Over this winter I have been running a little experiment with my feed. Here in NM I can get organic layer, grower and feed. All of them contain soy. When I talked to the guy who mixes he was fine with mixing a soy free mix for me, but felt that it would be harder to bring the protein level up enough. I had a friend who tried the soy free version on her farm and said getting the protein level up high enough was a real PIA. Her method was to get beef bones and scraps from the local butcher. I thought that was a bit time consuming for my tastes. Still, soy is something that I am trying to weed out of our diet. So, this winter I have been feeding the whole grains that I can get from this supplier next to his mix. Basically, I put into a feed hopper equal parts of corn, wheat, triticale, oats, milo and sunflower seeds and put that hopper next to the "layer" hopper. The birds will eat from the whole gains over the mix at about a 2:1 ratio with very little waste. They also have free access to alfalfa, which they love and which is a good green for them with a higher protein content. To date, unless it's extremely cold (11 degrees was a touch nippy), I am get about 5.25 eggs a week from the cochins and barnevelders. Today I added ground up seaweed and dried anchovies to the whole grain (about an ounce of each to the 3 gallon mixer bucket). My goal is to add trace minerals and protein. My next step is going to be to sprout grains and add that as an option. I can foresee moving to an all whole grain diet in the future. It will give me more choice over cost/content.
