How To Make Homemade Chicken Feed
If you are tempted in making your homemade chicken feed, I suggest you try. Even if you do it to subsidize the feed you buy for your chickens generally just to save some money.
I am sure your chickens will love you for it!
Your Own Homemade Chicken Feed Recipe
Finding out the benefits of making your own chicken feed as you can add ingredients to your chicken feed to what your chickens like…
By sourcing your own grains and ingredients you can put together the perfect recipe for your backyard chickens that they will really like.
Just watch out that when they charge you for the food, you are not knocked down…
The increasing cost of chicken feeds is driving many poultry farmers out of business making your own feeds would cut down costs even just for the backyard chicken owner.
The Added Benefits Of Making Chicken Food
You can save money by making your chicken food and adjusting it to the likes and dislikes of your own chickens.
And when it comes to buying your chicken feed from stock feed stores, buying large quantities of such grains and those other ingredients can be more cost-effective than buying bags of premade food.
I personally do not buy chicken pellets of chicken grains from supermarkets, as they are far too expensive.
And you also know what’s going in your chickens as there are added things that are put into chicken foods as there is with our own foods these days.
The Drawbacks Of Making Your Own Chicken Food
As you would have already guessed, it can end up being a time-consuming business to make your own chicken feed.
The sourcing of all the ingredients that you want can be a little difficult.
If you have a feed store in your area that is willing to order organic grains for you, it is made all the easier.
You can also do some research online to get your specific grains ordered and sent to you, or you could also order grains online or from a feed store in your area and then pick them up when they arrive.
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Or they might have a delivery service, now that would be good.
You can always ask them…
Now I did say that I would not buy chicken feed from a grocery store, but if you only have a few chickens…
Why not!
As I have never just had a few chickens, it has never been a viable option for me.
Having The Right Recipe For Homemade Feed
It is a good idea if you can, to have a mixture of:
- minerals
- protien
- vitamins
- nutrients
When making your chicken feed, laying hens for instance will need at least 16% protein.
As chickens usually start laying between 16 – 20 weeks.
Before they do start laying, they do need a higher percentage of protein.
Whereas, broiler chickens and other poultry have different protein requirements as well as they have stopped growing.
DIY chicken food depends mostly on feeding a quality feed for proper growth egg production and good health
Poultry birds require energy in order to obtain the desired growth rate you must have to purchase and provide highly nutritious poultry feed if you want to get the most out of your laying chickens.
Good quality fresh eggs and healthy birds make a good chicken house.
There are some feeds out there that are adulterated.
So don’t go buying the cheap stuff, if you are low on finances at the time, a little most probably won’t hurt, but you can always subsidize them by giving them more scraps from your kitchen.
Many poultry farmers in different parts of the world want to know how they can make their own feeds in order to cut down costs, so why can you as a small chicken owner…
To formulate and make your own feeds at home or the farm save a lot of money which is a great help
Therefore, it is important that farmers/home chicken people adapt feed rations to these requirements for maximum production.
Young broilers/hens have a high protein requirement for the development of muscles feathers etc if you have bought a batch of young hens only, to start off your chickens in the backyard.
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As young hens grow their energy requirements for the deposit of fat increase and their protein requirements decrease
What To Add To Chicken Feed?
Before we go any further, I just want to condense some ingredients that your chickens need overall.
Things to Add to Chicken Feed:
- aragonite
- oyster shell (calcium, free feed)
- limestone (omega-3, feed whole to avoid rancidity)
- grit salt
- salt
- flaxseed (omega-3, feed whole to avoid rancidity)
- card meal (small amounts provide protein and minerals)
- probiotic
Ok, let’s move on…
05 per cent on feed preparation when making homemade feed rations it is important to do experimental trials.
If you isolate a number of chickens feed them and observe their performance if the feed rations are right the broilers will grow fast and the layers will increase egg production
At least one egg after every 27 hours farmers should be very careful with the quality of feed ingredients or raw materials
Poultry especially chickens are very sensitive to feeds that contain mycotoxins which are present in most of the raw materials.
Never use rotten maize to make chicken feed buy a quality fish meal from reputable companies
If a local fish meal is used you must be sure of its quality it is very important to mix all the micronutrients amino acids.
And premix first before mixing with the rest of the feed poultry feed formulation
Ingredients differ from place to place it depends on the availability of raw materials used in making poultry feed.
Some places use different ingredients to supplement the needed nutritional requirements for your birds.
So, chicken feed, whether you buy it make it or feed your chickens scraps out of your kitchen. As long as you give them variety.
Because remember as living things, they do need a small amount of minerals as we all do, your chickens are going to be the better for it.
And having healthy vibrant chickens are going to make you happy every time you look at them.
Now, this is what I call feeding a lot of chickens!