How many of you grow your own feed?

[Koda]

How many of you actually grow your own feed? I see a lot of people talk about crazy feed prices or on the other side of it people talk about these elaborate food forests or plantings they do to feed their livestock.

I would love to hear from people who are even just supplementing their livestock's feed instead of buying in everything. Please feel free to respond even if you don't have many or large livestock. Even if you have quail running around, I'd love to hear what you do.

*For the sake of attempting to stay on topic here is an outline of questions you can copy and paste for easy answer if you'd like:

-Livestock you raise:

-Quantity of livestock:

-Amount of land for livestock:

-Amount of land for producing the feed for livestock:

-How much food do you produce yourself?:
(It could be dairy from your cows, eggs from your chickens, grains/produce you grow, hay you bale, your kitchen/garden scraps, worms/bugs, etc.)

-For those that aren't producing all their feed, what is stopping you?:
(land isn't that useful from growing supplementary feeds, no room for dairy animals, not enough time, you find it easier to purchase feed?)

-What special preparations (if any) do you go through to feed over the winter?:

-Weight/age at which you butcher:

-Amount of meat from butchering:

If you can think of anything else you'd like to say or add as a question please feel free to say so. I welcome any and all input even if you only answer a few of the questions. Thank you in advance for your time!

[am1too]

I'm seriously considering rabbits because I think I can grow most if not all my own feed on a couple acres or less. Might have to feed commercial stuff as a supplement and during the winter. Winter wheat is easy to grow and stays green all winter.

[rambler]

Cattle, corn, oats, alfalfa, less productive land in hay and pasture, cornstalks and cover crop of clover alfalfa oats turnips for fall into winter grazing.

I just buy salt and mineral.

I'm too small to be a 'real farmer' and too big to fit in here as a homesteader.....

Paul

[dfr1973]

I have chickens, and this year I am greatly expanding them, but just for our layers for the table I have planted turnips (top-crop for greens), mustards, collards, and now kale. Given my lack of gardening skills, it hasn't been much more than treats once or twice a week so far. I also happily feed the hens any and all hornworms I find on the tomato and pepper plants! During the summer, they get the lawn clippings to peck through and eat as they find something they like, although that may not happen this summer with the number of grow-out chick tractors I'll have. I do raise up cockerels for meat.

I'm sorry I don't have numbers, as I have been doing this to see if I can and how/if the taste difference is there. Our eggs and chicken meat are certainly top-notch although how much of that is flavored by the satisfaction of raising our own is up for debate.

[Koda]

Thanks for your input guys! And no worries, I don't need specifics as to exact numbers. I just wanted to hear what people were doing that are growing even part of their feed.

@am1too: I would assume that growing the food needs for rabbits is probably one of the easier animals to start out with. None of their dietary needs are extravagant and they certainly don't eat excessive amounts. It seems a lot of rabbits will overeat on a pelleted diet, at least that's been my experience. I've seen rabbits do quite well on pasture rotation, hay, and excess garden greens. Based on that I would also assume that raising geese without a lot of inputs would also be probable.

@rambler: So do you graze them all winter long? Or do they just clear out the cover crops and the rest of the winter is hay, etc.?

@dfr1973: I figured turnips would be one of the more frequent things posted by people growing feed. Have you thought about maybe starting a worm bin? It would help feed your chickens and the worm castings would help greatly with your garden as well which in turn would give the chickens and YOU more food. I'm sure you've read places about it all, just seems like a nice aid to both! It's really great that you get so much satisfaction out of producing your own!

Thank you again all for taking the time to reply.

[sammyd]

We have a few goats and chickens. If the price is right We like to raise our own cow and pigs. Have had lots of rabbits over the years as well.
We have 5 acres for crops/pasture and another 5 acres of hay we make on 3/4 shares.
I try to plant 2 or 3 acres of corn every year. We also have an acre roughly in yard and along driveways that we use for the cow.

