Tinfoil hat question.. Sustainable chicken feed?

[Badlatitude]

right now my shtf prep is basically only ammo. We sold our farm before the market crashed and moved into a 2 family we own. Now we just went to get rid of the 2 family and go back to rural living.. so most of our life is packed in boxes right now.

Perfect example it took me 2 hrs today to find my 30-06 reloading dies haha

 

[annmarie]

I'm glad I ran into your question! I just read an article this morning about a compost company here in Vermont that raises around 1000 chickens pretty much entirely off of the compost piles and general free ranging. I guess the chickens are extremely productive layers on this diet too. So my answer would be... beg your neighbors and everyone possible for any compostable material, and in the meantime, you'll be building up some mean fertilizer for the garden. It doesn't get more sustainable than that! Of course, I can't find the darn article now, but here's a link to the company with some pictures of the chickens hard at work (in the winter!)...
http://vermontcompost.com/about/facilities/

 

[dgh]

There is a whole process of sprouting your own feed .
Its pretty easy and involves buying or growing oats or wheat grass or rye seed in bulk.
When the seeds sprout, there is protein released from the seed. I will try to find the info online and post it here.

 

[Momma_Cluck]

well-- is Walmart still open in this scenario???

We get BURIED in winter, and not enough land to grow that much feed to hold them over...
I'd have to go with wild bird food, bunny pellets (for greens) Sunflower hearts, boxed cereals, scrambled eggs, yogurt, and the fruits & Veggies I give them now....
Heck, might not cost much different either!

 

[dgh]

A Winter Menu ( back yard chickens)
Changing Poultry Feed by the Season

http://www.shopthecoop.com/id83.html

http://www.lionsgrip.com/intro.html

http://www.themodernhomestead.us/article/Sprouting.html

 

[patandchickens]

Quote:
Er, yeah, sort of, but notice that what the composting company mostly composts is commercial/institutional food waste, i.e. cafeteria leavings and so forth.

Basically they are feeding the chickens old people food

This is a LOT different than a typical backyard compost pile! Not that they can't get some benefit from that too but you are not going to actually sustain a flock that way.


Pat

 

[walls0stone]

I'm jumping in at the end..sorry I skipped a few posts.

I do put my scraps into the hen house. But I'll tell you how to grow a ton of bird food with out a lot of touble. Zuk and Pumpkins!
I have tons of Zuk I grow, just for chickens. How hard is it to grow those? If you keep them picked off...you can grow a million.
Pumpkins aer easy to.
Then I pack it away in the hay mow in mouse proof places.
If you keep them dry, and clean, you can totaly feed birds on them all winter. I toss in a pumpkin a day and they only leave the stem. Save 4 pumpkins worth of seeds and your all set for next year.

Have you ever seen a chicken garden?

 

[Badlatitude]

Good idea on the zuccini and pumpkins! thoose are bolth way sustainable so it squash. Not only for chickens but for people too!

We got a dump truck worth of manure mixed with shavings and hay when we had our old place. After it cooled off and was turned over a few times thru a season it produced so much butternut squash , pumpkins and strawberrys it was INSANE. We literally filled an 8ft bed of a truck with pumpkins then the squash and had a bussle basket of strawberrys and not intentionally either! the vines grew like wild fire!

I made the mistake of priming the soil along the garage with it for watermelons... HUGE MISTAKE! we had tons of beautiful watermelons. What I didnt realize was that some of the vines went up the gutter spout then the LENGTH of the garage in the gutter untill after it was too late and the gutter was hanging off the garage full of wacky looking almost bread loaf shaped watermelons!

 

[Their Other Mother]

Quote:
A hanging watermelon garden - How cool is that!!!

 

[Badlatitude]

It started out on the ground......