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Chicken Feed

 
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Good Afternoon Permies!

I was walking through Tractor Supply, grabbing my 50lb bag of Purina grower for my chooks, and I realized that there must be other ways besides big brand feed sacks.

I have found a local farm that makes its own feed mixes and sells at a better price point than the store. I'm going to buy a few bags and give it a shot but I figure I should see what other people are doing.

What do you feed your chickens?

Do you supplement their ration with anything?

Compost system?

Scratch?

What is your 'routine' and how has it treated you?

I want to hear how you operate!
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Buff and I
Buff and I
 
Timothy Norton
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I'm currently using for my main feed the DuMor 20% Chick Starter/Grower as I have just started my chook wrangling and it was easily available.

I also give a small amount of scratch to convince them that I am a cool guy and to maybe go into the coop at a reasonable time.

I further give them any kitchen scraps or garden scraps that I can divert and they seem to love it.

I supplement some granite grit in a separate container as well.

I have a bunch of heavy breeds so they can eat which I came in expecting. I'm hoping their larger size makes them especially winter hardy which has been my main worry.
 
Timothy Norton
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I have managed to get my hands on some Russian Comfrey Bocking #14 and planted it this year but I am reading that it could be useful addition to my chicken's diet.

I however read now that Bocking #4 might be a better fit.

Ohh no... I have to get more plants! The horror.
 
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2 bags of commercial chick starter.  From then on ground grain, what they gather on their own and household table scraps.  Ground grain is usually mostly barley that didnt make malt barely standards.(to high a protein typically)  For chickens to fatten some ground corn.  For egg chickens some wheat and oats added whole to the mix.
 
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I am still working out the details so I can do this on a larger scale for all my livestock, but I have contacted the larger farmers in my area. All are willing to sell me grain. All are willing to sell in smaller volume. Most are willing to sell it at whatever their market price is.  

There are two points were snags exist.  One is my ability to safely store the grain. The second is how to measure the grain being sold.  Neither is a huge issue, but I do need to work them out to where they make sense to me.
 
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While I dream of growing my own chicken food... I still bought the bagged food. I used the Green Mountain Feeds Organic Soy Free Layer Pellets and supplemented by moving them around and throwing kitchen/garden scraps to them.
 
Matt McSpadden
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I also supplemented oyster shells from Tractor Supply and the grit from there as well. I found out that I could get a 5 gallon bucket of rock dust from a landscaper for a couple bucks that was pretty much the same stuff I was paying $8 for a bag that was probably half a gallon.


***Edit - I realize that I worded that very confusingly. What I was trying to say, is that I was buying a small bag of grit for like $8 from Tractor Supply when I found out I could get a whole 5-gallon bucket (of pretty much the same thing) for like $5.
 
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I probably give them far too much to eat, as there is always food they haven't gotten to yet. I have four hanging feeders with just commercial stuff. I want to be sure that even those low in the pecking order get enough.

Their litter in the henhouse is strewn with grains and seed, which they love to dig up. The chicken run is strewn with kitchen scraps, grains, seeds and fruit (mainly apples). I gave them huge pumpkins, but they were not too fond of them. Tomatoes are probably the favourite.

Chickens love greens. Clover, dandelion and salads disappear immediately. Of course,nothing stays alive in their run as it is eaten up, but I bring them cuttings.

Now that the temperatures are around 10'F I bring them two hot meals: porridge, potatoes, pasta. They love youghurt but I rarely have milk as I would have to buy it from the shop.

The flock is 28 and freezing temperatures mean they need energy. I give them fatty winterbird feeder balls which are actually meant for small birds.

My chickens are not fat, but surely nobody stays thin either! It is quite endearing to watch how much they love eating. Especially if you throw the food around and they get to dig it up.

My definition of a happy flock is that you see lots of tails as they are pottering around 😄
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I was told years ago that "Chicken Scratch" is junk-food for chickens and they shouldn't get much. However, I can understand the OP using it as a bribe.

I just have a better bribe - Russian Kale. My birds totally adore it. I can genuinely use it to bribe the girls to go to bed.