We haven't had to buy hay for years. The corn get picked and stored in a crib till needed. Some we shell and send to the mill to be mixed in the goat feed and some gets ground into pig feed. One year we didn't have any animals and sold it all.
We buy commercial feed for the meat chickens and breeding doe rabbits. Rabbits being grown to eat are in tractors and when the adults aren't being bred like though the winter they get hay. At the height of our rabbit growing days we didn't mow our lawn all summer, the rabbits did it.

[Jolly]

For many years, my wife's uncles would plant a ten acre field of corn. Each family would help plant and each family would help harvest. It worked out to two acres per family.

Equipment was a Ford 3000 owned by one of the uncles, with two row implements.

The corn was stored in cribs at each man's house and all of them used the corn for hog and chicken feed.

They stopped when most of the kids moved away from home and the brothers got up in age.

[highlands]

Originally Posted by Koda

How many of you actually grow your own feed?

We grow much, perhaps most of our feed, simply because it is our pastures. We pasture because pasture is what we have. Our land is not suitable for cropping as it is thin soil, steep, stoney and stumpy. Bad for machine working but animals graze on it very well.

We grow pumpkins, sunflowers, beets, turnips and other things in our winter paddocks and this becomes food in the late fall and winter for our livestock when the fields fade.

We do buy in winter hay since it is more effective for us to pasture than to hay given that hay is a low cost commodity item around our area. If it were otherwise I would hay but for now I import those nutrients to our land.

We don't buy any grain or commercial chicken or hog feed. Grain isn't evil, just expensive.

We get some dairy, mostly whey, from a local butter and cheese maker, a little spent barley mash from a local brew pub and apple pomace (crush) from a local cider mill as seasonally available. See:
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/pigs
and follow the feed links.

Originally Posted by Koda

Livestock you raise

What we sell is wood from our forest and pork. In addition to raising pastured pigs we also have pastured chickens, ducks, geese and usually sheep although currently we're sheepless. These are support staff that help us get pork to fork. For example, the chickens are our organic pest control. The ducks keep the wallows and pig ponds stirred up and eat slugs & mosquitoes, etc.

Originally Posted by Koda

Quantity of livestock

~400 pigs with about 60 breeders
~300 poultry

Originally Posted by Koda

Amount of land for livestock

~70 acres

Originally Posted by Koda

Amount of land for producing the feed for livestock

~70 acres - the above is pasture, savannah style with a mix of open, brush and tree cover. We do managed rotational grazing. There are a few acres that are the winter paddocks which become summer gardens.

Originally Posted by Koda

How much food do you produce yourself?

(It could be dairy from your cows, eggs from your chickens, grains/produce you grow, hay you bale, your kitchen/garden scraps, worms/bugs, etc.)

Food for our own table? We're capable of producing all of our food staples. However we also enjoy the luxuries of things we don't produce. Chocolate, flour, rice... We're not fanatical about it. More depends on how much money we have available to spend on luxuries in any year. Some years we've bought next to nothing. Other years more.

For our livestock? We're capable of producing all of our animal feed and have done so some years. However we're better off buying in winter hay so we do. We also get 'free' (have to do some work to receive) 'wastes' such as the apple pomace, barley mash, whey, etc. We do as much as possible as back hauling to minimize driving. See:
http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2010/04/22/delivery-sequencing/

Originally Posted by Koda

What special preparations (if any) do you go through to feed over the winter?

Pull animals in from far pastures to close winter paddocks
Getting in winter hay
Setup deep bedding packs in open sheds and open greenhouses which compost generating heat and food
Shrouding waterers to protect them from the wind
Building up snow banks on the windward side of tanks
Pickup because soon everything is buried in snow.

Originally Posted by Koda

Weight/age at which you butcher

We sell pork. We don't sell the other animals except rarely. Simplicity of market for the moment. Focus.

In pigs we sell at all sizes from small oven roasters (mostly October to New Years), spit roasters (mostly May to October) and full size pigs and cuts. We primarily sell wholesale to stores and restaurants with standing orders on our weekly delivery route. That's our bread and butter, what pays the mortgage. We also sell some whole pigs weekly to individuals. Some monthly CSA boxes too.

