Would it be cheaper to just get commercial feed vs. growing your own?

[Ariel301]

I was wondering what kind of corn you had that grew that many ears per plant...I've never had more than 2 or occasionally 3 ears on a corn plant.

To the original poster, if you have the means to grow some alfalfa or a small area of some sort of grain crop, by all means go for it. It will be a good supplement for them. I can't even grow grass where I live (northwest Arizona). Between the heat, lack of water (almost no rain, and our neighborhood's water system is terrible and sometimes we lose water to our house/property for a week at a time!), and all the wildlife, anything but cactus dies very quickly. We have a garden, and this last season we barely got any produce at all between the rabbits digging under our fence (It's buried over a foot down, in a trench filled with rocks and concrete, and they STILL dig through! Grr!) and the squirrels climbing through/over it. They would take a bite or two out of every vegetable, pull it off the vine, and then ruin it. And then dig up the plant too! We tried to grow a lawn, and the rabbits and quail ate up all the grass. Farming is hard in the desert.

As for cost efficiency, growing crops vs. buying commercial feed...I'm sure the commercial feed is cheaper if you add up the costs of water, labor, equipment, fertilizer....realistically you can't even make your own eggs/chicken meat in your backyard cheaper than what you get at the store. It's not a matter of being able to do it cheaper, but being able to make a better/healthier product, at least in my mind.

 

[rhoda_bruce]

equipment??? I might rent a tiller if I want to really treat myself. But really the land will already be cleared and I might only just turn it over. As for fertilizing.......plant a bean. You will drain the soil of nitrogen if you try corn. I don't fertilize. I mulch and turn over the land. Most corn doesn't have 4 to 6 ears, but some do. If I plant corn that only has 2.....oh well thats great. I still came out good. Even if I loose 2,000.
You know what..........it makes perfect sense to grow your own. Try it. What do we have to loose, except money....which we will loose anyway? And if we see that we aren't doing well......turn the chickens loose in the garden. Thats who it is for anyway. I won't be satisfied until I see for myself what I can do, so......to be continued.

 

[gsim]

You said you both were or would be working full time? That answers it. Man, it will really get old in a hurry doing what you describe. As far as free-ranging is concerned, forget it because you will both be gone for hours daily and will one day come home to a genuine tragedy. Do a really oversized run and plant it well with grass. Put up a 6 ft electrified fence too and if doing chicks, completely cover over it with an aviary net. To grow grass that chooks cannot rip up, make pr treated 2x2 frames maybe 6 ft square and cover them with hardware cloth mesh for the grass to grow thru. They will get the greens they crave and all of that natural calcium in it and the grass will survive the chooks. There will be an inch and a half that they cannot touch.

 

[hollandmum]

I like the idea of supplementing as much as I can, without stressing over growing it all. I'm starting to look into duckweed - it is supposed to be VERY high in protein, easy to grow and a great food source. It replaces itself VERY quickly, and I'm hoping to keep some containers growing indoors over the winter - free protein and fresh greens! Also, you could consider composting with red wiggler (composing worms) and feed the excess to your chickens. If you keep these covered or inside they should be free of the parasites found in some garden earthworms. Ontop of all this, we have a stack of scraps, and sometimes our friends provide a bucket of goodies (scraps) for our chooks.

I know they need balanced diets - but lets not forget they survived in natures once without fully processed vitamin and mineral enriched layer pellets!

good luck!!

Tracey

 

[hollandmum]

oh, I forgot another one...

have read that the siberian pea bush produces good quality seed - a great bush to plant in their foraging area.

It is considered a pest in some areas though.

Cheers!

Tracey

 

[Lollipop]

Browneye, truth is feed companies spen fortunes formulating their feed as a balanced diet. You can do a little better with fresh this and that, but it takes a lot more effort than most folks are willing to give and the bennies aren`t that great. If you were on a working farm and already produced most of the grains you need, that`s different. Just do yourself and hubby a favor and buy good quality feed already in the bag. You`ll have more time to be pretty for your man.........Pop

 

[Green Ridge MO]

With 5 acres - you will not be able to grow enough grains/varities to feed your chickens a complete feed. You could grow a grain crop if your soil fertility would allow it but it would not be cost or time effective to mess with such a small parcel planting into several crops. I would strongly suggest looking at green browse patches such as clovers, lespedezas, or maybe alfalfa if you have adequate soil. Alfalfa would be the best, but it is more difficult to establish and maintain. By establishing a forage pasture mix of grasses such as timothy, bluegrass, rye, orchard, mixed with a combination of forbs and separate plots of legumes, clovers, alfalafa you could provide the most nutitionally balanced blend that would be easiest to maintain. With a good riding lawn mower you could mow the growth at least once a year and bag it if wanted for coop bedding and nutrient picking in the winter. This would be the ideal case. Seed costs would be relatively high for initial establishment but should last for a few years until some plants outcompete others. Most of all the species listed could also be broadcast planted but it would be best to slightly till the soil and roll it.
Personally, I had the same case in which my land was previously row cropped between soybeans and corn. I simply bought a 50lb bag of medium red clover and frost broadcast it. I now have a 1 year old stand of excellent growth red clover for forage, not to mention the insect production in the warmer weather. I had a neighbor farmer cut and bail it this summer and it produced one big bail on the acre I had planted to clover. I now utilize that for bedding and letting the hens scratch around in the snow covered ground.

If you have row crop farmers around. Talk to them and have them let you know about grain spills when they are combining. Many times now days larger farmers will not scoop shovel up grains that are spilled during grain cart/truck/bin/combine transfers. THis last fall I exerted a little elbow grease and sweat and picked up over a half ton of spilled corn that now fills every container in my shed. I probably saved about 100-200 of the cost of buying corn and will have plenty to make it through summer. Start paying attention to where grain trucks go in and out of fields and usually there is a small pile there and after gaining permission usually free for the taking.