Now if I could just get my young rooster to follow their example... sigh... I tried very hard tonight, but there was no help available and he just couldn't figure out that the pop door was for going *in*, not just *out*.
 
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Good question and I would love to figure out the portions to make my own. I currently use the feed from store because I am in the desert and they do not like to eat rocks which is all the land offers them. So feed, scratch, oyster shells and kitchen scraps. They loved our left over soaked oats.
Watching some YouTube videos just now, there is a lot of crap out there. Apparently Joel Salitin had a formula and I am not sure if he has updated this or not but this is what it is:
36% roasted soy
45% corn
10.9% oats
5% aragonite
3%Ferrell nutri balance
.5% kelp

That sounds like a lot of calculating and grinding and I am not sure he even still uses this or not. It was just from a few videos.
I know a lot of people are not using soy or corn now so if anyone knows what they are replacing it with, that would be helpful!
 
Jay Angler
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Betty Garnett wrote:I know a lot of people are not using soy or corn now so if anyone knows what they are replacing it with, that would be helpful!

We get commercial feed and the main ingredient is wheat.
I think one factor is location and what grows well locally.

One concern I have is that in some places, chemicals are used to encourage the wheat to all die back at once to make harvesting easier. The rules for residual chemicals for animals may be less stringent in places than the rules for humans, as if the stuff doesn't hang around and end up in humans anyway... let's not go there. There's simply no way I can grow all the food Hubby's "farm animals" eat. Several people have tried organic feed, but it tends to have a high chaff content which has little nutritional value, so the birds need much more of an already expensive product.

Jesse Bloom's book, Free Range Chicken Gardens, has huge lists of chicken friendly plants. Worth reading and taking notes in my opinion.

Russian Kale is so popular with Hubby's birds, I'd like to grow much more of it (if I can protect it from the deer and bunnies...) I've also been propagating Mulberry which has high protein leaves as well as fruit that chickens love. However, I get the impression it really likes more water than it can easily get in our summer drought, so I need it planted where we can easily dump buckets of duck and chicken water on it. The baby plant I put near one permanent shelter (most of our shelters are portable ones) has done incredibly well in one year. Granted, it got planted on top of punky wood, a rooster who passed, and some pretty good compost, so it may not have just been the water that made it so happy. I'm too far north for Black Soldier Fly although a friend would love us to give it a try. The trouble is that they need food to turn into grubs, and lots of it, so that's another layer of complexity.
 
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For baby chicks to 20 weeks I feed them mainly the Purina brand starter/grower 20% protein crumbles. But I also provide them things in the garden for supplements. There is a clear pattern of preference and I think that reflects their primary needs during different developmental stages. I synchronize the growth of baby chicks with various food sources without costing me extra.

For day old chicks to 10 days old, they love eating minced florescents of rapini. They can eat up to 10% of the body weight every day. They are able to gobble down black soldier fly larvae on the third day. I took video of them doing that; it was like having a baby chick football game.

From 10 days to 9 weeks I give them minced Russian kale leaves. They always eat every thing up as much as I can provide. I plan and grow those vegetables intentionally 6-9 weeks before the chick pick up date(mid June).

Their love for kale wanes around end of 9 weeks and start to show demand for calcium by eating up all the eggshells for the laying hen. It lasts till the 12- week mark.

By the time I have built up the black soldier fly population and they have lots of grubs to dig for in Aug and September. After the grubs are done there are plenty of grains and fruits in the fall.

My recent batch of pullets are laying eggs from 20 to 22 weeks old, including the slow maturing buckeyes. I don't have measurements for them but in last year's experiment, I gathered some data from 5 easter eggers raised in a similar way and their growth rate exceeded the ACRB meat bird used in a reasearch publication.
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EE vs ACRB body weight first month
EE vs ACRB body weight first month
 
Timothy Norton
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I just want to pop in and thank you guys so far for your responses.

I was not aware of Russian Kale but the more I'm reading about it the more I am getting excited.

Keep the suggestions coming!
 