Oven roasters vary from 10 to 35 lbs hanging weight.
Spit roasters vary from about 45 lbs to 200 lbs hanging weight.
Whole pigs are typically 180 lbs hanging weight at about six to eight months.

Originally Posted by Koda

Amount of meat from butchering

We do scald & scrape, head on, feet on, tail on, skin on. Typically:

Hanging Weight = 72% Live Weight

Commercial Cuts Weight = 67% Hanging Weight

That means a 250 lb live pig gives about 180 lbs hanging or about 120 lbs of meat. Note that there is a significant amount of good eating between those last two weights in the skin, fat, bones, oddments, etc. A customer buying a whole pig gets 145 lbs to 160 lbs depending on if they want all the oddments like organs, head, skin, feet, etc. See these two articles and the accompanying pork cut chart:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2014/04/04/w...-nose-to-tail/

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2006/07/04/w...alf-pig-share/

Cheers,

-Walter

[farmerDale]

We raise a lot of our own feed, in various forms. Hay, pasture, grains, they all have their place.

We are getting into sheep more, and are looking at it as a Walterfied (Highands), version of raising lamb for specific end use markets. except we use grain, simply because we grow a lot of it.

We also have horses, lots of chickens, eggs and meat, often ducks, turkeys, etc. We want to add goats and a few hogs for this spring if it goes well.

Right now we only have about 40 sheep, but we plan to grow to several hundred in the next few years. We usually have in the hundreds of chickens roaming around.

We grain farm, but we are adding animals to take advantage of the type of area we farm in. We have a lot of woods, ponds, lakes, and other non field areas, that are underutilized right now. We have about 600 acres or so of non grain land, that could be used more efficiently than it is now for pasture.

I am seeding down another 40 acres of grain land this spring for hay. That 40 acres should produce hay enough for a few hundred sheep, which added to the other hayland already producing, should cover the amount of winter feed needed. We have long cold winters, and need to have enough feed for at least 200 days.

As far as grain, we do not really raise grain for our stock, but we do use it to feed them. In other words, the stock eat so little of our total grain production, that it is more of a fringe benefit than that we specifically seed 10 acres etc. to feed the animals. We grow wheat, oats, barley, rye, flax, canola, peas, faba beans, mustard, canaryseed, and so on. We use barley for the sheep, and wheat for the hens mixed with 40% premix to ensure they have the protein they need in the winter, when they have no chance to get out and forage. Even 500 lambs would only eat 20 bushels of barley a day.

The only thing stopping us from producing our own food, is this: we are not doing this for giggles, we need the animals to perform well. To do that, especially in an area of harsh winters, you simply have to ensure the animals have the minerals and vitamins they need, along with basic protein and energy. We just can not risk shorting our critters, so we supplement our home grown feeds, with mineral for the sheep, and high protein balanced formulas for the hens and other fowl. But we do grow 99% of the bulk of what the animals eat, and could no doubt keep them alive only on home grown feed, but they would not perform as well as they do when you use scientific principles of ensuring their needs are met.

Again, our winters are long and harsh. Always. You MUST have feed for at least 200 days in some form or another. What we do is take our animals, multiply what a single one eats in a day, multiply by 200, multiply by number of animals.

We butcher our chickens at 9 to 10 lbs dressed. They are cornish cross, in a free range situation, but are fed well with our wheat. We simply do not over feed them. The lambs we shoot for 110 to 120 lbs live. we finish them with hay and barley at a rate of 2 lbs of barely per lamb per day, and this seems to be working well. Lambs dress out at close to 50% of live weight.

As grain farming continues to be challenging in this area due to wet weather, short seasons, and the tons of stress and financial worry that come with it, we are shifting more to animals. We have the land, we just have to use it more fully. We find raising animals much less stressful: Hail does not destroy them. Frost is not a concern. Inputs costs are minimal compared to grain. We will always grow grain, but we could raise a lot of meat on our land without even affecting our grain production.

