Is this feed recipe healthy?

[saysfaa]

I was planning on having the feed for the whole year, we have an older air tight silo I would store it in

I'm familiar with silos although ours were not airtight. And I'm a little familiar with the other related options including Havestors. Only for storing silage and haylage, though, so I may just be missing things but I'm having trouble seeing how it would work with dry feed or with such a small amount of feed (in the size of even the smallest Harvestors, although I realize there may be other airtight silo options). How do you get the oxygen out without filling the silo with fermenting feed? And how do you get small amounts out without letting oxygen in?

 

[saysfaa]

I am a second year agriculture buisness major at the moment, planning to take animal science which would cover this in the upcoming semester

And

So, what changes would you guys recommend? ...

I recommend buying soybean oil meal and mineral salt. Maybe also vitamin/mineral premixes. And alfalfa if you don't yet have your own.

Then look up a ration to see how much to mix with what bulk feed stuffs (meaning your corn, wheat, oats, etc).

I would use one of the rations from the old extension office bulletins or poultry textbooks or peer reviewed articles in research publications. "Old" being 1950s - 1970s maybe.... basically from after researchers had rations that worked pretty well but before the extension bulletins just said to feed commercial bagged feed. These are very, very, very much more likely to work well enough than what I've seen "on the internet" or even in recent homesteading type books.

This one in the picture below has options that don't use meat or milk. Unless you have extra milk available? This example is just one of many - look around for one uses the ingredients you can grow or get or use the most easily.

Then, when you get that working, you can try substituting other ingredients if you want to and as you learn how in your classes (or on your own). At least, ag classes used to teach that when my brothers went through dairy science and related programs.

You might look for rations using buckwheat and grow some of that too.

 

[saysfaa]

In addition, I would cultivate chicken pastures. By that, I don't necessarily mean plots with fences around them. I mean things like leaving patches of weeds, overseeding clovers or deer plot mixes or edible flowers, planting or encouraging fruit including small fruits (except autumn olive or floribunda rose), making compost piles - or just piles of vegetation to rot, even simple boards flat on the ground to encourage insects - moving the boards to let the chickens feed is optional, shallow water bowls for the bees, and so on.

 

[Sally PB]

except autumn olive or floribunda rose

Are those toxic to chickens, or is there another reason? I know autumn olive is an invasive that is spread by birds eating the fruits and pooping out the seeds.

We have it all over. The honeybees LOVE it, so I let it stay. Oh, and I probably couldn't get rid of it anyway.

 

[Rangergord]

Making your own feed is a subject that has been gone over a lot here over the years. I invite you to check out some of the posts I have made in various threads. There are links to books you can download and study, links to websites etc. Take the time to understand poultry nutrition thoroughly rather than just copy a formula and understand what your limitations are. Organic poultry ration is especially difficult to source ingredients for and always rather expensive. One thing I found that was crucial to understand was the essential amino acids versus crude protein. Crude protein levels of most rations are the minimum required and the insects that your poultry may or may not consume make a large contribution to pastured poultry diets.

 

[saysfaa]

Are those toxic to chickens, or is there another reason? I know autumn olive is an invasive that is spread by birds eating the fruits and pooping out the seeds.

We have it all over. The honeybees LOVE it, so I let it stay. Oh, and I probably couldn't get rid of it anyway.

Neither of them are toxic.

I said it mostly because of how invasive they are. But also because I learned that the wild birds are harmed by eating the autumn olive berries instead of other things but the AO berries are not as nutritious; so much so that it harms the birds. I think the conservation office said that in one of the info meetings they put on or in their literature. It may have been the extension office putting out info about invasives. I might look for the source for y'all. Not tonight, though.

Anyway, because of the less nutritious part, I figured it was best to discourage that.

The floribunda rose was mostly because I put them in the same bucket of very hard to deal with and no redeeming value that other plants can't provide without the problems.