What are your frugal and sustainable tips and tricks?

[gtaus]

That winter I went through almost a bag a day. so 2 buckets per bag x 30 day= at least 60 buckets for a month of feed. That's a lots of buckets LOL

Sounds like you at a much higher level of keeping chickens than I am with my small backyard flock of ~10 chickens. A 50-pound bag of feed lasts me almost an entire month.

I imagine you might need a different storage strategy if you go through two 5-gallon buckets of feed every day. I don't think I would bother transferring that much feed into small 5-gallon buckets. I know our local grain elevator sells feed in bulk, but it's something like a full IBC at a time. You can save money buying in bulk, but that would be way too much feed for me and my small backyard flock of 10 chickens. The feed would go bad before it was ever eaten up in my case.

 

[gtaus]

$485 per Hour Sifting Chicken Run Compost!?

I was in our local garden center the other day and noticed that they are selling 0.75 cubic foot bags of organic cow and chicken manure compost for $12.99 per bag. Well, heck, I make my own chicken run compost so I wondered what the current cost savings for me would be if I used the cost of $12.99 per bag in my calculations.

A few years ago, I invested just over $200.00 and converted a cement sifter into a compost sifter. Here is a picture of my setup...

With the cement mixer compost sifter, I can sift out about 7 cubic feet of compost into that 6 cubic foot black wagon every 15 minutes.

I had to sift out a wagon full of compost for Dear Wife this past weekend for her flower gardens and pots. I wondered how much it would have cost us to buy the equivalent in bags of organic compost at the local nursery. Turns out, that wagon full of my homemade chicken run compost would cost $121.28 if we bought the compost per bag!

That makes my time savings in sifting my own chicken run compost up to $485.00 per hour! Of course, you don't need a cement mixer compost sifter like mine to make valuable compost at home. But I'm an old guy and it was just too much for me to continue to sift all my compost with my old wood frame and hardware cloth over a wheelbarrow.

For those of you who might like to look at the cost savings breakdown of my homemade chicken run compost, here is the math from Copilot AI...

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Let's break this down step by step to calculate your savings per hour:

1. Determine how many bags of store-bought compost equal 7 cubic feet:[7 \div 0.75 = 9.33 \text{ bags}]
2. Calculate the cost of 9.33 bags:[9.33 \times 12.99 = 121.22]So, 7 cubic feet of store-bought compost would cost $121.22.
3. Find out how much you produce per hour:Since you sift 7 cubic feet every 15 minutes, in one hour you would sift:[7 \times 4 = 28 \text{ cubic feet}]
4. Determine the cost of 28 cubic feet of store-bought compost:[(28 \div 0.75) \times 12.99][37.33 \times 12.99 = 485.10]

So, by sifting your own chicken run compost, you save $485.10 per hour compared to buying the equivalent amount from the store.

That’s a huge savings! Your method is definitely paying off.
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[Molpet]

Sounds like you at a much higher level of keeping chickens than I am with my small backyard flock of ~10 chickens. A 50-pound bag of feed lasts me almost an entire month.

I imagine you might need a different storage strategy if you go through two 5-gallon buckets of feed every day. I don't think I would bother transferring that much feed into small 5-gallon buckets. I know our local grain elevator sells feed in bulk, but it's something like a full IBC at a time. You can save money buying in bulk, but that would be way too much feed for me and my small backyard flock of 10 chickens. The feed would go bad before it was ever eaten up in my case.

View attachment 4133808

I eat 3 cockerels and half a jake a month. So I sorta end up keeping all the girls
And I originally planed on rotating the stewing hens out, but since I retired I figure they deserve to retire too.

So out of over 40 chicken hens I get maybe 1 and half dz on a good day lol ...only 1 pullet from last years 4 made it to spring.

I don't have a place to store or way to unload bulk and the local grain elevators , that are left, don't sell chicken feed anymore. They buy, sell and store grains. No Mill any more