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Thanks Timothy for starting this thread!

I have a parallel question to ask and I saw this thread here so I thought I would ask it here.

Do any of you grow your own chicken feed?  Anyone grow 100% or close to 100% of the feed on your own property?  I have a student that keeps chickens for egg production and she was telling me about how expensive their food was.  I thought that there had to be a cheaper way to do things, but I just didn’t know.  So I am asking partly on behalf of my student and partly for my own curiosity as chickens seem like one of the easiest of livestock to start.

Eric
 
Kaarina Kreus
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I think the permaculture way is to feed them what grows on your farm (unless it is rocks like Betty noted😄).
I grew buckwheat, peas and a lot of veggies. My chickens get all of these - as I eat them, I put a portion aside gor them. Chickens love all kind ow weeds, and I dried lots in the summer. Crumble them and ust add hot water!
My farm is new, so I am supplementing with commercial feed this year. Hope to be able to stop in the next couple of years.
 
Matt McSpadden
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Do any of you grow your own chicken feed?  Anyone grow 100% or close to 100% of the feed on your own property?



I do not, but I have heard from a few that do. They generally let the chickens free range and supplement with kitchen scraps. The ones doing it that way, from what I heard, had a significant drop in egg production. The chickens were still healthy, but did not have as much surplus food to put into egg production. I think it needs to be purposeful food production to get the level you need for egg production. Unfortunately that tends to be either time heavy or money heavy.
 
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I have been keeping a few chickens for a long time now.  I started out in a chicken tractor, then built a winter coop.  So keeping chickens for me is divided into two distinct periods Snow and No Snow!  Keeping my chickens in my garden and orchard has always been central along with trying to provide access to as much free food as possible.  

I have spent considerable time reading and researching poultry nutrition.  I can read a nutrition and ingredient label and back engineer a formula.  I have bought my own poultry protein, vitamin and mineral supplements to mix with grain as a complete ration.  In Canada 1/3 of all chicken feed made is mixed on farm using these supplements along with grain grown on farm or bought in bulk from grain elevators.   I don’t have a cheap grain supply so mixing my own ration is more expensive than buying ready mix.  It takes considerable time to mix your own  feed and I ferment it too when during No Snow!  I feed about 100-120 grams per bird.  

This year I planted a fallow garden plot with wheat.  It grew very well and I harvested it put it in my chicken coop loft to feed from the stalk this winter.  It will not go very far in the grand scheme of things but I will do it again.

 Of course my chickens get lots of fruit, vegetables, food scraps, grit, oyster shell etc,    I have learned that range provides two important things.  One, green vegetation that contains proteins in the form of chlorophyll, and two living organisms (insects) which provide animal proteins rich in essential amino acids, in particular Lysine, and Methionine.   I have also learned that soya meal that is part of most poultry rations is a critical source of these essential amino acids.  The only other source of these comes from synthetic supplements or animal proteins.  Organic farmers who don’t want to use soy need to use fish and crab meal.  This is expensive and may not be sustainable.  

Chickens eat a lot of food.  One hen eats almost 100 pounds of laying ration per year.  Even worse only 25% of the nutrients they eat are transformed into meat or eggs.   So if you wish to be more self sufficient and sustainable you must try to provide some nutrition from range and apply the manure to your soil!   In my experience reducing purchased feed consumption is most effective with a SMALL flock.  Less than a dozen for sure,  I have 7 right now and my best results have been with 3 or 4 hens.  
In the Snow season all access to green vegetation and insect protein completely disappears.   I can feed only ration and food scraps.  I have taken to feeding some skim milk daily in winter.  This provides some animal protein and improves winter egg laying.  Milk was often fed to chickens on farms in the old days, right from the cow.  I grew up on a farm milking a cow and we fed soured milk by the gallon to our chickens.  Souring breaks down lactose which chickens cannot digest.  

So that’s what works for me.  When range is abundant with vegetation and most importantly INSECTS,  my chickens will lay perfectly with only some scratch grain and oyster shell added.   Unfortunately due to climate and and necessary confinement it is not possible to provide this kind of range continuously!  


