're chickens will tell you if you're doing it wrong.

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:

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.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

This, BTW, is Justin Rhode's Recipe (again, before correcting for moisture content), nutritional info sourced from Feedipedia again:

and for comparison, here is the nutritional label from a bag of Purina Flock Raiser (corrected for moisture content):

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Murdering our chickens is NOT an option and never was. We saw some cheaper feeds that were under $20/50lbs in nutrena brand and Tucker Milling. I'll try to see if we can go back and look at what feeds are available. Would a layer feed without the added calcium be alright for roos if I put some oyster shells separately for the girls? And my mother says that we are overfeeding our chickens by leaving our feeder in the coop full of food. I read from multiple different sources that they eat 1/2 cup food each day which would mean that they would finish a 50lb bag in approximately 13 days so I dont think they are overfed unless 1/2 cup is incorrect. We ran out of food about 2 days ago so they haven't had food for a couple days except the bag of peas I gave them yesterday.

I tried to explain to my parents how malnutritional homeade food is going to be and how they are not going to lay well (she only cares about the number of eggs they produce). I said that we should have researched the nutritional value of everything and learned about what chickens need in their diet BEFORE we went and bought a bunch of stuff. Looking into it, I realized how badly making homeade food is going to be for them. Many websites I looked at said that those ingredients should only be given as treats and not as a main part of their diet. They are full of carbs and don't have a lot of nutritional value (which I tried to explain to my parents). I looked at adding that fertrell nutribalancer and fish meal but they were very expensive and would have not made it cheaper. My mother responded with saying that they are my chickens so I should just go get a job to pay for all their stuff myself since she was apparently always wrong about everything. (I can't get a job and she knows that bcs I dont have my license yet) She told me that she watched a whole 5 videos and I didnt actually look into how we are overfeeding our chickens and we shouldn't keep the feeder out there for them because I just wanted to see how bad homeade food was for them. She said that I was just looking for how bad doing this was going to be for them (I was looking up the nutritional value of each ingredient, not how is making homeade chicken food bad)

I've used Tucker Milling's 18% and was satisfied. Not thrilled, pleased or excited by the results, but satisfied. and locally, all the Nutrena is 40#, not 50# bags - so you want to double check that.

 

[Brooks_]

all the Nutrena is 40#, not 50# bag

I believe a few formulations are 50#. Starter (18%) for one

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I believe a few formulations are 50#. Starter (18%) for one

Could be, I just know my local TSC stocks only in 40# bulk and a much smaller plastic bag size for grower

 

[Lazy J Farms Feed & Hay]

Waste of time, Waste of Money, Waste of the productivity of your flock, Waste of the health of your flock.

 

[ChickenTender1203]

We are going to use Tucker Milling, the guy at the store said nutrena hasn't been getting supplies in sometimes but the Tucker Milling has. So we got a bag of 22% protein layer pellets that we are feeding to the entire flock;hens, pullets, cockerels, and roosters. We also got one more bag of the all flock to gradually change them to the new stuff. The new feed doesn't have ingredients listed, but the guy at the store said they never change their recipe and that roosters will eat it, so I hope it's okay for them. They also had a 16% layer feed but we wanted the extra protein for the colder months.

 

[Vicker]

I don't know why there is so much naysaying about this. There are many people who mix their own feed with great success and show how they save money. There are many who ferment the feed for nutritional and feed reduction purposes. I don't do it because I'm too lazy.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I don't know why there is so much naysaying about this. There are many people who mix their own feed with great success and show how they save money. There are many who ferment the feed for nutritional and feed reduction purposes. I don't do it because I'm too lazy.

If you've reached the end of this thread, and still don't know why there is so much naysaying about this, then I have somehow failed in my efforts to educate with hard figures.

For the majority of people, the majority of time, they lack the education, experience, research, facilities, and economies of scale necessary to compete economically with "the big boys" in the crafting of a nutritious, economical feed. To mitigate the first, they often rely on internet or youtube personalities (i.e. the aforementioned "Garden Betty" whose own knowledgebase is clearly deficient), and for the second, they generally don't pick up a calculator (or they are simply math impaired - something else I've seen on full display in some of the youtube feed videos).

Nor do most owners have truly healthy birds to compare to. If all your birds look like teens and adolescents raised on a diet of doritos soda white bread and peanutbutter, the whole flock looks healthy (when compared to each other).

In short, they simply don't know any better, and choose not to learn.

That's not to say feed can't be mixed at home, just that it requires effort to do so well, and it can only be done economically under unique circumstances not enjoyed by the majority of BYC posters.

None of which has anything to do with fermenting, a process with its own myths surrounding it (ACV is another good example of this). At least ACV and the various ferment methods are useful to some people in some circumstances.