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Making your own chicken feed

57 replies
KT
Joined: 11/21/2007
User offline. Last seen 28 weeks 6 days ago.

I received some information from a site member about concerns over high soy content in manufactured chicken feed, so I decided to look more into chicken feed ingredients.

As I began to research chicken feed in more detail, I began asking myself a lot of questions. I try to avoid/limit soy in my own diet, so it this something I should limit for my chickens?  Is the "ready made" feed healthy for chickens, even if it is organic?  I try to limit my own consumption of processed foods, so why should I feed my chickens a processed food?  Would it make a difference in their health, egg laying, and longevity? Also, chickens have been around for A LONG TIME, and processed/manufactured feeds have not been around that long. Was the switch to manufactured feeds an improvement in chicken diet? (I highly doubt so.)

Well, from what I have read it is not just soy or organic/non-organic that is an issue, as there are many aspects of manufactured chicken feed that are less than ideal.

Backyard Poultry Magazine has a great article on making your own feed, and talks about manufactured feed vs. fresh homemade feed.

I am going to work on my own formula and phase out the last bag of "processed" feed that I have.  I see it as an experiment, and I am curious to see my results from switching them to a less processed diet that I make fresh every few days.  I'll be posting some updates periodically on how the process is going.

If you are making your own feed, or have been thinking about trying it, share your thoughts and experiences.

Joined: 03/02/2009
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I was thinking about making feed this morning. Currently, in our household we make our own dog food. Every few days we throw store bought chickens (or any other meat I can find for under $1.00 a pound) and a small amount of vegetables into a meat grinder and bake the ground product for about 30 minutes. I do this for my pets health and safety. Doing this for the chickens would not only improve their health and safety but my own.

The response of my chickens between when I throw a hand full of feed vs. a few pieces of fish is amazing. They seem to go nuts over anything that isn't feed.

I'm not sure yet what my feed will consist of but I'll be experimenting. Anyone think of a good source of bugs?

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You can purchase live crickets at a pet store.  A plant nursery will have other bugs and worms.

KT
Joined: 11/21/2007
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I've never tried crickets from the pet store, but our chickens love worms. They love when I turn the compost pile, cause they get a worm feast.

Joined: 03/13/2009
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hee-hee:) yeah i made a worm and bug cake 4 their b-day!!

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Just found this great article. It's a bit gross but if you can stand it...http://thedeliberateagrarian.blogspot.com/2006/11/free-chicken-feed.html

KT
Joined: 11/21/2007
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Thanks Jason- that is a great article!

KT
Joined: 11/21/2007
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I've made my own feed successfully (aka- the chickens at it) with whole grains and protein, but it's time consuming.

Since I am too busy to make my own feed, and organic feed is NOW available at local feed stores, I am now just purchasing that. It is a really good product, which resembles the food it was made with, rather than the conventional crumble. It's like comparing whole grain bread to white bread in the look and feel, as well as nutrition.

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I really dislike people that have no real comment about the subjects being discussed, but instead want to push advertisements on our community site. Mccullum above obviously knows nothing about chickens, nor making feed, so how can we get rid of these people that only join for the day to promote their websites? It frustrates me to read them and realize I was wasting my time reading an idiots "non-comments" that don't pertain to anything. Sorry. I guess now I'm just wasting your time with my empty ramblings. I do have chickens and I have been purchasing bags of different feed and grains and mixing it myself. I give them flaxseed, barley, oat groats, scratch, sunflower seeds (when they aren't too expensive), layer pellets, grit and oyster shell. They do free range when I am home and two of them just started to lay last month (which is great because I was beginning to think I would never get an egg...the oldest is 11 mo. and the youngest is 7 mo.) Smile

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Well I have a Small farm in the Sonoran Desert in Mexico. (Hermosillo Sonora MEX) the Climate is just like in Arizona (Very Hot) I have free range chickens and found a very interesting source of food. By observing how nature works in that area I found that by placing Wood or blocks of cow manure (Blocks that are 3*4 and 1 inch High) After a few weeks I found that I had a variety of insects like crickets, worms, ETC; but the interesting part was that I found Termites.. I am able to farm the Termites and provide some extra treat for my chickens. Once a week I lift up this wood or Cow Manure blocks and sweep up the termites and feed them to my chickens. They love them. Fact did you know that a termite can lay about 100 eggs per day. That’s cool.. (For my Chickens.. LOL) Let me know what you guys thinks of my discovery…

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Thank you for the excellent source of information. My wife and I are getting ready to build our coop come the spring and begin raising chickens. We both have concerns over the amount of processed feed that is being used in commercial chicken farms and are wanting to avoid processed feed.
We look forward to updating our process as we begin to build and establish our coop.

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So,I wanted to feed my chicken for free)))
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That's impressive, but I heard farmers from your country are really good at doing making their chicken feed in great situation. Congrats.

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