What do you do to save money on feed?

[dragonlair]

I add cheap dry cat food to their crumbles in the winter months.

I have been adding crimped local oats to their crumbles at the rate of 2 parts crumbles to 1 part oats. It stretches their crumbles and lowers grain purchases because crumbles are 17.00/50 pounds and the oats at 11.00/50 pounds.

I get free meat and fat scraps from the slaughter house for my dogs. I give the chickens some every day.

The layers get fresh goat milk mixed with thier crumbles and oats every morning

I grow comfrey to feed them during the growing season

I have friends save edible left overs that I mix with the crumbles and milk

I had a garden and gave the extras to the chickens

Since my hens have to be penned up 24/7, I let my lawn grow and bring them grass, clover and dandelions during the growing season.

I watch for sales or sign up for coupons for chicken feed and buy extra when on sale.

I get cheap bird seed for them as a cheaper scratch feed.

I pick up snails and dead worms in the morning and put them in a bowl in the chicken pen

 

[dragonlair]

I feed back their eggs shells to them. Don't have a problem with them eating their eggs. I dry the shells and crunch them up. I'm not sure they know that the shells belonged to their eggs.

I also hard boil extra eggs and smoosh them up shells and all and feed them back to the girls. They go nuts for them.

 

[mandelyn]

Firstly, I kill all the mice. Last I checked mice don't lay eggs, so no free handouts for them. Didn't even know I had a mouse problem until I trapped 26 of them after seeing some droppings in a corner of the coop.

Keep the feed in a plastic garbage bin, and bagged feed is in a wooden box and hardware cloth over the vents. Mouse proof so far.

Supplement with free range and a lot of greens. A handful of cat food over winter or molt. leftovers from the house. Whole veggies that were on sale, pumpkin or watermelon or whatever.

Put a tray under the food bowl, they flick out some, it lands in the tray, I dump it back into the bowl. A lot had been getting lost in the bedding and they wouldn't always go back for it.

Our feed is a milled mix, not a crumble. I don't top off the bowl daily, so that they eat the finer stuff in the mix too. Otherwise, they pick all the corn off the top and beg for more. After trapping all those mice, I only need to top the bowl off every 3 days or so.

 

[aoxa]

Oh I am bad.. Making everyone feel like their chickens are gluttons

1) I free range. They get a lot of their diet from the land. Grass, bugs, whatever dares cross their path (frogs, mice, etc).

2) Ferment. The water alone doubles the mass of the food.. If that's not a good enough reason to start doing it, I don't know what is.. You don't even have to ferment. Wet food is better than dry food. I started out just serving wet food before I started fermenting.

3) Scraps. Lots of scraps.. Anything we don't consume, they get. I don't worry too much about 'too much' people food. We really don't give them as much as we used to (now they have to share it with a lot of other chickens!).

Remember that the # of birds I have are not laying. I keep bantams and standard chickens.. Though my turkeys eat more than any of my chickens.. They probably consume 2-3 x as much as the chickens.

So this week I went through 2 bags of feed. I normally go through 4 if I serve dry (in the summer!) This time of year they usually eat a lot more than the summer, so that says a lot in and of itself for fermentation. e

 

[mistyt14]

PUMPKINS LOL

I've been collecting friends left over halloween pumpkins. I have about 8 of them now to chop up and freeze. Figure it will really help during the winter and my girls love it. We just got the chickens so we have been experimenting. I got a suet basket and put stuff in there for them so it doesn't get covered in dirt ect. Seems to help and gives them something to work at

 

[SaraChristine]

Chopping up and freezing pumpkins.... BRILLIANT!

We let ours free range through the yard and in the woods. I would only have to feed up their trough maybe once ever 4 days (if I let it get completely empty). We only had 6 chickens at the time, now that we basically have a new flock, it might be a little different. We aren't letting the new ones free range yet, but might a few days a week after they get used to their new home.

They would roam through my garden every now and then, but never took much interest in anything still on the plant (except for the bugs! Which worked out well, I didn't have to use any repellant this year thanks to those guys!) But I would cut up cucumbers, squash, and swiss chard every now and then. Their favorite was definitely cucumbers! We have a bunch of pumpkins I was using as decoration, but I'll use some of seeds for toasting, but the rest I'll see how the girls like it!.

We don't give them any meat, but they do get bread that's gotten a little stale. We DEFINITELY don't give them any of our dog food or cat food... lol the inside pets all get Blue Buffalo and that is wayyyyy too much $$ to give to the chickens lol. I'll happily keep giving them the layer feed that's $11 for the 50 lb bag.

 

[Quyen Le]

you are lucky that you can get 50 lb bag for $11. I paid $16.99 for 50 lb bag of layer.

 

[tbridegroom]

next week i think im going to go to the local resturants and see if theyll throw their wasted food and such in a 5 gallon bucket everyday and put it by the trash at night and i'll come everyday and get it to feed my chickens .....seems like an awesome way to "recycle" to me

 

[LaynaDon95]

All such good ideas! I've been experimenting all week with feed. Fermenting the layer pellets didn't work very well for me. I had some technical issues. =P I plan on trying again, but I've decided to start with scratch grains and that is working like a charm! (Who knew fermenting chicken feed could smell so good?!) I'll continue wetting the food until I learn to ferment it, though! That's a great idea! I'm considering getting some oats like dragonlair suggested and supplementing their feed with a combination of sprouted and fermented oats/scratch grains. The problem is oats are only $.11 cheaper than laying pellets here, with laying pellets being $14.99 and oats being $14.79. The scratch grains I get are $13.49. Does anyone feed their girls sprouted grain? I think that would be a great way to get greens down them in the winter.

So, a rough sketch of the things I'm doing, trying or about to try (which are constantly changing)
I free range my flock as well. They have access to the garden right now, constant access to the compost bins (A big favorite), and about 1 1/2 acres of pasture.
I'm working on killing off all my extra roosters! We have gone from about 20, to only 4 extra roos.

(It's only taken like 10 stinkin' months -_-)
I feed LOTS of extra scraps as well. Fridge clean-out day is my flock's favorite day! I have some pizza crust I need to go throw out actually...
As previously stated, I'm about to start mealworm farming. My chickens should love that!
I'm trying to keep track this week of how much feed I go through and how much money it's costing us. I'm not especially good with the maths and especially since it's changing a lot right now it's hard to keep track of. But what I think I'm gonna try for while is:
Wet laying pellets
fermented scratch grains
and sprouted scratch grains
And I'll see how that goes and if it saves any money!

 

[mistyt14]

We live in a city with no fenced yard so no free ranging here, but since we have known we'd get chickens ive been saving fruit scraps ect freezing in 1 cup ziplock containers. Pop it out fits perfect in a suet feeder then they have to work for it, also doesn't get stomped into the ground