I feel your pain. I have the same issue! No organic soy-free feed anywhere near us! I ended up sucking it up and just paying the shipping costs from countryside natural like another poster noted. (the closest place to me that has it is about 150 miles away and they want $83 for a 50 lb bag! Nearly twice the price I can get it direct.) It is organic so no GMO and it is soy-free. They are accredited by Global Organic Alliance Inc. who is an accrediting agent for the USDA. Global Organic Alliance also appears to hold to higher standards than USDA alone as well. (If you spend some time on their website comparing the sections of USDA standards with the International Cert Standards they also hold their members to, it appears the International Cert Standards that must be met are slightly more stringent then USDAs NOP for crops)
Anyway, it is not cheap...not by any stretch. I pay $45.44 to have a 50 lb bag shipped to my door, but I only have 3 girls currently and no one else around me wanting to split up shipping on larger orders of organic feed. I do have a new chick someone gave me last week that I am hoping is a girl, lol. I also have one roo, and it may sound mean, but I do not let him eat the girls layer feed. He lives off the grass, bugs, etc. of approx. 1.25 acres as well as my always fully stocked compost and I do also toss him some of my "organic meal worms" lol so its not like he is starving or anything. (Yeah, I also have a meal worm farm going, but to be fair its not just for the chickens. I have some toads and a couple leopard geckos to feed as well, lol) I just cant afford to let the roo have that feed...I tried. He hogs it, wont let the girls near it, and it seems he alone eats as much as the 3 girls combined a day!
I actually came on today to check out some homemade incubators and got side tracked, lol. I want to order some hatching eggs so I have "non hatchery" (or feed supply, which is where these girls came from lol) chickens filling in the rest of my flock. I am kind of bracing myself just thinking of the feed costs. I found some rare breeds I want really badly though, lol! So a hatching I will go! I am a sahm of 3 human kiddos myself so no income from me...just my hubby, and trust me, sometimes I want to throw my hands up in the air and just give up and go buy that $12 bag of conventional feed up the road. However, its the right thing to do for our kids and our planet, and I have to practice what I preach ya know?
Oh and before any highly committed environmental conservationists point out my carbon footprint from shipping feed like that...I know, I know. But living in Florida, which is SO not a grain growing state, lol, ALL feed is shipped here anyway so any feed I buy has that tied in already. Plus, I do try to get several orders of other things we need that are not available locally to work out with the same shipper and day as well. This way I am not having UPS stop by to drop ONE box at a time to me, not to mention its UPS so there are many other people in the area that they were coming out for anyway. Not so different than the carbon footprint of buying from a store, which I would be forced to do in my state regardless. (I like to think its a bit less of a footprint considering I skip a storefronts operations plus I supported the organic process which lowers my impact as well.)
Anyway, back to the original subject...thought you might like to check out the ingredient list of the countryside natural layer feed so here it is:
Organic Field Peas, Organic Corn, Organic Oats, Organic Wheat, Calcium Carbonate, Fish Meal, Organic Alfalfa Meal, Organic Flaxseed, Organic Rice Bran, Sodium Silico Aluminate, Dried Organic Kelp, Dicalcium Phosphate, Salt, Yeast Culture, Roughage Product (organic wheat middlings),Organic Sunflower Oil, Vitamin A Supplement, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Vitamin E Supplement, Choline Chloride, Menadione Nicotinamide Bisulfite Complex, D-Calcium Pantothenic Acid, Niacin Supplement, Riboflavin Supplement, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Thiamine Hydrochloride, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Biotin, Folic Acid, Manganese Sulfate, Ferrous Sulfate, Calcium Iodate, Zinc Sulfate, Copper Sulfate, Sodium Selenite, Dried Aspergillus oryzae Fermentation Extract, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Dried fermentation product of Lactobacillus acidophilus, Dried fermentation product of Lactobacillus casei, , Dried fermentation product of Lactobacillus plantarum, Dried fermentation product of Enterococcus faecium, Dried fermentation product of Bacillus coagulans, Dried fermentation product of Bacillus licheniformis, and Dried fermentation product of Bacillus subtilis.
Tanya
