Making your own chicken feed – part 2
Last week, I shared my conundrum with feeding chickens (what to feed them, how to make sure they are getting enough protein, my distrust of commercial feed, etc.) and promised to share my recipe for easy homemade chicken feed.
Well, today is your lucky day because here it is!
All of the ingredients were purchased from my local Winco Foods store. They have an amazing bulk bin section where I was able to buy just the amount that I needed of each ingredient for a great price.
If you don’t have a Winco Foods near you or another source of bulk items, check out the links in the recipe where you can buy everything you need online!
I also used this chicken feed calculator from Garden Betty to help calculate how much protein and fat is in the final mixture.
As a starting point, I decided to more or less copy what other people have used in their homemade mixes and just try in out. Then tweak it and try it out again. Then tweak it again…
I figure my girls will tell me if they like something in the mixture or not.
If they like it, they will gobble it up. If they don’t, it will be flung all over the ground.
Homemade Chicken Feed Recipe
Here is the chicken feed recipe that I have come up with for my initial go at this.
4 cups oat groats (buy here)
4 cups hard red wheat berries (buy here)
2 cups black oil sunflower seeds (buy here)
2 cups barley (buy here)
1 cup sesame seeds (buy here)
2 cups millet (buy here)
2 cups split peas (buy here)
1 cup flax seeds (buy here)
All of these links are from one of a company called Azure Standard. They have good prices on these items and they ship them to a location near you for local pick up! Or you can even have your order delivered right to your house!
It’s great to do your regular grocery shopping through them too because they guarantee their products to be free from any artificial additives and preservatives, GMOs, refined sugars or bleached flour. Click here to get started!
You could also order these items from Amazon or your favorite online retailer. Or check your local stores for more options!
This is what it should look like. It sort of looks like wild bird food with whole grains and split peas added. It’s so colorful and pretty!
According to Garden Betty’s chicken feed calculator (thanks Garden Betty! Great, great tool!), this mixture is 17.1% protein and 11.8% fat. Which is just perfect. This PDF from Utah State University (my alma mater, I might add) has some basic principles about how to feed a small backyard flock if you need more information.
The nice thing about my homemade mixture is that I can adjust it for different seasons. In the winter they will need more protein and fat to stay warm. In the summer, they will need less.
Super customizable!
Making your own chicken feed at home is a great way to save money and know exactly what you’re feeding your chickens.
Along with growing chicken feed from scratch, consider adding some chicken-friendly plants for your coop! To learn more about all sorts of different chicken-friendly plants, check out this graphic and article from Insteading.com!
Image Source: Insteading.
What a great idea to plant some chicken friendly plants near the coop! Anything you can plant or grow yourself reduces your feed bill.
If you’re considering getting some chickens of your own (or even if you already have a backyard flock), check out my post about the 7 things nobody will tell you about keeping chickens here.
And if you are interested in other chicken related topics, you can read this post about a chicken feed conspiracy, or this one about the price of chicken eggs, or click here for all my blog posts about chickens.
They are seriously my favorite pets of all time!
Here’s a video of the first time I gave my chickens this whole grain feed.
I think they heartily approve!
Happy Chicken Feed Making,
