Chicken Feed Recipes, Articles and Systems

[Lauravonsmurf]

Well I got stuck in a weird zone the feed I needed was not available so I had to crash course some homemade for a while. I needed no corn because of high % green jungle fowl and ultimately higher protein. Everything around me had corn except for some wild bird seed feeds… so I had to track down everything and mix. I did nit bother to do cost analysis. Not sure if it cost more or less.

Now I can get a really good mix no corn in it for the flock. You do need to make well informed thought out decisions on your feed, and feeding should be tailored to your flocks needs.

I also agree modern nutrition should not be ignored.

 

[Lauravonsmurf]

I will say, with complete confidence, that the more I read about poultry nutrition, the less I am likely to mix my own feed. I think I can say, without too much ego on display, that I now know more about feeding chickens, after 6 months or so of focus on the subject, than the vast majority of backyard chicken owners - who are even less qualified to make their own. But if I had no other choice - the resources you have gathered here would be helpful, if only modern transportation systems continue to exist to transport most of the ingredients my way.

I will also say that many of these old recipes rely on "meat scraps". Those can't be used in commercial feed anymore, but if you look at these old recipes with a modern understanding of a chicken's needs, and you take the meat scraps out - the recipe falls apart. Deficient on multiple fronts. Which is why J Rhodes make at home recipe relies heavily on fish meal. As do a number of commercial milling offerings, plus porcine blood meal, and similar animal byproducts.

Yeah I noticed the heavy use of beef scraps in these recipes

 

[Lazy J Farms Feed & Hay]

Excellent, thank youView attachment 2982596View attachment 2982597View attachment 2982598View attachment 2982599

Fishmeal has challenges with price and salmonella.

 

[raingarden]

There are marine ecology problems with using fish meal. All of those menhaden and anchovies were supposed to support stocks of predatory fish up the food chain. In some parts of the country you can walk into the local feed store and buy a 50 lb gunny sack of fish meal. Not so at our local feed store.

Meat scraps and blood meal are out too. But some of the recipes from a century ago used milk as the animal protein source. Can you imagine? We got milk, but it's not cheap. Nonetheless, I wet some hard red wheat with Half & Half. The chickens went wild for it. Nothing's too good for Farem and his harem.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Fishmeal has challenges with price and salmonella.

There are no perfect solutions.

But fish meal has something like (depending on source) 6x the protein, 10x the Methionine, 15x the Lysine, 8x the Threonine, and 10x the Tryptophan of Corn - and since corn is so deficient in each of those measures, a little bit of fish meal/meat scraps/etc can go a LONG way to fixing that all grain mix.

I was simply alerting others unfamiliar with the science to how critical those animal protein sources are to many (most) of these old recipes, and the need to source modern substitutes - of which fish meal is probably the most readily available for most of us.

 

[Lauravonsmurf]

The Home Poultry Book by Edward I. Farrington, 1913

 

[Lauravonsmurf]

The Home Poultry Book by Edward I. Farrington, 1913

We can usually get a lot of equipment prefabricated but sometime folks like building their own or maybe building your own is desirable for some reason or other… so I thought these photos might prove useful

 

[Folly's place]

Not me, but good pictures for those do-it-yourself folks.
Mary

 

[3KillerBs]

View attachment 2983327
The Home Poultry Book by Edward I. Farrington, 1913

We can usually get a lot of equipment prefabricated but sometime folks like building their own or maybe building your own is desirable for some reason or other… so I thought these photos might prove useful

If I get seriously into one breed I'll have to consider trap nests. I'd need to put a LOT more ventilation into them though.

 

[Rangergord]

This is a great thread!
I have been studying poultry nutrition for a few years now. The first book I read was Feeding Poultry by G. Hueser.

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.139923

I like Principles of feeding Poultry. Principles are more useful than recipes that are unlikely to suit the ingredients I have available. Three things stick out for me, one the use of meat and bone scraps no longer used in commercial feed. I use Hi Pro all vegetable ration. It relies on soy, canola and pea protein with added synthetic methionine to create a balanced and complete amino acid profile. I know chickens are not vegetarian but I am. So I have no meat that I can or will feed them!
The Principles article correctly points out the role of insects in furnishing animal protein in the diet. It also correctly identifies the fact that there are NO insects available in the winter. Two no green feed is available either. So my chickens get a vegetarian diet all winter on commercial ration! (Correction without access to insects they are eating a Vegan diet! Vegetarian diets include milk and/or eggs. The chickens are easily induced to egg eating and cannabolism on a vegan diet ). They clearly do not prosper in the same way as during the growing season.
Three skim milk is identified as being an animal protein source that can replace meat scraps in a ration. This is the first time I have seen this stated so succinctly. The only downside to milk is its water content which tends to over dilution of the protein.
This winter I am feeding a fermented mash of 18 % laying ration blended from cracked wheat, oyster shell and Hi Pro 36% poultry supplement. One third of all the chicken feed in Canada is made by blending grain with this product. I mix the ration with skim milk powder to add another 2 % protein and 1% protein added in the form of alfalfa pellets that furnish green feed without the drawbacks of sprouting grain. That’s a 21 % ration, something that I cannot buy here. Through the months of December and January my three hens have been laying 2-3 eggs a day. I think it’s working!