Feeding Chickens just People food...Can it be done??

[Sebrightmom]

I just got done reading the whole thread. Thanks for all the great ideas. I have been eating my chickens fermented feed for 2 weeks now. It has cut down on my feed in half which helps a lot. I still would like my farm to be as SS as possible. I am looking at raising a bigger garden next year to help feed the poultry through winter. I am trying to talk my husband into building a greenhouse that way I can grow food sooner and longer next year. We have only been on our little farm for 4 years and have done so much already. I feel bad asking him to do more.:/

 

[Bettacreek]

I haven't exactly fed the birds in over a month now. When the feed hit $24/100lbs, I gave up. I still have that bag, but use it to feed the chicks and ducklings that I'm growing for spring. They are completely free-range. No fencing or anything here. The turkeys and ducks are the best rangers, plus I have a silkie mix and a few Ameraucanas that stick with them. The main laying hens (barred rocks, leghorns, brahmas) are fat lazy things that stick around the yard and only range around when I take the lamb out to the "field" (just grasses, weeds and bugs). The full rangers (turkeys/ducks) always come home with bulging crops. The cornish cross, despite what everyone says (they're stupid, won't move, etc, etc), are my best ranging chickens, minus the few that stick with the turkeys and ducks. I think the main reason that those ones stick with them is because everyone else picks on them because they are much smaller, and cannot compete with the fatties that just trample them. Anyways, the cornish cross are now pretty big, about four months old and 10-15lbs, and while I have a dozen of them, rarely do we actually see them in the yard, until it's time for bed. Free-ranging birds have a big advantage, their bodies will tell them what they need, and they can actually go out there and get it, for the most part. Winter, will obviously be an entirely different story. I've been looking around for grain from local farmers, and working on a deal with a farmer who has oats at $12/100lbs. Hopefully I can get other grains to keep everyone going well. As for what I DO feed the hoard here (we're at something like 60 birds), I always save the egg shells. I never do anything special, just toss them out in halves, and the hens are the ones who eat them. The others will eat bites, but usually turn their noses at it. I take acorns, load them up in a 5g bucket and let it sit for a few days. Then I dump the acorns out on our paved driveway, which we run over when we come/go, and they can snack on that. The reason I put them in the bucket first, is because all of the moth larvae will come out, cannot get out and end up jamming themselves into the bottom of the bucket. When you dump the acorns, the larvae stays in the bucket, which you can then tap out somewhere that the birds can snack.

When I butcher anything out, the rest of the hoard is right beneath my feet, lapping up the blood and entrails. About the only thing that doesn't get eaten by us or the birds would be the bones, head, feathers and feet. I'm sure if I processed it down enough, the only waste would be the feathers, but I haven't taken it to that extreme yet, lol.

I haven't raised mealworms in awhile, but they're super easy. I always used the wheat bran from Tractor Supply. I think it was $8 for 50lbs back then (not sure what it is now), and that was enough to last probably over three or four years, depending on how many you raised, fed, sold, etc. They were nice because if life (or depression) caught you, and you forgot to water them, it didn't matter, because they still survived, though production did drop some. Anyways, don't count on them being your main source of protein, or even a really high percent, because they are mostly exoskeleton and there's something in them that inhibits absorption of calcium (I forget what it was). You can also raise waxworms, silk worms (this is my next adventure), and if raising chicks or making mashes of feed, fruit flies are an AWESOME little bug. They are tiny, which makes it suck, but they breed like, well, like flies. When I harvested my fruit fly cultures, I simply tapped them out into hot water and froze them, then added that to dry food. Harvest them heavily once you start seeing larvae, because if you don't, they will overpopulate and kill themselves off too quickly.

 

[LilyD]

Bettacreek thank you for the wealth of information. It's very helpful. I would have never pictured Cornish X as being foragers but I guess if the food isn't provided for them that their drive to eat would overpower their want to stay by the feeder all day.

I am hoping that by lowering the amount of feed I provide them that they will gradually become better foragers. They tend to spend most of their time out away from the coop as it is but I am not sure what they are eating and if they are getting enough.

I have a line into getting vegetable, grain and meat and cheese leftovers from a local bakery starting next Monday. If it works out well it can be a consistent source of foods to feed to the chickens and the bakery prides itself on using local good quality produce it should be a good source for greens, protein and calcium for the winter months.

 

[~gd]

This is an interesting thread.

Mickey - Your hens don't/can't free range then? I would have thought the purchased feed consumption would have been less than that. My seven hens free range and I think I bought just one bag of scratch grains in a three month period. More bagged food now since we added a lot more winged critters. but I'm working on that, too.

Lily - Let me know how the sunchoke business goes. My goats ate the leaves this year (so I left them) and I was going to dig some later for the guineas and hens. Maybe they'll like 'em - the last batch of hens wouldn't touch them.

~gd - No foil or paper bits thrown at weddings around here. Birdseed is typically used. There's no reason to belittle someone here because they have a different opinion, choose to do things differently or ask a question. This should be a gathering place for people who support the DIY attitude even if it's something that you aren't interested in attempting.

Sorry if I try a little humor now and again. Different places different rules as to what is thrown at weddings. The city churches that have a lot of weddings will not allow bird seed either for the same three reasons posted above. That thing about rice is just a urban myth and I feel justified to point that out. There is a difference between opinions and facts. everyone can have their own opinions but not their own facts. I suspect I was DIYing before you were born. Bless your heart!

 

[LilyD]

We picked up the first two batches of food from the bakery on Friday and today. It works out to 5 or 6 5 gallon pails although they say it will go down once winter gets here because that's their slow season. We feed a large amount of it to the pigs and keep about 10 gallons for the chickens. There are veggie scraps egg shells and the ends of bread from their bakery. They keep it in their cooler until we pick up every 3 days.