A few things we are studying, just as an aside:

Bison. We have a quarter of land 16 miles from our home land area, which is wild wilderness. We wonder about fencing this and throwing bison cows out there, and collecting their calves each fall to feed out. Bison are pretty self reliant critters. They just need amazing handling facilities.

Fibre markets: Alpaca, angora goats, etc. There is an insatiable need for lots of these products.

We just plain really enjoy our sheep. We look forward to getting many more...

[bja105]

We have three horses and four cattle. They eat only pasture from April to November. This past year we made it almost to Christmas on pasture only.
Last summer I tried a tiny bit of open pollinated field corn. I planted three small plots, one for the wildlife, two for the livestock. The cows got into one plot early, and saved me some picking. The other little plot we picked about a garbage can full of ears, and then let the animals graze the stalks.

We give the animals an ear or two to make them come to us, or as a treat.

This summer, we will be partnering with a neighbor who has a planter and cultivator. We'll need to make a corn crib, and find a grinder or hammermill.

I also bought a hay mower, and am shopping for a baler. If I have time, we will make some of our own hay. It doesn't take much. I will only use 20 round bales this winter.

[FarmboyBill]

I got to where I could raise both 10 acres of corn, followed by 12 acres of hay, the 10 of each on the same land in Okla. Quit cause I don't have water. I am seeking to buy a place around 60/90 miles away around my kids. THAT DOES have water. I have around 92 bales of round hay to sell.
I can raise corn, and cut and bind it, and run it through a husker shredder, which shucks off the ears into a wagon, and chops the stalks to where cows will eat them,.

[Koda]

Really great information everyone, thanks! It's great to see all the different ways that people are doing things.

[JoannaCW]

We have dairy goats, pigs, laying hens and meat rabbits. We started with rabbits last spring because we could raise them with few purchased inputs. In summer they get hay, greens and and twigs free-fed, and a small amount of store-bought whole oats for lactating does and growing kits. In winter they get hay, dried willow and raspberry, carrots and parsnips, but we also buy wheat (which we sprout into fodder) and oats for them.

We grow pasture and hay and we dry willow, burdock and berry canes for our goats, but we buy them grain--feed-store premix until partway through this winter, wheat/oats/BOSS now (some of the wheat is foddered).

Pigs have been eating feed-store hog grower mix supplemented with kitchen and vegetable scraps and extra milk from the goats.

Chickens have been getting range, vegetable scraps, rabbit-butchering leftovers and layer mash. We're hoping to cut out the layer mash and do whole-grain sprouts instead.

[rambler]

I have roughly 20 head of cattle wintering on roughly 40 acres of a mix of 5 acres soybean stubble, 5-10 acres of oats stubble which has the turnips and clover and alfalfa mix, 2-4 acres of grassy edges, field road, etc, and the remainder in corn stalks. (They love the cover crop mix, they eat a lot of the cornstalk leaves and husks whenever they can find them, and they will at times eat fresh soybean hulls when they feel like it, tho the soybeans are more of a rotation in planting, they are not very useful for the cattle grazing.)

Typically in my climate after thanksgiving and before Christmas the snow gets too deep for the cattle to get much out of the field any more, and I place round bales out in the field for them to eat. This keeps the manure and waste hay out in the field where I want it.

This year and several years ago we've had unusually low snowfall and they have grazed more stalks than normal. One year we froze up hard and early and snow came deep, I had the wire fence up but the cattle didnt get to graze the turnips, only lightly could browse the tops of the cornstalks. I figured well I can work them up for fertilizer in spring, no loss. All of a sudden we had a nice thaw that year in February, and the cattle stopped eating hay. I couldn't figure it out, went out to see what was up with them, and they were rooting out the turnips from under the snow, the ground had warmed a bit and they found them. Were happy February cattle that year.

So I kinda take what ma nature gives me, I need enough hay to feed then all winter but am happy if I only need to use half of it....

