Can you really grow all of your chickens feed?

Was just listening to one of Paul's talks where he talked about growing all of your chix feed but he didn't go into detail. I've heard the combo of black soldier fly larvae, forage beets and duckweed would do the job but chatgpt said grains or seeds would need to be added. Who's got the scoop? Thanks.

Hi Paul,
I think it is possible to feed your chickens off your land. I think it is possible to grow things specifically for the chickens and get more production than simply free ranging the chickens. I also think there is something to be said for scale. If you are growing your own things specifically for chickens, I think you need a certain scale either small or large to make it worth it. In the middle seems like a lot of work.

The option I think is most sustainable is using the leftovers to feed the chickens. Human leftovers from meals. Garden waste. Compost. Skim milk from cows. Etc. I think this option makes feeding your chickens much more efficient than having crops dedicated to the chickens alone.

As to the specifics of what to grow... I can;t say that I have a lot of experience, but a laying flock is going to be a bit lighter on protein and heavier on calcium and vitamins. Whereas meat birds will need a higher level pf protein in their feed.

There are a bunch of factors I would be working on, if I thought I could do this:
1. Rotational pastures - in my climate I'd need at least 10. Chickens are big insectivores, so moving them gives insect populations time to recover.
2. Planting those pastures with a good variety of chicken-friendly food. My chickens adore Kale and it seems to help their egg laying, but if you have 10 chickens needing a big kale leaf every day, that's a lot of kale!
3. We soak wheat for our ducks, and the chickens adore it too, but I have been quite unsuccessful at growing wheat in my ecosystem, even though apparently it was done in this region in the past. I think my microecosystem simply can't manage to meet its needs. Finding seeds they can eat, but that are easy to grow here, would also be important.
4. Over all, making sure we meet all their nutrient needs will be key. I am aware of many small flock owners feeding their birds mostly stale bread from bakeries. This is *not* a healthy diet. If the birds are only laying a couple eggs/week, they might do OK, but quality eggs 5/7 days a week requires a quality, nutrient dense diet.
5. Also an issue in my ecosystem - growing food for the chickens, but making sure the rats, birds, bunnies and deer can't get into those gardens is a real struggle. I wouldn't want to feel this had to happen until I have much better fencing in place!
6. At some point, one would also have to ask whether the effort to grow to feed chickens, might be better put into growing to feed the humans directly. That's a tough choice, if for no other reason than that most of my eggs go into baking.

I've spent a lot of time planning for this goal; one of my favorite topics.

It is of course possible but the challenge for me is finding a way I would actually do it. That requires methods that draw the least on my two most limited resources - time and land.

My strategy is this two pronged, aiming first to minimize inputs by building much of their diet on weedy perennials that produce abundantly and multiseasonally, and second seeking multi use crops that also feed my family and our other animals, thus making maximum use of our space.

The heavy lifting perennials I'm doing my best to establish and expand are Chinese yams,  sunchokes, duckweed, mulberries, arctic kiwis, chestnuts, elderberries, persimmons, comfrey, and perennial kale, along with self seeding or similarly easy annuals (sorghum, amaranth and sunflower are my standbys).

Most of these are multi use - Chinese yams are the best example. They produce abundant popcorn sized bulbils that the chickens love while also producing tubers for the family underground.  Further,  they trellis up chicken chops, dropping feed into the run and their bulbils store over winter very well.

The other key multi is strategy is fitting them in with other animals. They pair particularly well with rabbits,  who breed so prolifically and must be harvested constantly. Rabbit viscera and scraps are great protein sources for chickens.  Once we start milking our goats,  I hope to provide additional protein and calcium by giving whey to the chickens.

Check out the Poultry Forage Matrix by Tim Murphy & Small-Scale Poultry Flock by Paul Ussery.  We have a lot of predator pressure, so keep them moved daily in a minimum sf/ chicken tractor setup, then let them out last couple of hours b4 sunset when they tend to skip getting into our plantings to run for their main nutritional interest the bugs they've been tracking all day to finally get back to roost on their own.

I do-- well,  not off my own land, but off of all hyper local ingredients.

We feed them all of our kitchen scraps and supplement with corn, peanuts, sesame seeds, and an occasional snack of black soldiers fly larva. Also an occasional bunch of chopped greens. We have 10 chickens and 8 ducks.

The 2 ingredients that boost egg production are corn and larva.

We're planning a meal worm habitat. Our roosters are eating too much of the layer feed and getting a high dosage of calcium. This can damage their kidneys. So I want to put together a feed with different things I can grow on the farm, and leave out the oyster shells.

Meal worms seem like a good option. I already found a #50 bag of oats to feed them. These will need to be ground up a little.

In the book Free Range Survival Chickens, the author describes a non-traditional chicken system that scales a population of chickens with a certain amount of acreage to be self sufficient. The amount of space required per chicken is highly dependent on the available forage and climate that the chickens are being kept in.

For my own chickens, I do not have the property to be able to meet all of their nutritional needs. I instead get my grains from a very local mill that grows all of their own feed and mixes it for you. While I am not truly self sufficient, the relationship I have developed with local growers has been invaluable.

Gordon Longfoot wrote: Our roosters are eating too much of the layer feed and getting a high dosage of calcium. This can damage their kidneys. So I want to put together a feed with different things I can grow on the farm, and leave out the oyster shells...

We have a separate oyster shell holder we hang where the chickens can access it. Both the chickens and the ducks seem to know when they need it, as the consumption appears to go up and down based on how many of the birds are laying regularly. This is also important if I have young girls mixed in with laying aged birds, as the young ones need less calcium (but need some if their bones are growing.)