Welcome to BYC
@Featherlove23 . You don't say where you are at, which makes it hard to customize advice for your environment. I also see that you have Pekin ducks, in addition to your chickens.
In answer to your first question: Can you? YES. Should you? Only in extreme circumstances.
With very few exceptions, the make at home formulations are generally worse than off the shelf feed solutions nutritionally, and more expensive as well. For a tiny or small flock, like your own, there is no value in buying bulk to mix hundreds of pounds of feed at a time - it will spoil long before your birds can eat it. Further, if pandemic related supply chain issues and Ukrainian -war related supply constraints, and other world events conspire to take commercial feed completely off the shelf, the chances of you sourcing the variety of ingredients you need to make a nutritionally complete feed during those supply disruptions is near zero.
Neither do most people have the combination of acreage, equipment, good soil, and climate to grow and store the variety needed in quantities needed for a full year of feed.
Step one - cut out the treats. Yes, I know those very expensive dried meal worms, etc are high protein, but they are also very high fat. The live feeder fish are a better choice, if you can make that system sustainable with what you save not buying the dehydrated insects.
Do some aquaculture research. A battery and some solar powered DC pumps will help insulate you from supply issues in the future.
As to what to plant? That depends on your environment, climate, soil - but I would recommend avoiding bulk grains - the sort of stuff (like corn) which are relatively low value nutritionally and are likely to remain available. Focus on the more nutritionally dense things you may be able to grow locally - legumes like clovers, alfalfa. Grains and near grains like flax, teff, amaranth, sorghum, buckwheat, sorrells, even rye. Panic Grass (the smaller, less ornamental ones) and orchard grasses work well for me too. There are others, but that will get you the start of a list to work from.
My personal preference is not to make monlithic plantings - I have things mixed throughout my "
yard", so the birds have to hunt, and can't gorge on a particular crop as it comes into season w/o moving around. Even then, its not a substitute for feed, though it may mean you need less feed.
