The 99% homegrown chicken feed challenge

As a cheapskate who dislikes going to tractor supply, I've long dreamt of raising all my own chicken feed.

This year I'm going to go for it and hopefully by year end I'll have all the crops and systems in place to kiss tractor supply goodbye (other than an infrequent bag of oyster shells).

I have 25 chickens. Two roosters (one leghorn and one buff orpington), and the rest mostly buff orpington hens with a few barnyard blends mixed in. They have a decent sized run and get let out occasionally for a late afternoon jaunt when I accidentally leave a door open.

They eat about 2,000 lbs of feed/scratch grain a year supplemented by kitchen scraps and random toss ins from the garden.

Here's the plan and I'll try to post updates as I go. I'm dividing the plan up into 2 halves, first the warm weather stretch from April to October, then the cold stretch from November to March.

WARM SEASON

Proteins:

Duckweed (also counts as green) grown from pond
BSF larvae (two self-harvesting tubs in the run)
Whey (from our two Nigerian dwarf goats)
Rabbit/bluegill entrails (from biweekly harvests from pond and rabbit colony)

Carbs:
Mulberries (massive tree directly adjacent to run)
Chickpeas
Pigeon peas
Dent corn
Buckwheat
Melons
Tomatoes
Chinese yam bulbils (vine up the coop and drop right in the run)
Sunflower seeds
Elderberries (grow like weeds)
Ground cherries
Castaway apples, plums, peaches, figs and pears from the food forest

Greens:
Moringa
Basil
Kale
Zucchini
Turkish rocket
Comfrey
Sweet potato greens


COLD SEASON

Here it's less useful to divide into macros as I have fewer greens in 7b winter and my high protein supply takes a big hit too (fish stop biting in pond; BSF disappear). So my hope is that a diversity of storable foods with balanced nutritional profiles will get my birds through the dormant times.

Root crops:
Jerusalem artichokes
Sweet potatoes
Mashua tubers
Yacon
Chinese yams
Mangel beets
Parsnips

Stored grains/vegetables:
Amaranth
Sorghum
Millet
Various moschata squash
Dried chickpeas.

Misc.:
Kale
Privet berries
Chocolate vine
Beet greens.

And of course continual supplementation from animal harvest and dairy byproducts.

There's a lot of harvesting and cut and carrying involved in this plan, but thankfully not too much labor in growing it - these are mostly low maintenance (most are already growing on the property), low irrigation crops in my zone. Additionally, many are perennial and the annuals are easy to save seeds for (or self seed like amaranth).

I'm not stressing about protein percentages because I feel the birds will be able to pick and choose what they need if I give them enough quantity and variety. The rest will be compost.

If this works hopefully it will be a template for others trying to do the same in atemperate climate.

I think this is an excellent undertaking. In the past I grew a lot of my own chicken and rabbit feed. It was a ton of work, but I enjoyed it at the time. With prices being what they are I think it's an important conversation we need to all be having. I see a lot of people online say things like, "I'm self sufficient, I have a garden and a flock of chickens." While I don't think total self sufficiency is really feasible or pleasant, I think greater self reliance will be key

Don't forget your neighbours who have food-producing gardens and large volumes of chook-friendly food to donate in certain seasons. And who will appreciate the gift of eggs when you are running a surplus. Goes around, comes around.

Please let us know how it goes! I'm a few years away from having chickens (need to build my own house first) but always had lofty goals of growing at least some of their feed. Our place is on a small island with limited access and I'd like to know I could keep them alive if I can't get to the store!

Please let us know how this goes for you.  I have been growing several things to supplement purchased food for my birds.  I grow rye, barley, sunflowers, dent corn, pumpkins, beets and turnips.  Of course during the summer they free range and get garden scraps.  We have been able to cut down how much we purchase by 50%.

Dry beans are a big plus with chickens.  They are super easy to grow, a good protein source, and last for years.  The way I feed them is soak them for a day or so, overnight at least, change out the water, bring them to a boil in a dutch oven, then turn off the heat and let them sit another few hours.  The birds love them and they get water with their food so they don't need to drink as much.  That's especially helpful in winter when the water freezes every day.  I usually mix the beans with rice or pasta, but I can't grow those of course.

Good topic and good list!

When I lived in Portland, OR, where fennel was more or less a weed, our chickens eagerly ate the seeds from stalks I cut and carried to them. I didn't do it enough to estimate how much poundage they would eat per season. Chickens can self-harvest mature seeds from plants, or you could harvest and store to ration out through the winter. I wrote a post about this way back when: Fennel seed as a calorie crop.

I also wrote Integrating Chickens Into Your Food System.

If cowpeas grow well for you, they should be a valuable feed.

Elaeagnus berries with seeds may be valuable.

A guy on YouTube was trying to grow okra for seed.

I've seen chickens eat raw sweet potato, though I don't know how much they would really eat.

I'm still experimenting with this, and don't know how well it grows in temperate climates, but I see potential for rice bean, *Vigna umbellata*. It shatters small rice-grain-like seeds which I assume chickens will eat. The "Green" variety from ECHO grows as a vine, so it may work well to grow it on the paddock fencelines. Some can fall into the paddock and be eaten, and hopefully some will self-seed from just outside the paddock where the chickens can't reach it.

