Looking at what people say about scratch, e.g.: "When purchased commercially, it usually consists of wheat, corn, oats, sunflower seeds, millet and various other seeds. It is NOT complete nutrition." and then recipes for homemade feed, e.g.:
this thread, isn't homemade feed just basically scratch?
I'd like to make my own feed and use organic grains where possible, but if I follow the recipe above is it still not complete nutrition?
My chickens forage and I give them heaps of vegetable trimmings from the corner vegetable market.
Opinions?
Well, here's one wildly differing opinion. And yes, I aware it's just an opinion.
The Greener Pastures recipe is what I would consider scratch. I would not ever feed it to my chickens as "feed." Not even if we were desperately broke ... because it's too expensive for broke people. If I were broke, I have no idea how we'd do chickens. Can't bear the thought. I am not about to feed my chickens quinoa. I don't eat it, so they'll never get the leftovers. Yes, I do feed the chickens organic corn when we can find it. No soy. They also get organic oats and kelp. They get a special mineral mix. And other "special" stuff. It's not like they're deprived by not getting quinoa.
Our homemade feed is not "just scratch." We use the Nutrient Requirements of Poultry publication, 1994, 9th edition, as our quideline. We just use what we can find locally and grind and mix up batches of feed. Yep, we include the extra vitamins ... all the nutrients that are listed on a regular bag of feed from the feed store is in our homemade feed. Plus other stuff. We don't put in the feather meal, but "nutrient-wise" our chickens get the nutrients listed in the NRC 1994 9th ed. (above) It's not perfect, but it is the "standard."
Phosphorus. Magnesium. Calcium. You may want to look those up and then decide how you want to supplement those if you're going to go the scratch and vegetable trimmings route. They work in conjunction with each other. I know people do skip the phosphorus and magnesium. That's fine by me. I just know what I've read about poultry nutrition and I prefer to make sure they get some phosphorus and magnesium along with the calcium.
You may want to look into or study up on animal vs. vegetable proteins. I want my chickens to get animal protein since a number of sources claim that a chicken's physiology requires it for robust health. And robust health is what we're looking for around here.
There's more, but I can't put it all in a message here. Whole books have been written on chicken nutrition and feeding methods. Just figuring out how much alfalfa meal to include based on about 80 years of studies by universities and agricultural stations becomes a week-long project pretty quickly.
Your local feed mill may be able to provide a few ingredients. For example: Millet from them will be cheaper than millet from the bulk area of your grocery store. But millet by the 50 pound bag is still expensive compared to what it was 2, 3, 4, 5 years ago. Example 2: Your local feed mill may have vitamin and mineral premix that you can add to your feed once you figure out a recipe (if you go that route). However if you want to go "no soy," the premix often has soybean oil in it to keep the dust down.
Short of formulating, grinding, and mixing your own feed, scratch *Plus Supplementing* is about the best you can do for the chickens if you want to stay GMO free. You just have to find out what chickens need nutritionally and then figure out a way to get them "some of that" in a way that doesn't make your eggs cost you a $1 a pop. Organic, grass fed eggs around here cost 50 cents each these days in the store. Amazing.
I wish you success.
