Chicken/Pheasant food.

[ticks]

I have been gone so I do not know if this has come up yet, but any ideas on how to make homemade chicken snacks/food and Pheasant food? I was thinking planting some sunflowers, drying out the heads, growing corn, drying out the corn, and pumpkins. Boy my birds love pumpkins. What are your thoughts?

 

[dacjohns]

My initial thought is don't try it. It will be very time and energy intensive to try and get a balanced diet for the birds.

On the other hand it depends on how many birds you are talking about feeding and what you are raising them for. They will survive on homegrown grains, ranging, and table scraps but they might not thrive.

Just my initial thoughts without any research.

 

[ticks]

Thanks dac. I am really thinking this for Pheasants, chickens is jsut to draw people in
Pheasants live in the wild so it seems like their diet can be a little more natural.

 

[dacjohns]

If I recall you already know quite a bit about pheasant. My limited knowledge tells me they forage well on weed seeds, glean grain, eat insects and other little critters.

But, as you know, having them penned limits their ability to forage and letting them range leaves them vulnerable to predation.

I think a mix of seeds and an ample supply of supplements might be OK.

 

[dacjohns]

You might already be familiar with this organization.

http://www.pheasantsforever.org/

 

[ticks]

You might already be familiar with this organization.

http://www.pheasantsforever.org/

yessir! Got my membership last spring!

 

[me&thegals]

Hi Ticks and welcome back!

My chickens get all the leftover pumpkins and squash, or anything that is getting soft.

This year, I plan to plant a huge buffer crop of sunflowers between my organic gardens and the bordering conventional farmfield. I plan to harvest most of the heads for the chickens and let the rest self seed.

Our chickens also get the leftover root crops like beets. My main objective is definitely to feed my family, but our chickens get anything that we can't use up: Kale, chard, other greens, dried sweetcorn, and all that mentioned above.

Good idea My fantasy is that my husband will become an organic farmer, which would force him to grow a greater variety beyond corn and soybeans. Then, maybe I would have flax, oats and a pile of other grains to feed the girls!

 

[freemotion]

Of course, I will be the rebel again....

I feed my birds a whole grain diet, no manufactured feeds here. For chickens, it takes about three weeks for them to develop a crop capable of handling whole grains if they are used to pellets or mash.

My birds do free range, though. Two acres, fenced. I was planning on a foal and the fence keeps the coyotes out. Never got the foal, but the fence is wonderful to have for all the other critters.

Chickens can and will learn very quickly to balance their protein if you put two feeders in, one with a high protein supplement and one with the energy feed, meaning a mix of at least three grains. I use whole corn, whole oats, and whole barley. I use soymeal for the protein, as it is all I can get, and I have to travel to get it.

In the summer, they barely touch the soymeal, but it stays available in a hanging feeder. I will toss some of the grains on the ground spring-summer-fall rather than using the hanging feeder, since I am mostly supporting the squirrel and chipmunk population with that here except in winter.

I try to give them as much variety as possible in the winter months by drying lawn clippings and bagging them in summertime. I feed them pumpkins and squash and anything else I have available.

I am working on an alternative protein source for next winter to get away from the soymeal. I will have two worm bins in my cellar, and I have been sprouting the barley, which really increases the protein quite a bit. They love it, as does my dairy goat. I am working on getting it all the way to the grass stage without getting mold or slime. It has been a challenge for me, but I can get it sprouted quite a bit.

They also get any animal meat or fat or bones that come from our kitchen, like the bones from broth-making and today they got the cracklings from some suet I rendered....they went nuts over it!

This diet was based on much research, which I recommend you do before making any big changes to your bird's diets.

My birds are very productive, there was no drop in egg-laying with the feed change. Even the two-year-old hens are laying almost an egg a day, and I got eggs all winter, too, without lights. A few less, but a steady supply.

I got my turkeys switched over, too. Still getting eggs. They love the sprouted barley and the lawn hay, as they are still confined for now.

 

[ticks]

I feed my birds a whole grain diet, no manufactured feeds here. For chickens, it takes about three weeks for them to develop a crop capable of handling whole grains if they are used to pellets or mash.

Good for you!!! Do they still lay (assuming you have layers) daily on this diet?

 

[freemotion]

Yes, no change in laying. I originally fed my Dutch Brown Leghorns this way, and they were egg-laying machines. Now I have more "heritage" breeds, and they lay quite steadily. I got 9 eggs yesterday from 12 hens, 5 are older. That is a typical spring haul. All winter I got 3-6 eggs a day, so never had to buy eggs for the two of us. It got pretty low, but I stopped selling any in the late fall as soon as they started dropping off, so I would have plenty for us, and it worked out great. Except they weren't paying for their feed anymore!

The research also shows less incidence of coccidiosis when the chickens are on a whole grain diet.

My guineas also join in this diet, as they are all together. The guineas can't handle the whole corn, but will pick out what they need. I did give them all some cracked corn with the other grains while they were little. I also gave them chick starter the first 3-4 weeks exclusively, then started introducing scratch grains. When I observed them eating the scratch grains steadily, I introduced the two-feeder concept, maybe 8 weeks? Can't quite recall now. So they had three feeders for a while, and by 10 or 12 weeks they were pretty much ignoring the starter. They had access to a good-size covered pen in which I re-plant grass each time I use it, so they had a good mini-range until they destroyed it. A tractor would be better.

I am working towards a hen or two raising broods from now on.

Some of my info and the courage to do this came from Harvey Ussery's site, www.themodernhomestead.us in the article, Turning the Grinder Off (or something like that!) I also found some scholarly articles online that were about the feed choices.