 
Rene Poulin
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I see a number of people in this thread with questions about protein in poultry ration.   About 25 years ago the protein in ration was not only soy.  Slaughter house waste in the form of meat, blood and bone meals was widespread.  I remember finding part of a cow hoof that had not been fully ground in a bag of feed.  I am a vegetarian and this was not really what I wanted to see.  Then Mad Cow Disease hit the feed industry over the head and regulations were revised to eliminate  these proteins from the feed system for animals consumed by humans.  

Now to be clear I am glad that contaminated slaughter house waste is no longer in the feed,  and I am not personally convinced that soy is bad.   However soy only is not adequate in my experience when or if poultry do not have access to insects in the soil.   Poultry are omnivores and protein quality is very important.  

We buy poultry ration labeled with its protein percentage prominently displayed but it’s the essential amino acid profile of the ration that really matters.  Methionine and Lysine are the so called limiting amino acids.  The overall protein content is only as good as the amount of limited amino acids contained in the feed.   In other words the absorption and assimilation of protein is only as good as the amount of Lysine and Methionine that is available.  For this reason substituting peas entirely for soy is NOT a good idea.

Another very important quality of a good poultry feed is that the fibre content of the ration must not exceed a certain level.  So ingredients like oats, barley, flax seed, sunflower seeds, and alfalfa must be a limited part of a good poultry ration.  The best grains for poultry ration from a fibre perspective are wheat and corn.  Wheat has a better protein profile but corn grows better than wheat in warmer climates.
I have a link to one of the books I found useful in understanding this subject.  It was written in the Early 1950’s before commercial poultry rations were ubiquitous.  This was a very different time.  There have been many advances in poultry nutrition since that time.  This book is no Bible.
You will notice that the book has little to say about beans for example.  Soy and other legumes are recognized for having nutritional value but it says that they were TOO EXPENSIVE!   Expensive means not available in large quantities.

The world at this time had only just emerged from Depression and War.  People were going hungry.  The average hen at this time was laying just over 100 eggs per year!   These were some of the conditions that fueled what truly was a revolution productivity wise in agriculture.  Yes it was enabled by chemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides but you are here now because it happened!   The modern bag of poultry ration and advances in poultry breeding enable us to keep hens that lay 250-300 or more eggs per year.

If you want to make changes in this system, you should at least understand what is at stake.   We can keep our poultry in a more sustainable and self sufficient manner but there are limits. Limits on world grain supplies for example.  Corn, soy and  wheat supplies are all in crisis due to weather, war, energy and economic issues.  If you are consuming these commodities I think we have a duty to do so responsibly and PRODUCTIVELY.

Feeding Poultry
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.139923
 
Jay Angler
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Has anyone had experience with French Sorrel and/or Swiss Chard and chickens? Both have Oxalic acid in them and both grow *really* well in my climate.

I've been giving some of the girls the French Sorrel once a week or so, and on a per/bird basis, not very much. I'm not sure that it's growing faster than the kale, or only appears to be because I've been hesitant to give them very much of it. They don't object, but I don't want to overwork their little kidneys!

However, it's in a different family, and Cole family crops can get Root-Knot Nematode if you grow too much of it or for too long in one area. That's really easy to do with kale/cabbage as it self seeds, loves my climate, I've got a couple of plants that are about 5 years old,  and the birds adore it.

My climate isn't good for drying summer greens as winter feed as we're so damp year round. I'm really looking for more winter greens that aren't in the Cole family.
 
Rene Poulin
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Jay Angler wrote:Has anyone had experience with French Sorrel and/or Swiss Chard and chickens? Both have Oxalic acid in them and both grow *really* well in my climate.

I've been giving some of the girls the French Sorrel once a week or so, and on a per/bird basis, not very much. I'm not sure that it's growing faster than the kale, or only appears to be because I've been hesitant to give them very much of it. They don't object, but I don't want to overwork their little kidneys!

