What to Add to Store Bought Chicken Feed

[cjhubbs]

Hi Everyone,
We have owned our chickens for a little over 4 years now and have never thought to *play around* with their feed. For the most part we have sticked to using dumor chicken feeds and they have really started to go up in price lately, normal layer feed being $17 per 50 pd. bag. At the local farm store, they have cracked and whole corn for $11 and I was wondering if this would be okay to mix with the chicken feeds? I was wondering if there was anything else I could add to the feed to help it last longer? Thanks for the help!

 

[A.T. Hagan]

I think you will eventually find mixing in fillers such as additional corn into your layer feed to be a false economy. What this does is to greatly increase the bird's carbohydrate intake while lowering their protein. The result of this will be to reduce their egg production and make them fat.

If you have left-overs and scraps (not rotten or moldy) they will eat you can give them those. Any sort of green feed you can produce or get free/cheap will help as well. Free-ranging is best of all, but not everyone can do that.

 

[Fred's Hens]

I think you will eventually find mixing in fillers such as additional corn into your layer feed to be a false economy. What this does is to greatly increase the bird's carbohydrate intake while lowering their protein. The result of this will be to reduce their egg production and make them fat.

If you have left-overs and scraps (not rotten or moldy) they will eat you can give them those. Any sort of green feed you can produce or get free/cheap will help as well. Free-ranging is best of all, but not everyone can do that.

Exactly. Another avenue to pursue is a local feed mill that grinds their own feed and sacks it in a plain feed bag. Often, the feed is of excellent quality at a price that is often 25-40% less than the retail, rural, TSC type stores sell pre-packed, trucked in feed.

 

[cmom]

I think you will eventually find mixing in fillers such as additional corn into your layer feed to be a false economy. What this does is to greatly increase the bird's carbohydrate intake while lowering their protein. The result of this will be to reduce their egg production and make them fat.

If you have left-overs and scraps (not rotten or moldy) they will eat you can give them those. Any sort of green feed you can produce or get free/cheap will help as well. Free-ranging is best of all, but not everyone can do that.

Ditto...

 

[cmom]

Opps Duplicate post???