Feeding this plus the extra protein and calcium has done wonders. My poor ladies are now getting their feathers back in. I am hoping that they will keep getting better and will start laying again as they feel better. I am supplementing with a little bit of layer pellet just to help make the transition. I have found that they absolutely love for me to make a suet cake out of peanut butter and beef suet and they really like anything that is real food. They do tend to pick out what they like best first and then come back for more. The only thing I need to work on now is getting the proportions right so that they are getting what they need and cleaning up all the food so that the squirrels go elsewhere to get food.

Thanks for all the advice and help from everyone it really helped out hearing everything you said and doing research on my own. I feel confident that I will be able to feed the chickens and they will thrive on the new diet.

 

[Bettacreek]

I guess I forgot to mention the brewery grain. I wasn't picking it up on a regular basis, but with the cold kicking in and especially since I'm starting to give artifical light to get them back up to full laying steam, I started to bulk up on my brewery grain. I picked some up the other day, along with some buckets from the bakery at the grocery store here. Tomorrow I'll be doing the same, getting more buckets, plus taking the buckets I already have, up to fill up with grain. Everyone here goes through about a 4 gallon bucket of feed per day, so I'm going to try to have enough buckets to have a week's worth of feed, since it doesn't store well (it's all moist grain). Then I only have to make the trip once per week.

 

[LilyD]

I guess I forgot to mention the brewery grain. I wasn't picking it up on a regular basis, but with the cold kicking in and especially since I'm starting to give artifical light to get them back up to full laying steam, I started to bulk up on my brewery grain. I picked some up the other day, along with some buckets from the bakery at the grocery store here. Tomorrow I'll be doing the same, getting more buckets, plus taking the buckets I already have, up to fill up with grain. Everyone here goes through about a 4 gallon bucket of feed per day, so I'm going to try to have enough buckets to have a week's worth of feed, since it doesn't store well (it's all moist grain). Then I only have to make the trip once per week.

I tried to get the brewers grain but all the good breweries up here have a waiting list for people to take the grains. Instead I am going to get some whole grains and then I will sprout them and feed them that as a supplemental feed. Right now though they are getting so much good food from the bakery that they are actually not really even eating their pellets. They are starting to get their feathers back from moulting and are looking so much healthier than on the grain that I was feeding them. They all seem super happy to have a varied diet to eat.

 

[FarmerJamie]

I guess I forgot to mention the brewery grain. I wasn't picking it up on a regular basis, but with the cold kicking in and especially since I'm starting to give artifical light to get them back up to full laying steam, I started to bulk up on my brewery grain. I picked some up the other day, along with some buckets from the bakery at the grocery store here. Tomorrow I'll be doing the same, getting more buckets, plus taking the buckets I already have, up to fill up with grain. Everyone here goes through about a 4 gallon bucket of feed per day, so I'm going to try to have enough buckets to have a week's worth of feed, since it doesn't store well (it's all moist grain). Then I only have to make the trip once per week.

I tried to get the brewers grain but all the good breweries up here have a waiting list for people to take the grains. Instead I am going to get some whole grains and then I will sprout them and feed them that as a supplemental feed. Right now though they are getting so much good food from the bakery that they are actually not really even eating their pellets. They are starting to get their feathers back from moulting and are looking so much healthier than on the grain that I was feeding them. They all seem super happy to have a varied diet to eat.

check online for any local home brewers clubs, that may be another source, if you don't know anyone yourself.

 

[Mickey328]

Lily, have you tried posting on your local Craig's List or Freecycle asking local home brewers for their grains? We have a neighbor just down the street who gives us theirs. With just 6 chickens, it's way too much to use before it molds, so we dry it for them, and they get a little a few times a week. You could also try fermenting grains for them. It's easy to do and makes the nutrients more accesible for them. I'm going to try this shortly. Fermenting it myself will let me make only as much as we need on an ongoing basis rather than having a whole whack of it at once.

Our egg production has dropped quite a bit over the last couple of weeks. Gabby seemed to have sprained her foot and was limping very badly so we separated her into a dog crate to limit her movement and give her time to heal. I don't know if it's just her, or is a result of the stress, but she's molting. She's the only one of the 6 though. Bless her heart, she has given us about an egg a week even in her separation. We aren't adding light to the coop so we expected production to go down...it's gone from 5/6 a day to about 3/4. It's not a problem for us since we don't eat 3 eggs a day anyway We just don't have quite as many extras to sell.

Another project we're going to embark on soon is mealworm farming. I think it'll be an inexpensive source of high quality protein for them. I wish we'd started over the summer so I'd have worms for them now, but...better late than never! We only have our backyard (which isn't huge) for the girls and we have 3 dogs, so we can't really let them free range. They're "pastured". The coop/run is portable and we move it around the yard...about every 3 days or so. That way they're always on fresh grass and have weeds and bugs to hunt for. For the winter, we've fenced in the garden area and have turned them into that, which they're loving. They've already spread all the compost, bunny poo and old litter we've been tossing in there. Come spring, we won't have to do much to prep for planting.

 

[LilyD]

No I will try an ad, I didn't think about home brewers I just focused on the known breweries in the state but they are all taken by people already who use the grains.

I have been looking into fermenting my own grains and I am checking out what grains are available at the feed stores that we have up here. I might be able to go that route. They don't eat a lot of grains since they are foraging and free ranging most of the day. For the winter (and the rest of the year but the pigs will get most of it the rest of the year) They have bakery scraps which consist of homemade bread ends, veggie peelings and fruits that they use in their pasteries, as well as some meat and cheese from their sandwiches. The chickens are totally loving it and I am not having to feed much at all.