Making your own chicken feed – part 1
I have a dirty little secret…
After almost 3 years of having backyard chickens, I am still a bit unsure about what to feed them. Mind you, I haven’t exactly spent the hours upon hours of research on this topic like I have some others, but still, I am a little bit baffled.
Most people just buy big bags of commercial chicken feed and call it good. It seems to me that this is only a slight step better than how chickens in CAFO’s live…my birds are not kept in tiny cages and have access to the outdoors, but feeding them commercial feed is still the same old crappy food.
The main reason for my confusion is because there is so much information out there. And some of it is contradictory.
Add to the mix a chicken feed conspiracy and the high price of chicken eggs and confusion really abounds.
I feel a bit like I did when I was a new mom…a new mom who read a lot of parenting magazines, that is. There was so much advice about how to do things “just right” or “by the book” that I nearly drove myself crazy. After awhile, I had to just throw them all out the window and listen to my own inner wisdom. After all, that is where the greatest source of peace comes from, right?
When it comes to feeding chickens, though, I really don’t feel like I know enough about the dietary needs of chickens to make a wise decision about what to feed them. Heck, I don’t even know enough about the dietary needs of humans to make a wise decision about what to feed myself. But somehow I manage to get by!
Here’s what I do know.
- God made food (in its natural state) to be balanced and nutritious.
- My chickens go bonkers about worms, bugs, or spiders of almost any kind. When we let them out into the yard or garden, the first thing they do is dig for worms and bugs. Only after the bugs are gone do they look for plants and seeds.
- Second to bugs, they also love anything green. Grass, collard greens, Swiss chard, lettuce, WEEDS, you name it. They can’t get enough of them.
- When they eat enough green food, their yolks are a deep, deep orange color.
- Laying hens need a high amount of calcium. Since I don’t buy regular chicken feed (i.e. “layer feed” that already has the calcium in it), I have always have a cup of free choice calcium available in a tuna can close to their food. They eat this when they need a calcium boost. Sometimes they eat it really fast and sometimes hardly at all. The body’s inner wisdom…brilliant! I give them crushed up egg shells or oyster shells depending on what I have at the moment. Here is a picture of what I put the free choice calcium in.
Yep, tuna cans!
- If I can’t see the individual food or know the exact ingredients in their food, it makes me nervous…as in, “what, exactly, did they put in this stuff.” (Sort of how I feel about fast food fare and processed food. Do I eat those kinds of foods on occasion? Sure. But always with a certain level of uneasiness).
- I really, really love the convenience of scooping chicken feed from a container and dumping it in their feeder
- I really don’t need one more thing to micro-manage and maintain. I’m sure you can relate.
Based on these things that I do know, here is what I have done in the past to keep things simple and so I generally know what my girls are eating.
For adult chickens I have given them cob mix (corn, oats, and barley) in the feeder with an occasional handful of freeze dried meal worms which they LOVE. They also get any kitchen scraps, free choice calcium (see above), and as many greens as I can remember to give them.
When I have had chicks around, I have bought one bag of commercial chicken feed called “chick starter” and use it until it is gone or until they are adults…whichever comes first. I figure I should probably stay on the safe side when they are tiny and developing.
I always thought that making my own homemade chicken feed would be too complicated. It always felt like I need an Ag degree to be able to make my own. Until now. I read a blog post from a girl that mentioned that she buys all of her ingredients from the bulk bins at Winco and another blog post that had an excel calculator to help with the math. I thought, “I can do that. I’m going to try it.”
And so I did.
But since this post is already quite long, I will share my secret sauce recipe next time. Stay tuned, folks.
To be continued…