Paul

[Homesteader]

Gosh I feel like a small fish in a big pond here just 2.5 acres - really not much to contribute but I will offer what I have! We only have laying hens and two dairy goats currently. The dairy goats are now fat happy pets and are fed purchased alfalfa pellets, hay and minerals. We supplement the hens commercial feed with sunflower seed, oyster shell and cracked corn (all purchased).

Then, when the gardens are in full swing, they also get chard all growing season, and the spare tomato, any hornworms.

During the non-harvest time, we grow fodder indoors for them. Here is our set up:

Our Fodder Set Up Pic heavy - one week in!

They LOVE this stuff.

Our gardens for our consumption are fabulous - I have discovered this year that what I put up is lasting longer than I anticipated!

I can now say we grow a years' supply of many of the veggies we eat. Cool season ones are a real challenge, as the heat hits here so fast and early, they barely make it - they just bolt. But spuds, tomatoes, carrots, peppers, herbs, onions, corn, chard, beans, we got that covered!

[FarmboyBill]

How do you guage how much to give per chicken, per rabbit. I have 50 chickens and have had over 150 rabbits. Got away from the rabbits cause of the feed costs.

[Whisperwindkat]

We have in the past grown the majority of our feed needs for some of our animals, but it was time consuming. We have horses, goats, rabbits, and chickens. We have also raised pigs. The chickens pretty much take care of themselves by ranging. We do supplement with scraps from the kitchen and when I am putting stuff up from the garden I will freeze some stuff for them. I use that in the winter to supplement them. They also clean up what the goats and the horse spill. The rabbits get the majority of their food from weeds that we gather and stuff from the garden. I have in the past grown a small patch of either winter rye or Bahia that was fed green during the growing season. For the horse and the goats the majority of their food supply comes from the pasture and browse. Grain is a supplement during that time. In the winter, they get a little more grain and then hay. I try to keep our pastures in good shape and I overseed with winter rye to extend the grazing season so I usually only have to buy in hay for about 3 months. We have 10 acres and so it is difficult to find enough space to grown multiple crops to provide enough feed needs for the animals. Instead, what we grow is mainly a supplement.

[dfr1973]

Originally Posted by Homesteader

Gosh I feel like a small fish in a big pond here just 2.5 acres - really not much to contribute but I will offer what I have! We only have laying hens and two dairy goats currently.

I'm right there with ya, only 2.55 acres here ... currently at 66 chickens, of which 60 are chicks. Next month I get in 40 more chicks, but by then some of the cockerels will be big enough for dinner, so the number fluctuates. Dairy goats are in our plans, but probably not this year.

The OP said s/he wanted to hear from all of us, even smallholders.

[Marinea]

Micro family farm here- less than two acres. We have about a dozen chickens and anywhere from 7 to 30 rabbits at a time, including growing kits. We raise the chickens for eggs, and the rabbits for both people and dog food.

We buy commercial feeds, but greatly cut our feed costs during the growing season. The chickens free range daily, and they are supplemented with lots of garden castoffs. Their feed costs are very low, and it only goes up when we are hatching and raising chicks to replenish our herd and to sell. The chickens do end up as a negative as far as expenses, but we love the fresh eggs.

The rabbits I try to keep on, at least, a revenue neutral basis. What commercial feed we feed them is offset over the year by sales. Most of the feed is consumed during the breeding season and in winter. In addition to that feed, they get various weeds from the property, wild rose canes and leaves, wild blackberry canes and leaves, apple leaves, poplar leaves, kudzu leaves and vines. We also grow various greens in the garden and the buns get their share- lettuces, spinach, turnips, beets, carrots, herbs, etc. We are looking into sprouting fodder for winter supplements for next year.

Could we refine our practices so that we were making a profit on our livestock? Almost certainly, but we are satisfied with where we are at the moment. We have quality foodstock that we maintain and control. We know where it comes from and how it was raised. Our costs are much lower than the insane grocery prices of late.

Your question is a good one, but really needs to be refined- are you interested in a sustainable family operation or a commercial, revenue-generating one? Very different responses and requirements for each.

[jester31780]

Grow all feed for chickens and pigs all is non gmo but its not tuff to do when i sell non gmo corn seed