However, it's in a different family, and Cole family crops can get Root-Knot Nematode if you grow too much of it or for too long in one area. That's really easy to do with kale/cabbage as it self seeds, loves my climate, I've got a couple of plants that are about 5 years old,  and the birds adore it.

My climate isn't good for drying summer greens as winter feed as we're so damp year round. I'm really looking for more winter greens that aren't in the Cole family.



I feed both French sorrel and Chard/Beets. I have fed Rhubarb and Comfrey as well.   I try not to overdo the quantity but I have found that if my chickens eat too much of something the first time they will definitely be more choosey about how much of it they eat the next.  You can put it in their run but like children you can’t force them to eat unless you really starve them!

 
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Jay Angler wrote:Has anyone had experience with French Sorrel and/or Swiss Chard and chickens? Both have Oxalic acid in them and both grow *really* well in my climate.



I have planted clumps of french sorrel and swiss chard aka silverbeet in our chicken run and our 9 girls always eat them right down to the ground.

I have found that if I bury the roots of the sorrel & silverbeet at least 4 inches under the soil, the root system manages to get (re)established enough to withstand repeated grazing. Older plants that are beyond their best and about to start flowering are the preferred ones to plant in the chicken run, the roots have more mass to regenerate from.

There are also several comfrey plants and lots of overgrown brassicas for the girls to choose from and as May mentioned, they love eating the flowers and will jump up to peck at them.

I doubt that the girls are eating enough sorrel and silverbeet to damage their kidneys, hopefully there is enough variety in their diet to not cause harm.

We have a couple of old tractor tyres in the run and bury our kitchen scraps in the tyres and each time we add more scraps, turn the contents to bring the worms to the surface. The girls love digging around inside the tyres looking for worms and insects. Any seeds from the fruit and vegetable scraps that germinate get gobbled up as the girls turn over the compost.

I have also got a couple of friends that go hunting and they keep the deer bones and meat scraps for me that I cook, chop and freeze into portions to feed to the chickens. The bones get boiled up and fed to the girls.

Have set up a maggot bucket but one of the chicken co-op members is a vegetarian and finds the smell of decomposing road kill a bit challenging so the bucket is hanging in the chicken run empty.

They have free access to commercial pellets with 15% protein in a step on feeder that they can access on demand and we get through one 25kg bag each month.

Other gardeners are always leaving overgrown plants and excess brassica leaves for us to feed our girls so they have plenty of choice of fresh greens.

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venison bones and meat scraps
venison bones and meat scraps
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cooked bones
cooked bones
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cooked meat scraps for the chickens
cooked meat scraps for the chickens
 
Jay Angler
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Megan Palmer wrote:I have also got a couple of friends that go hunting and they keep the deer bones and meat scraps for me that I cook, chop and freeze into portions to feed to the chickens. The bones get boiled up and fed to the girls.

Oh, my, I'd be boiling them up for stew for *me* for dinner! I admit if we have to cull a troublesome racoon, I will pressure cook that for our chickens and they're happy to eat it.
 
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Use local feed as much as possible! We have 3 local feed mills that sell a variety of feed and grains,some from regional feed makers like Formax and Burkmann brands but also have custom mixes for all types of livestock.

Im reading this thread and hand shelling rye that i had grown as a cover crop, then got chicks so i let it seed and harvested in early summer.Im only shelling now because its dark at 6 PM and i can do it while reading permies or watching basketball or videos,kinda idle time fidgeting. They like most small grains and rye is about the same as wheat.

Does anyone grow and feed fodder? Im going to try some wheat fodder or maybe just sprouts,they seem to really like to find sprouted grains.

Kaarina mine dont like pumpkin either,im thinking about cooking the last one i have to see if they like it better.
Turnip greens,lettuce of any kind,mustard greens are a favorite of my chicks as well but the strangest thing they love to eat is my potatoe plants.They dont eat the actual potatoe,just the green parts of the plants,they will mob them until they are gone.They do eat pepper plants too but i only give that to them when the plant is about to die from frost.All of which are now gone.

