homemadelivestock feeds

[rebecca100]

I know there are more ways to feed your farm animals than just going to the feed store and buying a sack of pellets or whatever it is you get. How and what do you feed your livestock if pasture is not readily available?

 

[Wifezilla]

Great question

 

[rebecca100]

I'm waiting on you, Free!

 

[freemotion]

Well, pasture is readily available here, and that is why I have animals now! I waited until I had the pasture (except the horse, she was boarded out and we bought this place to retire her....to pasture!)

I do purchase a lot of my feed.....but I take a departure by buying whole grains for everyone and supplementing with as much as I can scrounge. I am cutting a bunch of my own hay this year, but also will be buying some alfalfa hay for the lactating and preggers goats and for the buckling I will likely end up having here until the end of January...once he does his job, he will be sold.

I lactoferment my grains to increase the nutrient value.

I cut leafy branches for my doeling daily, I could do this for all my goats if I needed to, but they all get pasture. I cut for the doeling because she is confined to a stall at night, and although she could get just hay, tree roots go much deeper than grass and weed roots, so leaves from big trees have more minerals and nutrients that grasses won't have. The big girls get hay at night, some purchased alfalfa and some that I cut and dried and stored loose.

Every veggie scrap that is suitable is cut up and given to Mya, who is lactating. If there are a lot of scraps, I save them and spread them out over several feedings. I have a client who enjoys saving her veggie scraps for me, and gives me a big bag of frozen organic stuff every two weeks....Mya loves her brussels sprouts!

Last year I had a great rutabaga crop and found a bunch of small volunteer pumpkins (72, to be exact!) and Mya got most of them, some of the pumpkins went to the chickens. I would put 4-6 in a pot on the woodstove every few days. They went nuts over them.

When I work in the gardens, anything still edible that I don't want to deal with goes to the animals. Tomatoes are a favorite of the chickens, and Mya gets the ones that are cracked but not rotten. Also any plants that are not moldy or diseased but that I don't want....like the chard that is limp or has bug holes in it.

I just started fermenting veggie scraps for the goats as a probiotic supplement, using kefir whey and salt. I started this when I made two gallons of cucumber salsa from overgrown cukes and had almost two gallons of seeds and peels....too much for Mya to ever handle, too much for the hens, so....I fermented them! And Mya gets 2-3 ounces in her feed whenever there are no other veggie scraps for her, or if her poo isn't just right. I plan to do this with my cabbage cores when I make more kraut. I'll chop 'em up fine in the food processor first. I hope to have something to give her all winter, it helps immensely.

Hmmm, that is all I can think of now, but I am sure I'll think of more, and more people will chime in!

Merle, your turn....

 

[big brown horse]

 

[Blackbird]

We end up purchasing a lot too, unfortunatly. I've been begging my dad for a couple years to let a portion of the field go to alfalfa, or anything that is edible but he rents it out now.

However, we do have alfalfa and other plants planted between the rows in our shelter belt that we harvest. Our animals have done better on that than any alfalfa that we've boughten. Since a portion of it is next to the woods it contained red clover, black raspberry, mugwort, smartweed, dock, catnip, vetch, some nettles, as well as a variety of grasses here and there.

We also, like Monique, feed a variety of garden produce that we don't have a use for, have over-ripened, been frost bitten, and the like.

Last year when hay prices were 4.00+ a bale and we ran out we also cut our own 'hay' from the ditches, windrolled it, hauled it on tarps, and made a very large haystack. We tried to save most of it for the males, as the girls didn't produce as much milk on it as on the alfalfa mix, but they still ate quite a bit and enjoyed it.

Right now our donkey and the wether Micky are on the back pasture, otherwise we often pen up the geese back there, both take care of the grass pretty well.

Aside from that, all of our lawn clippings are fed to the animals (and used as bedding and mulch). We have a 4-wheeler and lawn sweep that we use to do that. We also rake up all the leaves in the fall and feed to the goats, which they love! And it makes a great bedding. The good thing about most tree leaves is that most people don't treat their trees with anything, so you can get leaves from a lot of people to use. Raking people's yards isn't hard and sometimes you can get paid for it. Last year we saved all the leaves we raked from the church yard and gave to the goats.

