if you worry about food costs, and your not going to let them free range.. at least feed them your grass clippings.. like if you have a bag mower or something.. that would totally help!
re roosters arent worth the feed? cull them?
- Thread starter maf2008
- Start date
Yeah.. Your math is off.
10 weeks = 70 days
At 1/4lb a day it would be 17.5lb of feed till butchering.
At 1/2lb a day it would be 35lb of feed till butchering.
In order to better these figures, allowing them to range, or feeding them clippings and whatnot such as Eric suggests is the best way.
You might also switch to a breed that's ready for butchering sooner, say at 6 or 8 weeks. Cornish X come to mind.
10 weeks = 70 days
At 1/4lb a day it would be 17.5lb of feed till butchering.
At 1/2lb a day it would be 35lb of feed till butchering.
In order to better these figures, allowing them to range, or feeding them clippings and whatnot such as Eric suggests is the best way.
You might also switch to a breed that's ready for butchering sooner, say at 6 or 8 weeks. Cornish X come to mind.
Quote:
Yeah! someone actually likes one of my ideas! haha
LOL... You're a very easy person to make happy....
Just common sense to supplement their $$$ feed as much as possible with kitchen scraps, yard clippings and whatnot to help cut costs.
Just common sense to supplement their $$$ feed as much as possible with kitchen scraps, yard clippings and whatnot to help cut costs.
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- Thread starter
- #15
- Feb 19, 2009
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OK... now what about this.. I will suppliment with grass/clover. We are a small family of 4 and do not have much scraps
My husband just got a job at "a big fast food chain" Can I feed left over burgers/ fries and such????? he can bring home scraps from there each day.
I do not want fat fast food chickens!
My husband just got a job at "a big fast food chain" Can I feed left over burgers/ fries and such????? he can bring home scraps from there each day.
I do not want fat fast food chickens!
Raise broilers... sell the roosters at auctions.
But ya your math is a bit off. It doens't take 100 lbs of feed to get a 4 lb rooster.... How many roosters do you have eating 50 lbs of feed in 8 weeks.
But ya your math is a bit off. It doens't take 100 lbs of feed to get a 4 lb rooster.... How many roosters do you have eating 50 lbs of feed in 8 weeks.
I would stay away from the scraps... not good for the chicken or for you.
I would crunch the numbers agian as it's not that expensive. You should raise a rooster for around 4-5 bucks.
I would crunch the numbers agian as it's not that expensive. You should raise a rooster for around 4-5 bucks.
Quote:
You can feed the scraps if you can get them. Most fast food places are tightly run and you may find that you won't see a lot of waste for the taking. But, take what you can get and put such waste to good use. Im not normally one to recommend a smorgasboard of treats for chickens, but in this case it is too beneficial to let the food go to waste.
Besides, chickens are not people, which may surprise some of us here at BYC. You can over feed them, I suppose, but if you can SUPPLEMENT their feed this way, you'd be nuts not to.
As for your math, you are definitely off. The others have shown this admirably, but I just can't help doing it, too. It is eye opening, really.
I plugged the general data from Leonard Mercia's book, "Raising Poultry the Modern Way," into a simple formula.
According to Mercia, feeding a meat bird cock to 10 weeks takes 18-20 lbs of feed. We'll use that as an approximation for our purpose here.
I'm lucky: I pay 9$-10$ per 50 lb bag of feed, and even less if I want to go to the mill and get it myself. Hey, I live in the middle of Carolina Commercial Chicken Country. Like I said - lucky.
So, let's use the $10 bag, which equals 20 cents per pound of feed.
(20 lbs of feed for one cock) x ($.20/lb) = $4 in feed.
Add in incidentals as you may wish and we can round it to $5. You can hardly buy a chicken in the store for that much, and when you can, they are not 'homegrown'. Even with feed at double the price, you still are talking $8 each. Still doable, in my book.
Sell all or a few, and you can likely recoup some of your costs, aside from labor, bringing your total back down.
Doing that also sounds like a good reason for the fast food supplements. I mean, what a does a plump homegrown chicken fetch where you live?
You can feed the scraps if you can get them. Most fast food places are tightly run and you may find that you won't see a lot of waste for the taking. But, take what you can get and put such waste to good use. Im not normally one to recommend a smorgasboard of treats for chickens, but in this case it is too beneficial to let the food go to waste.
Besides, chickens are not people, which may surprise some of us here at BYC. You can over feed them, I suppose, but if you can SUPPLEMENT their feed this way, you'd be nuts not to.
As for your math, you are definitely off. The others have shown this admirably, but I just can't help doing it, too. It is eye opening, really.
I plugged the general data from Leonard Mercia's book, "Raising Poultry the Modern Way," into a simple formula.