I have been feeding scratch grains and rabbit pellets,in separate feed bowls, otherwise they will waste the rabbit feed to get the grains.They do eat the rabbit pellet but not very much.

I did grow sorghum this year to harvest the seed and got some,but the wild birds ate so much of it i didnt get what i wanted.Its easy to grow as not much eats it until it seeds and the chickens provide the nitrogen.I did also grow some corn and it did ok i just didnt have enough planted to really make a difference in the feed bill.Corn is good for winter as it has fat and carbs for energy.

Jay has the best idea,pests or problem animals can be cooked and fed to them,chickens love mice! Everytime i catch one i get free entertainment watching them chase each other trying to take it.

Black soldier flies can be started and then fed to chickens for a good protien snack,i have 2 bins and they all come running if i start heading in the direction of the bins.Too cold for them now but they are very active in summer and the larvae are still in the bins and i will dump them on a warm winter day to let the chicks find them.

Dont forget other grains that chickens can eat that grow wild,Johnson grass is an invasive weed here but all birds love the seeds,including chickens,lambs quarters plant and seeds,most are gone by now as well but i didnt did  find some Johnson grass seed heads the other day and let them pick the few seeds left.

I also put scrap boards or pieces of firewood around the garden then turn them once in awhile to let the chicks find critters under them for protein.

Edit: I saw a corn field that had recently been harvested,im going to try to scavenge some ears that got ran over instead of harvested,most farmers dont mind if you collect a few for your chicks.
 
pollinator
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John F Dean wrote:I am still working out the details so I can do this on a larger scale for all my livestock, but I have contacted the larger farmers in my area. All are willing to sell me grain. All are willing to sell in smaller volume. Most are willing to sell it at whatever their market price is.  

There are two points were snags exist.  One is my ability to safely store the grain. The second is how to measure the grain being sold.  Neither is a huge issue, but I do need to work them out to where they make sense to me.



We do not currently have the farmers but if we ever find them, we plan to store the grain in the IBC totes. We can get nice clean ones in our area for $50.
Hubby talks about setting up a vaccum system for pulling the grain out that can be moved from container to container.
These should be easy for farmer to fill and keep out moisture and bugs.
 
Matt McSpadden
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Do you think IBC totes would be enough to protect the grain from rodents?

I don't have much experience with IBC totes, but I don't think they have very thick plastic walls?
 
Karen Lee Mack
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Matt McSpadden wrote:Do you think IBC totes would be enough to protect the grain from rodents?

I don't have much experience with IBC totes, but I don't think they have very thick plastic walls?



The plastic in ours is plenty thick enough. I don't have experience using to store grain but we have cut some in two for other uses.
My husband thinks so anyway and he is typically right about such things.

I tried googling but it appears that not all IBC totes are the same. I saw from 1.1mm thick to 1/2" thick.
I think most would be on the lower end of that scale.
If it helps, I watched dozens of aquaculture vids when we were considering that which used IBC totes so
strong enough to hold water ongoing.

On more thought is I don't think there is really any place on the tote for vermin to get purchase with their teeth.
 
Karen Lee Mack
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This is not what we were planning but is another idea using IBC totes.

You do want to know what was in the totes.

 
Karen Lee Mack
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Ohmy goodness, chicken tractor out of IBC totes.

Off topic I know but I can't resist.

 
master gardener
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Megan Palmer wrote:I have also got a couple of friends that go hunting and they keep the deer bones and meat scraps for me that I cook, chop and freeze into portions to feed to the chickens. The bones get boiled up and fed to the girls.


Jay Angler wrote:I admit if we have to cull a troublesome racoon, I will pressure cook that for our chickens and they're happy to eat it.


Shookeli Riggs wrote:pests or problem animals can be cooked and fed to them, chickens love mice!



Why would these animals and their parts be cooked before feeding to the flock?

I've been imagining shooting a raccoon or deer or whatever, maybe opening it up and just giving it to them. probably breaking it into chunks first if it's big. But I hadn't imagined cooking it.

So, why do that?

