New to all this - 3 hens in my backyard coop

Hi Phlimm,
I'm new too, and also have 3 chickens...they are only 9 weeks old. I also do not want to spend a fortune on food for them so Ive been researching what they need, what value things have, how to go organic, etc.
Here is what I found:
Each full grown hen eats from 1.8 to 2.2 lbs per week
( mine are medium sized, use 2.0)
Total food for 3 hens x 2 lbs = 6 lbs per week
Pasture grazing of bugs and greens is estimated to use 10% to 25% of total
.25 x 6 = 1.5 lbs. 6 - 1.5 = 4.5
Need 4.5 lbs of feed per week
I am raising earthworms and hope to reach a sustainable population to include them as a portion of feed.
Worms sell for about $25 a pound and up! Can you imagine paying that much for a steak for yourself?
One idea I saw was to use a bug trap at night by an outdoor light to catch free nibbles for the girls. I want to try this but have yet to do it.
My girls like to free range more than eating their store bought food. They have access to the food, but just come in once in a while to nibble and nap. I'm in Florida and I have a very buggy environment, but weve had drought so Im low on both bugs and green forage...even so, when they free range they reduce their store bought food intake from 12 ounces a day down to six to eight ounces, so it does help. They have shown no interest in any people food except a mcDs french fry I shared!
That is not part of our normal diet, however!
And even though we have lots of sand, I still give the granite grit because it is not polished smooth and it varies in size more than our sand.
I also discovered the girls LOVE spanish moss, which I have in abundance. It is not toxic, but internet research finds it is also not very nutritious. It must have something good, though, unless it's the chicken version of those french fries!
Considering mixing my own chicken food:
I modified a recipe I found, I'd love some feedback on it folks...
Summer Chicken Feed Recipe
Winter feed
To make one months worth of mixture (20 lbs)
Ingredients
(For winter, reduce oats 2 lb and increase corn by 2 lb
decrease millet 1 lb increase sunflower seeds by 1 lb)
(for northern climates you would want more carbs from corn than this for winter)
Items where the source provided amount equals the amount required only lists that price:
Note that some items need or are better with heat treatment: quinoa, amaranth, buckwheat, barley, flax,sesame seeds. I would boil them with the peas and lentils then divide into daily portions and freeze for the month.
(Percentage)(weight needed)(pricing on internet)(Weight supplied) (price per perctange used)
25% oats. 5 lbs. 10.99
25% millet. 5 lbs. 8.39
10% split peas 2 lbs. 7.99
7.5% quinoa. 1.5 lbs. 24.00. 5 lbs. 7.25
7.5% amaranth seeds 1.5 lbs. 19.95 5 lbs. 6.00
5% cracked wheat. 1 lb. Cracked. 8.96. 6.5 lbs. 1.50
5% sunflower seeds 1 lb. 11.75 5 lbs. 2.35
5% pumpkin seed (cracked or hulled) 1 lb. 15.95 5 lbs. 3.25
2.5% cracked corn 0.5 lbs. 2.85 5 lbs. 0.30
2.5% lentils 0.5 lbs. 7.80. 2 lbs. 2.00
1.25% hulled barley 0.25 lbs. 6.25 1lb. 1.60
1.25% buckwheat 0.25lbs. 3.29 1 lb. 1.00
1.25% flax seeds 0.25lbs. 11.50 2 lbs. 1.50
1.25% sesame seeds. 0.25 lbs. 9.95. 1b. 2.50
Granite grit
Oyster shell (layers only)

I'm confused why would you feed $25 a pound food to your chickens ?
 
Hi Dennis,

You asked why I would feed $25 per pound food to the chickens....

I'm not sure if you mean the feed or the worms, so I'll address both.

The worms are expensive for the intial purchase, but I do not pay for feed for them and I control the food they do eat. They get my yard waste and they do not get any food that was grown using pesticides, fungicides, manufactured fertilizer, or could be GMO. The only thing I cannot control is the mosquito spraying by the county, although they are cutting back on it due to cost, I think.