According to Mercia, feeding a meat bird cock to 10 weeks takes 18-20 lbs of feed. We'll use that as an approximation for our purpose here.
I'm lucky: I pay 9$-10$ per 50 lb bag of feed, and even less if I want to go to the mill and get it myself. Hey, I live in the middle of Carolina Commercial Chicken Country. Like I said - lucky.
So, let's use the $10 bag, which equals 20 cents per pound of feed.
(20 lbs of feed for one cock) x ($.20/lb) = $4 in feed.
Add in incidentals as you may wish and we can round it to $5. You can hardly buy a chicken in the store for that much, and when you can, they are not 'homegrown'. Even with feed at double the price, you still are talking $8 each. Still doable, in my book.
Sell all or a few, and you can likely recoup some of your costs, aside from labor, bringing your total back down.
Doing that also sounds like a good reason for the fast food supplements. I mean, what a does a plump homegrown chicken fetch where you live?
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- Mar 15, 2009
- 183
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Yes, you definitely want to crunch the numbers again. Unless you're paying $40 a bag of feed, it's going to cost you much less to feed them to eating size. We raised seven roos to 16-20 weeks. The 16 weekers weighed about 3-4 lbs after processing, the 20 weekers definitely had more meat on at about 5+ lbs each. These were a cross of a RIR over a White Leghorn hen.
The meat was absolutely delicious, tender, plump, perfect.
Remember that they're not eating anywhere near that 1/2 lb of food a day early on, they start out eating just a tiny amount and it gradually goes up over time as they grow, so you can't use 1/2 lb or even 1/4 lb of feed per day as your guide. Like everyone else, we found it was in the neighborhood of $4 or $5 per roo by the time they were ready to butcher. (That's if we're feeding them manufactured feed. For our own mix, it's less.) That's around $1 a pound for delicious meat that we knew exactly what went into it. The flavor of home raised meat is incredibly better. Another thing to consider in most store-bought chickens is that they inject up to 15% "flavor solution" into the meat during processing, so possibly 15% of the weight is just injected water, which ruins the texture and flavor of the meat as well. Can't believe they get away with that. Look on the package. You'll see that on nearly every package of any kind of meat at the store these days. Tiny print so few people notice or realize what it means.
As for the fast food scraps, there's going to be hamburger, lettuce, onion, cheese, etc, all of which are good for your chickens. Even adding the bun, I would bet that it's just as healthy to feed them that as to feed the processed chicken feed. If you read the ingredients of the processed chicken feed, you'll find it's pretty much the ingredient list that you'll find for a fast food meal, but without the greens. I don't know why processed chicken feed is considered so perfect. It ends up being that you're feeding your chicken processed food, just like eating processed food from the store with a vitamin pill added. Yay. Whoopee. (And don't get me started on store bought dry dog or cat food! It's just flavored cornmeal, a bit of soymeal for protein, with vitamins and a bit of white rice and maybe a bit of vegetable. Not a natural dog food!)
We started out feeding our chickens, guineas, and ducks the processed chicken feed. Most of it got wasted. They would eat a bit more of the Purina Flock-raiser than any other brands, but we had sooo much wasted! So we started mixing our own. I found recipes for homemade chicken feed online, what people used to feed their chickens. I kind of made up a similar recipe for our birds, and they love it, it's cheap, and they're quite healthy and laying up a storm.
I buy a bag of scratch (usually cracked corn, wheat, and sometimes other grains), a bag of rolled oats (from the horse section of Tractor Supply), a bag of black oil sunflower seeds, a small box of flaxseeds, barley, sesame seeds, lentils, etc from the grocery store. We mix sort of equal amounts from the scratch and oats, slightly less of the sunflower seeds, a bit of flaxseeds and the other stuff, and then always have free choice grit and then some oyster shell for the hens. They also get whatever vegetable peelings (not potato) and trimmings we have, and they're in a chicken tractor outside so they get grass, weed seeds, worms, bugs, etc. I sometimes throw them in a cabbage to devour. It's also suggested to add in some powdered milk, which I do when I remember.
This costs about half what a bag of feed does for the same weight of our mix. Sometimes I'll buy a bag of wild bird seed and give them some of that, too, which they love.
Yeah, it's not "perfect," but who eats a "perfect" diet anyway? I'm sure someone could and probably has invented the perfect pelleted nutrition food for humans, too, but no one's going to eat that. Especially not for every meal. Given a choice, a chicken will eat what makes them feel good. They seem to feel good on this mix we make for them and they don't waste it, either. Anything that falls out of their feeder is easily scratched for, found, and gobbled up. Any processed feed that fell out was ignored and wasted.
