Topic of the Week - "Off-grid" Feeding - Homemade feeds, etc.

[Perris]

complete with plastic, it appears
https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...food-we-eat-in-europe-first-research.1537242/

 

[wyoDreamer]

My garden has been taken over by weeds! I looked them up and they are Lambsquarters. Apparently similar to spinach in nutrition. My chickens LOVE them, so I am going to try to dehydrate the leaves and save them for winter supplemental feeding. They need to be removed from the garden anyway, so why not.

 

[C H I C K E N]

Try just giving them fruit, table scraps, any source of calcium (if you have hens for eggs), and a source of protein ex. cooked meat that falls apart on a fork or meat that's easy to pull apart.

 

[1cock2hens]

I haven't fed my chickens in a year. I'm lucky enough to have lush forest and pasture.

 

[Lspears218]

That seems like a huge amount of feed for a free range flock of 50 birds. We have 34 birds including four peafowl, and we go through 100 lbs of feed about every two and a half to three weeks. Maybe something else is eating your feed?

I agree , we have 24 and one bag of feed lasts several weeks.

 

[Supercow]

My garden has been taken over by weeds! I looked them up and they are Lambsquarters. Apparently similar to spinach in nutrition. My chickens LOVE them, so I am going to try to dehydrate the leaves and save them for winter supplemental feeding. They need to be removed from the garden anyway, so why not.

Lambs quarters has also been known as fat hen, so it seems very appropriate. Our ducks love it as well.

 

[Supercow]

As I understand it soybean cake (the leftover material after oil extraction) is used as the protein component of most industrial feeds.

It seems that I can buy hemp seed cake locally; and that also has very high protein content. We have added it in the past to the food for our dogs and that went fine. Are there any showstoppers about feeding it to birds (chickens, ducks...) ? I would not expect any but I'm asking just in case somebody yells STOP Thanks.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

As I understand it soybean cake (the leftover material after oil extraction) is used as the protein component of most industrial feeds.

It seems that I can buy hemp seed cake locally; and that also has very high protein content. We have added it in the past to the food for our dogs and that went fine. Are there any showstoppers about feeding it to birds (chickens, ducks...) ? I would not expect any but I'm asking just in case somebody yells STOP Thanks.

I'm going to offer a part answer, and a part explanation. "I don't know". There's a ton of research on soy, there is very little US research on hemp by-products as a feed ingredient. US policy towards hemp means there aren't a lot of byproducts looking for alternate uses, though that's improving. Nor is it available to me locally, so I've not looked into it specifically.

If you want to research, suggest you start here, let us know?

https://www.poultryworld.net/health-nutrition/us-first-application-for-hemp-as-feed-for-poultry/

Also here

Here

Here (the fact that I'm linking a pigeon study shows how poorly researched this topic is)

 

[Sally PB]

Lambs quarters has also been known as fat hen, so it seems very appropriate. Our ducks love it as well.

I love lambs quarter. If the plant hasn't gotten too sandy, I bite off the top and eat it myself.

 

[Supercow]

Thanks @U_Stormcrow !

In my country (Slovenia), traditionally pumpkin seed cake (same situation: leftovers from oil processing) has been used as feed for milk cows because of protein content. Also sunflowers, oilseed rape.

After some more Googling I found a study comparing the usage of hemp vs camelina seed cake as duck feed so I figure it's OK (.... and I'm already trying to remember who we used to buy camelina oil from.).

https://aab.copernicus.org/articles/61/293/2018/