The chemicals are all bad enough but GMO food DNA has been shown to pass intact into animals beyond the digestive track and once in the body it can begin to modify the animals DNA.

I do not want my chickens eating any of that garbage either, and I have modified my own eating habits as much as I can afford to. Having eggs from my own chickens will help with that.

Protein is the expensive part of chicken food, and the protein source grains are pricey (quinoa and amaranth). (corn is high carb...carbs are cheap: same with people food, which is why poor people tend not to be skinny in the US... We buy the cheaper food).

By growing my own worms at no cost besides the time it takes to feed and harvest them, I can cut the chickens protein grains down and save money. i started with two pounds of worms and now just have to wait until they reproduce madly! By the end of the year I should have enough to start feeding to the chickens. The first three months are the slowest but everytime I open the bins I find lots of baby worms. I got them March 20 so the increase should begin to be very rapid now.

I am not mixing my own chicken feed yet. I provided the list so other people could have the benefit of my research. I wanted to see how much it would cost, and the prices I listed dont even include shipping costs! Frankly, t is way too expensive, so I am trying to grow my own plants from the list.

I am experimenting with the quinoa, amaranth, pumpkins, sunflowers, and want to have a try at the lentils and millet. My peas are not doing great because a mole is destroying my garden and they dont recover well once I fill in the tunnels.

I want to kill that flippin mole! It has also destroyed almost all of my cucumber plants and two of my sunflowers.

My pumpkin is flowering, but every flower has died off at the stem so far like a rot...dont know what is up with that! Have not found any bugs.

I have to add that when I was in NY with my sis and her husband, I bought a chicken for soup from an amish store. It had virtually no fat and was the best flavored soup I have ever had! If I can work out all the feeding expense problems, my goal is to raise enough meat birds to stop buying chicken (just one a week). My next door neighbor has experience and said he would help with the butchering.
 
Phlimm - do you have three year-old hens or three-year-old hens? Because if they are three years old, they're probably not going to lay well even if you feed them the best diet ever concocted.

Kirikiri - pumpkin are in the squash family. The first flowers that appear on zucchini squash are male and appear to die off. The next round of flowers will be female and thus capable of setting fruit. Sounds like your pumpkins are being normal.
 
Hi Dennis,
You asked why I would feed $25 per pound food to the chickens....
I'm not sure if you mean the feed or the worms, so I'll address both.
The worms are expensive for the intial purchase, but I do not pay for feed for them and I control the food they do eat. They get my yard waste and they do not get any food that was grown using pesticides, fungicides, manufactured fertilizer, or could be GMO. The only thing I cannot control is the mosquito spraying by the county, although they are cutting back on it due to cost, I think.
The chemicals are all bad enough but GMO food DNA has been shown to pass intact into animals beyond the digestive track and once in the body it can begin to modify the animals DNA.
I do not want my chickens eating any of that garbage either, and I have modified my own eating habits as much as I can afford to. Having eggs from my own chickens will help with that.
Protein is the expensive part of chicken food, and the protein source grains are pricey (quinoa and amaranth). (corn is high carb...carbs are cheap: same with people food, which is why poor people tend not to be skinny in the US... We buy the cheaper food).
By growing my own worms at no cost besides the time it takes to feed and harvest them, I can cut the chickens protein grains down and save money. i started with two pounds of worms and now just have to wait until they reproduce madly! By the end of the year I should have enough to start feeding to the chickens. The first three months are the slowest but everytime I open the bins I find lots of baby worms. I got them March 20 so the increase should begin to be very rapid now.
I am not mixing my own chicken feed yet. I provided the list so other people could have the benefit of my research. I wanted to see how much it would cost, and the prices I listed dont even include shipping costs! Frankly, t is way too expensive, so I am trying to grow my own plants from the list.
I am experimenting with the quinoa, amaranth, pumpkins, sunflowers, and want to have a try at the lentils and millet. My peas are not doing great because a mole is destroying my garden and they dont recover well once I fill in the tunnels.
I want to kill that flippin mole! It has also destroyed almost all of my cucumber plants and two of my sunflowers.
My pumpkin is flowering, but every flower has died off at the stem so far like a rot...dont know what is up with that! Have not found any bugs.
I have to add that when I was in NY with my sis and her husband, I bought a chicken for soup from an amish store. It had virtually no fat and was the best flavored soup I have ever had! If I can work out all the feeding expense problems, my goal is to raise enough meat birds to stop buying chicken (just one a week). My next door neighbor has experience and said he would help with the butchering.