Oh yeah, and for chicks, the grains and scratch are too big, I mixed cornmeal, regular quick oats from the cereal section at the store, and then some Purina Flock Raiser. Probably half Flock Raiser, 1/4 oats and 1/4 cornmeal, along with some playground sand from Lowes for grit. Probably not some people's idea of perfect, but they were all healthy, happy, strong, energetic, we didn't lose a single one, it worked well for us. I think we fed them this until about ten weeks, though I can't remember for sure.
Good luck. I say feed them the fast food scraps, buy some whole grains for them when they're a little older, (make sure they get plenty of grit to help digestion) and you should have plump, juicy, delicious roos to eat in about four months, and for about the price you pay at the store.
The meat was absolutely delicious, tender, plump, perfect.
Remember that they're not eating anywhere near that 1/2 lb of food a day early on, they start out eating just a tiny amount and it gradually goes up over time as they grow, so you can't use 1/2 lb or even 1/4 lb of feed per day as your guide. Like everyone else, we found it was in the neighborhood of $4 or $5 per roo by the time they were ready to butcher. (That's if we're feeding them manufactured feed. For our own mix, it's less.) That's around $1 a pound for delicious meat that we knew exactly what went into it. The flavor of home raised meat is incredibly better. Another thing to consider in most store-bought chickens is that they inject up to 15% "flavor solution" into the meat during processing, so possibly 15% of the weight is just injected water, which ruins the texture and flavor of the meat as well. Can't believe they get away with that. Look on the package. You'll see that on nearly every package of any kind of meat at the store these days. Tiny print so few people notice or realize what it means.
As for the fast food scraps, there's going to be hamburger, lettuce, onion, cheese, etc, all of which are good for your chickens. Even adding the bun, I would bet that it's just as healthy to feed them that as to feed the processed chicken feed. If you read the ingredients of the processed chicken feed, you'll find it's pretty much the ingredient list that you'll find for a fast food meal, but without the greens. I don't know why processed chicken feed is considered so perfect. It ends up being that you're feeding your chicken processed food, just like eating processed food from the store with a vitamin pill added. Yay. Whoopee. (And don't get me started on store bought dry dog or cat food! It's just flavored cornmeal, a bit of soymeal for protein, with vitamins and a bit of white rice and maybe a bit of vegetable. Not a natural dog food!)
We started out feeding our chickens, guineas, and ducks the processed chicken feed. Most of it got wasted. They would eat a bit more of the Purina Flock-raiser than any other brands, but we had sooo much wasted! So we started mixing our own. I found recipes for homemade chicken feed online, what people used to feed their chickens. I kind of made up a similar recipe for our birds, and they love it, it's cheap, and they're quite healthy and laying up a storm.
I buy a bag of scratch (usually cracked corn, wheat, and sometimes other grains), a bag of rolled oats (from the horse section of Tractor Supply), a bag of black oil sunflower seeds, a small box of flaxseeds, barley, sesame seeds, lentils, etc from the grocery store. We mix sort of equal amounts from the scratch and oats, slightly less of the sunflower seeds, a bit of flaxseeds and the other stuff, and then always have free choice grit and then some oyster shell for the hens. They also get whatever vegetable peelings (not potato) and trimmings we have, and they're in a chicken tractor outside so they get grass, weed seeds, worms, bugs, etc. I sometimes throw them in a cabbage to devour. It's also suggested to add in some powdered milk, which I do when I remember.
This costs about half what a bag of feed does for the same weight of our mix. Sometimes I'll buy a bag of wild bird seed and give them some of that, too, which they love.
Yeah, it's not "perfect," but who eats a "perfect" diet anyway? I'm sure someone could and probably has invented the perfect pelleted nutrition food for humans, too, but no one's going to eat that. Especially not for every meal. Given a choice, a chicken will eat what makes them feel good. They seem to feel good on this mix we make for them and they don't waste it, either. Anything that falls out of their feeder is easily scratched for, found, and gobbled up. Any processed feed that fell out was ignored and wasted.
Oh yeah, and for chicks, the grains and scratch are too big, I mixed cornmeal, regular quick oats from the cereal section at the store, and then some Purina Flock Raiser. Probably half Flock Raiser, 1/4 oats and 1/4 cornmeal, along with some playground sand from Lowes for grit. Probably not some people's idea of perfect, but they were all healthy, happy, strong, energetic, we didn't lose a single one, it worked well for us. I think we fed them this until about ten weeks, though I can't remember for sure.
Good luck. I say feed them the fast food scraps, buy some whole grains for them when they're a little older, (make sure they get plenty of grit to help digestion) and you should have plump, juicy, delicious roos to eat in about four months, and for about the price you pay at the store.
Interesing feed mix. Not far off from the old fashioned recipes, aside from the lack of animal protein.
Hats off to you.
Hats off to you.
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