Mulberries are probably a protein crop; my understanding is that chickens relish them more for the gazillion tiny seeds than for the sugars.

I forget what website first made this "click" for me, but chickens require a diet with a majority of calorie-dense food. A supply of greens and fruits is important for nutrition, but mostly they need seeds and meat. (Roots are intermediate in calorie density.) At my current homestead (in Hawai'i), we're developing poultry paddocks with heavy canopy and not much ground vegetation. (The main predators here are mongooses who ambush chickens but aren't much of a threat if chickens can see them coming.) Some of the canopy will drop food for the poultry (mulberries, Jamaican cherries, cassava seed, acacia seed), but the main contribution of all the canopy will be leaves and branches and roots feeding the soil food web and generating worms and insects for the chickens and ducks. We'll also throw all kinds of biomass in, whether directly edible or not. We can occasionally harvest finished compost/soil to redistribute the nutrients elsewhere on the land.

This isn't super relevant to those in temperate climates, but it's a fantastic study from subtropical Australia which I can't believe I didn't discover until a year ago, of how eagerly chickens ate seeds of hundreds of species: Upgrading the scavenging feed resource base for scavenging chickens part 1 and part 2.

Norris Thomlinson wrote:Good topic and good list!

When I lived in Portland, OR, where fennel was more or less a weed, our chickens eagerly ate the seeds from stalks I cut and carried to them. I didn't do it enough to estimate how much poundage they would eat per season. Chickens can self-harvest mature seeds from plants, or you could harvest and store to ration out through the winter. I wrote a post about this way back when: Fennel seed as a calorie crop.

I also wrote Integrating Chickens Into Your Food System.

If cowpeas grow well for you, they should be a valuable feed.

Elaeagnus berries with seeds may be valuable.

A guy on YouTube was trying to grow okra for seed.

I've seen chickens eat raw sweet potato, though I don't know how much they would really eat.

I'm still experimenting with this, and don't know how well it grows in temperate climates, but I see potential for rice bean, *Vigna umbellata*. It shatters small rice-grain-like seeds which I assume chickens will eat. The "Green" variety from ECHO grows as a vine, so it may work well to grow it on the paddock fencelines. Some can fall into the paddock and be eaten, and hopefully some will self-seed from just outside the paddock where the chickens can't reach it.

Mulberries are probably a protein crop; my understanding is that chickens relish them more for the gazillion tiny seeds than for the sugars.

I forget what website first made this "click" for me, but chickens require a diet with a majority of calorie-dense food. A supply of greens and fruits is important for nutrition, but mostly they need seeds and meat. (Roots are intermediate in calorie density.) At my current homestead (in Hawai'i), we're developing poultry paddocks with heavy canopy and not much ground vegetation. (The main predators here are mongooses who ambush chickens but aren't much of a threat if chickens can see them coming.) Some of the canopy will drop food for the poultry (mulberries, Jamaican cherries, cassava seed, acacia seed), but the main contribution of all the canopy will be leaves and branches and roots feeding the soil food web and generating worms and insects for the chickens and ducks. We'll also throw all kinds of biomass in, whether directly edible or not. We can occasionally harvest finished compost/soil to redistribute the nutrients elsewhere on the land.

This isn't super relevant to those in temperate climates, but it's a fantastic study from subtropical Australia which I can't believe I didn't discover until a year ago, of how eagerly chickens ate seeds of hundreds of species: Upgrading the scavenging feed resource base for scavenging chickens part 1 and part 2.

Thanks. I've enjoyed your blog - great resource for getting past the underappreciated hurdles to self-sufficiency.

I'm pinning a lot of my hopes on sorghum and amaranth as calorie crops I can direct sow in the wilder areas of my property. Amaranth in particular is prolific as a weed on my property and readily self seeds. I've heard it has anti nutritive properties uncooked, but I've got a fire pit right next to the coop so I was planning on easy amaranth porridge as one of their winter staples.

Millet, sesame, and sunflower are some other seed crops I have planned but I'm not anticipating big yield on those. Sunflowers almost always get vacuumed by the wild birds.

For other calorie sources I have some mature hickory/pecans that I've never gotten on top of harvesting (squirrels usually get the best). I want to try cowpeas if they can handle neglect. Fennel goes on the list too.

I would love to get more meat in there. The challenge with meat in temperate climates is the bugs just about disappear in winter. If only I had a way to pipeline cockroaches from the house to the coop.

C Murphy wrote:Please let us know how it goes! I'm a few years away from having chickens (need to build my own house first) but always had lofty goals of growing at least some of their feed. Our place is on a small island with limited access and I'd like to know I could keep them alive if I can't get to the store!

I'm in the same chicken coop.  I happen to love places like Tractor Supply and Mills Fleet Farm, etc.,  But, when you consider how much of our food is fake and harmful, I can't help but wonder the same when it comes to commercial animal foods, too.  Whether it's right or wrong, I don't trust them anymore.  The absolute filth that's found in even human "health" foods and nutritional products and supplements is nothing short of vile.  And I'm not a purist who's determined to go back to Grizzly Adams and Little House on the Prairie days and do everything myself.  I simply want truthful, factual information and labeling.  And we're not getting it.  

So, I'm very interested in feeding my chickens (and dogs, cats, and any other animals I choose to get) as naturally as possible.