I would sell the worms and casings to pay for the good chicken feed.
I didn't add up the cost of your recipe but I don't think it will add up to $25 a pound.
I don't see how it can be cost effective to feed them instead of selling them to others.
So if you had to buy all the stuff for your recipe how much would it cost per pound ?
 
much of the vegetables/fruit we buy at the grocery store are pretty devoid of nutrients, especially minerals. your hens won't perform (lay eggs) on that alone.
hope you have fun with your girls. mine are just now on the brink of old enough to lay eggs. i can't wait.
 
Dennis,

I do plan on having a business with the worms which was why I bought them. The only hurdle that remains is getting approval for my business license from my county. I did not want to do this until I have enough worms to do business with! No reason to have to do business paperwork until I actually have a product to sell.

I will have to control the quantity of worms (the population does multiply rapidly) so being able to use that excess for something beneficial (chicken food) is better than letting breeding slow down due to overcrowding. Young worms eat more and produce more castings than the older ones, so the full grown big worms especially need to be thinned out.

If I can make a living from my worm business I would consider buying an organic feed. I am not thrilled with the mixtures ive seen, although I have not examined all the organic feeds online, so perhaps there is one I would like.

I didnt figure the cost per pound of the feed mix because I didnt know the shipping cost for all the items. Shipping can cost more than the purchase price.

If you just add the numbers in the list it equals 56.62 for 20 lbs, so divide by 20, so the cost per lb is $2.83. With no supplemental feeding that is $6.23 per chicken per week.
Then add in shipping: I would double the cost of the feed for the shipping estimate. Anything I can grow myself reduces the cost.

This is my first time doing any of this, so it is all an experiment! I think the quantity of the plants Im growing is not going to yeild enough for even a month of chicken food, but I wanted to see how the plants do here before investing much yard space, money, or time in the project.

I could have spent more money on worms to get going faster, but I just cant afford it. Im trying to do what I can with as little outlay as possible in all of this, while also trying to keep organic. So far my only failure is the chicken food...i just cant afford to feed them how I would prefer, but I am minimizing as best I can by getting them out in the yard to forage.
 
Phlimm - do you have three year-old hens or three-year-old hens? Because if they are three years old, they're probably not going to lay well even if you feed them the best diet ever concocted.

Kirikiri - pumpkin are in the squash family. The first flowers that appear on zucchini squash are male and appear to die off. The next round of flowers will be female and thus capable of setting fruit. Sounds like your pumpkins are being normal.



Well that is a relief, Thank you! i didnt see that in any garden forum!
 
Welcome to BYC we are new to chickens has well but we mix layer pellets, three way scratch, scratch and oyster shells with our chickens in runs has each like the variety some like the corn some like the layer some like the other stuff in the scratch so we buy a fifty pound bag of each of layer scratch and three way scratch we mix them all together we also supply sweet grass and clovers to them daily.
 
My hens are one year old each. I have three of them. Sorry for the confusion.
smile.png


Another diet question - I helped out at a Mother's Day brunch today and brought home 40 dozen egg shells. I was going to roast them and then grind them up and toss it out in the coop for the girls to eat. But then I wondered since I now have them on Layer Feed (Nutrena 16% Crumbles), is it possible to give them too much calcium? Should I just toss the shells?
 
I guess 13.3 dozen egg shells each at one time might well flood the system. If you want to use them now just throw them a little at a time. Roasted egg shells have a long self life. Store them in a air tight container. You may not need them with the layer feed now. As hens age some times they have problems absorbing the needed nutrients, which may then produce soft shell eggs. Egg shells are more easily taken up then some other sources.
 

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