Okie dokie, for the millionth time (maybe 3rd time) I live on a grain facility and we dry and store grain. We always have rice and some years have yellow corn too. We run a public scale and so a bit of silage is dropped too. Due to these circumstances, I am lucky to have access to free stuff. When we clean rice seed (this time of year) I have an over abundance of rice hulls which I know I can use as litter. As for the rest of the stuff, it goes into our "trash grain" pile. Any rice or corn (and random bits of green silage) that falls off the truck, out of the augers, ends up on the ground mixed with rocks, ect goes into the "trash grain" pile. It is all unrefined, mostly whole grain. The rice is sometimes hulled sometimes not, and the corn is huge, not like the canned stuff. My hubbie grabs handfulls (not the trash stuff, eww, but out of the auger) and pops it in his mouth and even my little dog likes to munch the corn.
Okay so my question is, how much of this can I feed to chickens? It's mostly (80% or so) rice. I know I have to wait until they are big enough, but I can't find the ratio or I don't understand what it means. My chickens are going to be able to semi-free-range on a large area with lots of weedy grass and plenty of bugs. Hubbie (who doesn't know anything about chickens and I know barely more) says just to give it to them as people used to do this all the time without problem. I have literally tons of it but don't want to get the girls sick, but nor do I want to spend lots of money on pricey feeds when I think I could make something myself. Okay this is already long enough. I await responses, thank you!
Okay so my question is, how much of this can I feed to chickens? It's mostly (80% or so) rice. I know I have to wait until they are big enough, but I can't find the ratio or I don't understand what it means. My chickens are going to be able to semi-free-range on a large area with lots of weedy grass and plenty of bugs. Hubbie (who doesn't know anything about chickens and I know barely more) says just to give it to them as people used to do this all the time without problem. I have literally tons of it but don't want to get the girls sick, but nor do I want to spend lots of money on pricey feeds when I think I could make something myself. Okay this is already long enough. I await responses, thank you!
