Preparing For Your Livestock....

[DuppyDo]

As grain prices are rising, how can those with laying hens, ducks and other lvestock that are part of our survival strategy prepare...? If one had a few bucks to store chicken feed for example.How long would laying pellets or mash last if stored airtight...? I mean, stored like one would wheat for long term.Are their any ingredants in laying pellets that would go rancid..?

 

[Denim Deb]

I've heard that you don't want to store feed for longer than 3 months. Reason being, even air tight, there can still be moisture in there, which can mold.

 

[DuppyDo]

Hmmmmm, but doesn't mold even need air to survive...? Suppose the pellets were dried more to remove moisture..? Low heat in oven..? Sounds like alot of extra work,i know, but if i had no laying pellets or mash,then i'd have few or no eggs.
I storing large amounts of corn and wheat in mylar,i honestly don't know what the moisture content is, they seem plenty dry, but that doesn't mean they are. I guess if i fed my hens a higher protein wheat and corn, they would lay okay..? Soy beans are high in protein.Do any of you folks make your own blend of chicken feed..? Please share..

 

[~gd]

Hmmmmm, but doesn't mold even need air to survive...? Suppose the pellets were dried more to remove moisture..? Low heat in oven..? Sounds like alot of extra work,i know, but if i had no laying pellets or mash,then i'd have few or no eggs.
I storing large amounts of corn and wheat in mylar,i honestly don't know what the moisture content is, they seem plenty dry, but that doesn't mean they are. I guess if i fed my hens a higher protein wheat and corn, they would lay okay..? Soy beans are high in protein.Do any of you folks make your own blend of chicken feed..? Please share..

Now that I am off the farm and no longer have poultry I don't but I sure used to. First about soy beans they must be cooked or heat processed to destroy an Inhibitor that they contain. Pellets are not as dry as they appear to be, usually a mixed dough like substance containing all the ingredients is fed into a screw extruder. This raises the temperature enough to heat treat the soybeans. The 'noodles' coming out of the extruder are cut to lenght at the extruder nozzle and they are kept moving as they cool and the overheated moisture flashes off. They are dry and hard on the outside but can still be fairly moist inside. Crumbles are make by partly crushing the pellets so more moisture can easily excape. Mash is usually the fines removed from the crumbles by screening.
Another way of making mash used by small local mills which can't afford the extruders is to buy the soy pretreated and just crushing all the ingredients together in the mill. The problem with this is that the ingreients can tend to seperate as the mash is moved around, in and out of hoppers, bagged etc. When I made my own I used to buy bags of vitamin and mineral mix and pretreated soy products. If you google around you will find sites with recipies or spread sheets where you can enter the ingredients you have available and the species (ducks ,chickens. geese) and the type of feed you want to produce (starter, grower, layer, maintenance, or finisher) of feed you want to produce and it will tell you the amount of each you need BY WEIGHT. If you keep your batches fairly small the seperation of the ingridents is not a problem. It is not rocket science, more like mixing things to be cooked. BTW if you are using your own grain it should be properly dried before storage. most grain fresh from the field is too moist for proper storage. If buying grains ask if it has been dried to storage conditions.

 

[patandchickens]

Processed feed (pellets/crumbles/mash) won't keep all that long even without the mold issue. The vitamin content starts to tank pretty quick, and the fats get rancid. Storing airtight won't help much if any against this, and heating the feed first would probably make the nutrient losses worse.

If you were planning for a stash to feed animals in an emergency (although if it were that kind of emergency for *long*, I think you'd find yourself getting awfully hungry to eat that feed YOURSELF) I think by far the most sensible thing would be to store WHOLE GRAINS (wheat, oats, corn, barley, whatever) plus stock up on some vitamin supplements, which typically keep for at least a few years if stored well.

And plan on using foraged food sources as much as possible for the livestock -- either letting them graze, or cutting stuff to bring *to* them.

JMHO,

Pat

 

[Wifezilla]

Yes, whole grains, growing your own, etc...

I don't have a lot of room for this as of yet, but I am buying whole grains and offering that along with their regular feed to see what the ducks will eat. So far they are liking the steam crimped oats I bought last week. I just put it in its own feeder next to the regular feed.

 

[miss_thenorth]

I would say whole grains also, as Pat and Wife said. Also you could sprout the grains to make them stretch further, and in worst case scenario, use them to plant to grow your own.

 

[patandchickens]

As far as protein content of feed, I vaguely recall reading somewhere that correctly sprouting soybeans works as well as proper heat treating to remove the anti-nutritional factors (??).

But I don't think personally I'd be feeding much soybeans to the chickens. For one thing they may not be very available for very long in the event of TSHTF since most of the widely-available varieties require very heavy herbicide inputs to do well.

Also they are arguably better eaten by us (in times of hardship) than fed to chickens, since chickens will HAPPILY use protein sources that we would have to be pretty hard-up to want to use. Bugs and rodents in particular.

So personally I would be feeding grains, letting poultry free-range as much as predators permitted, and working on bug adn rodent acquisition for them to bring grain-based protein levels up to what's needed for good laying.

Pat

 

[Bubblingbrooks]

One thing to look into is getting a breed of chicken that forages very well, and only needs grain in the coldest part of winter.
Goats should not be fed grain except for small amounts when lactating, and cows should never be fed grain.
For supplimental winter foods for lactating ruminents, grow root veges, and pumpkins, and stock up on hay.
The rest of the year grass for cows and browse for goats.

 

[ohiofarmgirl]

open the hen house door and tell 'em to 'get out there and free range because its FREE'

;-)

and dont forget Harvey Ussery's great article on home feeding:

http://themodernhomestead.us/article/Growing-Poultry-Feeds-1.html

see that its a 3 page article - link to first page.

i love that guy