Another thing we do is gather grain screenings. My dad won't let us use any of the grain they harvest in the bins but they can't be bothered with the screenings so we fill pails and take home. Sometimes, if its rained the outer inch of a pile will be wet or even moldy, that we just pick off right away. We actually went and got a bunch of screenings from our neighbor and thats what we've been feeding to the birds for about two weeks. They'll probably last another month. The screenings we only use for the birds because sometimes theres a lot of bugs in them, which they enjoy. We mainly get corn and oat screenings, but unfortunatly occasionally there will be soy beans mixed in it.

Thats all I can think of right now.. aside from pulling weeds from the garden and feeding to the animals.

Oh, and the rabbits enjoy easy to find things things such as sticks, some dry grasses, corn cobs, even bark which we feed as treats.

 

[freemotion]

I forgot about the lawn clippings.....I don't give them to my goats because there are a lot of strawberry plants in my yard and I am afraid to give them wilting strawberry plants. But the mower chops stuff pretty coarsely, so I give it generously to the confined chicks and turkeys. If the weather is going to be nice and dry, I spread the clippings out on the driveway and turn them a couple of times during the day, then bag them up when nice and dry and feed that lawn hay to the birds all winter. Keeps my yolks nice and orange all through the year!

I get my neighbor's clippings and either compost them (for growing more food!) or put them in the chick pen. I spread them out an inch or two thick and the youngsters scratch through them all day. These clippings will bring more worms to the surface, and feed the chicks. This is my first batch of hen-raised chicks, and I barely have to feed them. She taught them well. If I didn't have to protect them from the hawks, I probably wouldn't have to feed them at all. They are amazingly robust and healthy. I hope to put them in with the main flock soon.

 

[rebecca100]

Well, okay pasture, but with supplemental feeding. I just meaning not putting your horse or goats out and forgetting it. I just spent $75 on feed today. Say there was a disaster, and there were no storebought feed available, what would happen? Or just getting more out of what you have now. I've been reading about comfrey. I like the idea of planting alfalfa between rows.

 

[freemotion]

With the exception of my dog and cats, I think my animals would be able to forage for a lot of their food if they needed to, unless it was in the dead of winter. I always fill my storage area with hay and grain this time of year, so I would have enough to get through the winter. The variable is how much of that hay is stuff I put up and how much is purchased.

Every year I work towards making my property more productive and gearing my animals to a more self-sufficient way of life. So this is where hardiness and culling comes in to play. Culling doesn't always mean killing, it can mean selling! And keep only the critters that thrive and produce on the foods that I can produce here myself. Grain is a convenience, really. If I didn't have it, I would simply reduce the demands on my lactating doe, and expect fewer eggs and slower growth in my chickens and turkeys.

The guineas don't count....

 

[patandchickens]

Well, okay pasture, but with supplemental feeding. I just meaning not putting your horse or goats out and forgetting it. I just spent $75 on feed today. Say there was a disaster, and there were no storebought feed available, what would happen? Or just getting more out of what you have now. I've been reading about comfrey. I like the idea of planting alfalfa between rows.

I dunno bout goats, I imagine it depends a lot on what is growing *in* the pasture... but horses don't necessarily NEED anything other than good/decent quality pasture ('good' for work, young, or breeding stock; decent for animals in little or no work). Grain is not generally needed (unless a horse is working pretty hard), although it's certainly become a near-universal *habit*, sometimes it shouldn't be and sometimes legitimately when pasture or hay are not always sufficiently available.

You do need good/decent hay for whatever times of year pasture isn't growing, of course. It is not easy to put up horse-sized quantities of hay that stays good in storage (non moldy, etc) without serious labor and/or equipment, though.

Growing *significant* quantities of grain (which is about the best source, in terms of concentrated calories and ability to achieve some reasonable nutritional balance, of STORED food you are going to be able to put up) is pretty hard though without waaaay lots of labor and at least some specialized equipment.

I think it really kind of divides into two distinct problems -- how to feed livestock during the growing season, and how to feed them over winter (or during a serious dry season, in some regions). The former is not as hard as the latter. Well, of course unless you live somewhere that really doesn't *have* much of a winter <g>

Pat