 
Karen Lee Mack
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Christopher Weeks wrote:

Megan Palmer wrote:I have also got a couple of friends that go hunting and they keep the deer bones and meat scraps for me that I cook, chop and freeze into portions to feed to the chickens. The bones get boiled up and fed to the girls.


Jay Angler wrote:I admit if we have to cull a troublesome racoon, I will pressure cook that for our chickens and they're happy to eat it.


Shookeli Riggs wrote:pests or problem animals can be cooked and fed to them, chickens love mice!



Why would these animals and their parts be cooked before feeding to the flock?

I've been imagining shooting a raccoon or deer or whatever, maybe opening it up and just giving it to them. probably breaking it into chunks first if it's big. But I hadn't imagined cooking it.

So, why do that?



You may get adamant opinions both ways.

I am married to someone who gets bothered by overcautious safety stuff.
So we wouldn't cook it for our chickens or our dogs.
If we thought there was a serious concern, say rabies, it wouldn't get fed period.

That is just what we would do.
We also check meat or milk by smell for ourselves.
We eat our own raw eggs frequently without worry.
Investigate and then decide what level of risk you are comfortable with.
 
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The plastic on IBC totes is  thick enough to hold my weight, FWIW.

If you want to save on feed for chickens,  tap into human waste streams.
 
C. Letellier
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A couple of things to add to this if grow your own is the thought.

A cold frame, high tunnel etc gets weeds off to a great start.  Our weeds in protected conditions are usually 3 to 5 weeks ahead.  Spring chicks won't need as much so can you mix this with your normal planting stuff?  Maybe grow chicken feed in the walking paths of a high tunnel for example.  Here kochia is very good at starting early and chickens love it.  So in this area it would probably be the ideal for this.  And by the time you can't keep up likely there will be enough forage out for the chickens.

Second growing up, my father  got something like 2 ton of weed seed from the local grain cleaning plant for free.  The chickens liked it and did well on it.  Was the worst mistake we ever made for the garden though.  We composted the manure for a year and put it on the garden and never did get the weeds in the garden under control for many years after.  But what if you combined it with another part of the puzzle.  There are a number of places that sprout grain for chickens because it gives them different nutrients as part of the diet.  It loses a bit in relative feed value but gains other nutrients in the chickens diet.   What if you sprouted the weed seeds?  Could you get most of them to germ so they would be dead by the time they made the garden as manure?
 
Megan Palmer
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Christopher Weeks wrote:

Why would these animals and their parts be cooked before feeding to the flock?

I've been imagining shooting a raccoon or deer or whatever, maybe opening it up and just giving it to them. probably breaking it into chunks first if it's big. But I hadn't imagined cooking it.

So, why do that?



Hello Chris, I have been advised to cook the meat to try to minimise their taste for blood.

They can be vicious wee creatures and will peck any open wounds on other chickens - they are attracted to red.

I use a purple antiseptic that I spray onto the skin of any chooks with wounds or bare skin.

If I wear open toed sandals and have red varnish on, they peck my toe nails. I have a mole on the back of my leg and have to put a bandaid over it when I go into the run or else they peck at it and does that hurt!
 
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We order an organic feed from Azure. And we supplement with scratch grain at dusk - I read it helps keep them warm through the cold nights. That's it...I do want to get a compost pile going for them to dig through at some point.
 
pollinator
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We have 8 chickens, and we buy bags of cheap feed from TSC. But, I supplement a lot too. I do some fur trapping, and I toss them my fleshing scraps all my beaver carcasses (after I cut off the choice parts for myself). They go crazy for them, they tear them open and it looks like something out of a horror movie. I also use them to clear weeds out of various areas. I had them clean out my garden area, and they're currently working on clearing out some spaces around the house. They do a pretty good job, and when they're clearing land for me, they just get water and eat whatever they find.

Chickens-clearing-the-ground-of-weeds.jpg
Chickens clearing the ground of weeds
Chickens clearing the ground of weeds
 
Shookeli Riggs
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i dont cook mice i catch but i do cook deer meat scraps just to tenderize it some.then i tear or cut it into smaller pieces so they all get some.,otherwise they will play tag all day with one piece.
 
