Oats and corn?

[melton33]

Hey everyone i had a question about feeding my chickens. I was wanting to cut down on cost of food so i was thinking of growing oats and corn and feeding that to them as their main feed. I was just wondering if this was a good idea or if i was thinking to much. Oh and my chickens are free range if that makes a differents.

 

[chickenmaniac]

i would think thats fine i only feed my chickens corn and they seem to be fine

 

[A.T. Hagan]

IF they are free ranging
IF the range is at all good
IF you don't have more birds than your range can support
IF your range doesn't become poor for large parts of the year as in winter, droughty summers, so on

Then it may work pretty well. That is the traditional way chickens have always been kept.

But it's a lot of IFs. If your range is poor from late fall to early spring then the birds will likely do what they've always done in such circumstances which is they won't lay much or at all. If your range is poor they also may likely not lay much. If you have more birds than your range can support more of the same.

Try it and see how it works. You can always go back to buying chicken feed if it doesn't work.

 

[Fred's Hens]

A better solution, for us, has been to find a local source for less expensive, but high quality feed. I don't think I could justify the labor, machinery and effort to grow limited quantities of grains, then buy a supplement/vitamin/mineral package to add to my own feed, buy a grain grinder large enough to produce 50 lbs of feed a week....... nope. I've mused about that, but it didn't work out in my head.

If you pay $18 for a bag of national brand feed at a rural store, such as TSC, the cost is too high to be economical. But what if you paid that same $18, and got 100 pounds of feed from a local feed mill?, you've cut your feed cost in half. Since we've too many mouths to feed here, our local feed mill is a life saver.