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Here is what we do. We cannot let our chickens roam because of all the neighborhoods dogs run wild.  So we gave them a nice pen that they can run around in comfortably.

We grow a small patch of sorghum for seed and turned the rest into silage. Sorghum seed has an estrogen in it and we use it to boast their production in December and January if we are short eggs.  Just a handful will double our egg count in 2 days.  If they eat to many sorghum seeds the yolks will get pale.  

We also feed alfalfa that we grow in ¼ acre fields and is hand stored in feed sacks.  If alfalfa is handled by hand it keeps its leaves much better. This will make orange yolks.

We have an old line of yellow dent corn that is yellow to red in color.  The chickens will produce deep orange yolks from it.  

We raise giant amaranth for the seed heads and they eat the leaves too.  

We let the sunflowers self-seed and get about 100 heads every year to feed.  

We raise squash and gourds for the market and what we don’t use we feed.  We also raise cabbage and broccoli that we feed all of the scraps.  Our extra cabbage we store upside down covered in leaves.  

We raise about a 1/10 acer of spelt or oats.  We make the stooks and the top sheave tends to sprout here in Ohio humidity.  We pile the top sheaves next to the chicken pen and feed a couple a day usually in July.  The chickens will clean it all up and leave the rest for beading.

We have 2 small plots that we grow green chop for them.  It is planted with dandelions, alfalfa, perennial rye, plantains, red clover and white clover.  We use a small push lawn mower.  It has a perfect little handle on the bags to carry it to the chickens or cows.   We also cover crop with annual rye.  We were getting green chop in March last year!

We raise duckweed in kiddy pools that were get given to us.  We keep 2 minnows in each pool for mosquito control.  We dry the duckweed on a black tv dish that was given to us.  We use the dried duckweed to eliminate molds in prepped feeds in the summer.  When we have extra we feed it straight to them wet.


  https://youtube.com/shorts/i0PMjdVPKdI?si=tKU5Xre7I0xkuAR9  
 
                    
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Feed is getting too expensive and there have been allegations that chickens are not laying on certain feeds. There are some stories in the media about that and a few of our local growers had difficulty with their broilers not growing at the usual rate, so we graze them as much as possible and supplementally feed them with whatever organic grains we can find on sale. Recently I got some organic barley, organic wheat berries, organic rye. I look for black oil sunflower seeds on sale. Also these seeds on sale: chia seeds, flax seeds. Sometimes I can get frozen organic corn which I soak in water then feed it to them. I have dried vegetable scraps then rehydrated for the chickens. They love carrots, bell peppers, tomatoes, and lettuce. For us, keeping any grain from spoiling in the intense heat is a challenge in the summer, so we cannot stock up too much in summer.
 
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I found a feed calculator from "Garden Betty" that I use: Feed Calculator

I went to my local feed store to see what organic whole grains they actually had or could get.  I added a couple to the spreadsheet, put in the prices and play with the numbers until I come up with something that works.  I'm working away from soy but at the moment my mix has roasted soy, oats, wheat, corn and flax.  The main reason I'm trying to avoid soy is because it's the only non-shelf-stable seed in the mix.  Plus I've heard soy might be bad.

I have been mixing in a tiny bit (1 cup per 40 lbs) of a chicken mineral ration that I get from a distant feed store but my local store doesn't bother in their own mixes so I'm phasing that out.

My birds have an enclosed run with restaurant food scraps in the winter and half a day of free ranging when they snow goes away.

My current mix costs around $19 for 50 lbs of organic, whole grain feed.  Once I convert from soy to field peas it will jump to $26.
 
Timothy Norton
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I have started to incorporate sprouted peas into my feeding regiment. I am utilizing half gallon mason jars per 12oz of dried whole peas. I am seeing good results, but I do not have enough jars to get a good rotation going. I'm going to look into rye which might be a little bit cheaper. I also am looking into tray systems but I have to get creative with space in my household.
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