Chickens have been on home grown feed for about a month...

[unregistered168043]

Hello. Our chickens are going into winter on homegrown feed. So far so good. We grew about 1/4 acre of feed corn and some sunflowers. Sunflower fats and protein levels are high to help boost the corn. They also free range daily.

So far I have seen no change in their conformation or egg laying. Just butchered a few yesterday so we'll see about taste, but carcass looks the same as always. Cost to feed 50 chickens all winter will be about $20, which counts estimated tractor fuel and seed cost.



Darntootin

[sriston]

Same way we feed ours. Ours taste pretty darn good!

[danarutan]

I just chopped & dehydrated a bucket of peppers and canned a bucket of tomatoes I took all the skin, pepper seeds, and scraps and canned 7 qts of "chicken salsa" with reuseable lids to feed the girls during the winter. They already had all the bad tomatoes I found while picking and my freezer is too full so I thought I'd just can it. I also grew 1 40 ft row of sunflowers and 8 40 ft rows of field corn. I also started a nightcrawler tub this summer and should be able to feed some of them to the girls.

[KSALguy]

sunflower seeds are very good, all kinds of squash, any kind of grain you can grow, all are great things to have for year round feeding, also I love the idea of canning the tomato mix from left over spent garden stuff. that should help keep their eggs nice and bright all winter lol

[Real Hawkeye]

Originally Posted by Darntootin

Hello. Our chickens are going into winter on homegrown feed. So far so good. We grew about 1/4 acre of feed corn and some sunflowers. Sunflower fats and protein levels are high to help boost the corn. They also free range daily.

So far I have seen no change in their conformation or egg laying. Just butchered a few yesterday so we'll see about taste, but carcass looks the same as always. Cost to feed 50 chickens all winter will be about $20, which counts estimated tractor fuel and seed cost.



Darntootin

Sounds very economical.

[Shadoweng]

Do you feed the sunflower seeds with or without the shell?

[sriston]

We feed our sunflower seeds with the shell on.


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[KSALguy]

sunflower shell is fine to feed its full of fiber and good stuff,

[paraclete]

Originally Posted by Darntootin

Hello. Our chickens are going into winter on homegrown feed. So far so good. We grew about 1/4 acre of feed corn and some sunflowers. Sunflower fats and protein levels are high to help boost the corn. They also free range daily.

So far I have seen no change in their conformation or egg laying. Just butchered a few yesterday so we'll see about taste, but carcass looks the same as always. Cost to feed 50 chickens all winter will be about $20, which counts estimated tractor fuel and seed cost.



Darntootin

What type of field corn and sunflowers did you plant?
What percentage of corn to sunflowers would you guess you feed?
Do you have to add/provide any minerals to make a complete diet?
Did you have to irrigate?

Sorry for the million questions! Thank you for posting an informative thread, it's given me an idea to utilize some unused acreage : )

[unregistered168043]

Originally Posted by Shadoweng

Do you feed the sunflower seeds with or without the shell?

We feed black oil sunflower seed and all.

[unregistered168043]

Originally Posted by paraclete

What type of field corn and sunflowers did you plant?
What percentage of corn to sunflowers would you guess you feed?
Do you have to add/provide any minerals to make a complete diet?
Did you have to irrigate?

Sorry for the million questions! Thank you for posting an informative thread, it's given me an idea to utilize some unused acreage : )

We feed something like 30% sunflower seed and 70% corn ( guestimate). Thinking that depending on how much sunflower we still have in spring we might start our new hatches on about 80% sunflower since the protein (17%) is closer to a 'starter' feed.

[paraclete]

Thank you Darntootin

[Vosey]

Wish I'd read this a few days ago! never occurred to me to can or freeze all the 'plugs', as I call them, from straining my tomatoes for sauce and V-8. The chickens love them, but I have so much extra.

[Twobottom]

Great ideas here.

[JLMissouri]

Thas awesome. I am planning on doing the same with a mix of black oil sunflower, corn and wheat with maybe some type of beans or peas mixed in. I was planning on running the sunflowers through and extruder to get the oil and feed the cake. Anyone have problems feeding chickens too much black oil sunflower?

[unregistered168043]

I have not had any problems with it. We throw them the whole head and they peck the seed out.

[unregistered168043]

Update; Back in late Oct our chickens started to reduce their laying production. This is normal for us at this time of the year even when feeding large amounts of laying mash. Just to be sure, I took them off the homegrown and put them back on 'Layena' brand laying mash for 3 weeks. The chickens at this point actually reduced their laying even further, though I do not blame the mash I think it has more to do with the natural cycle of sunlight and temperature.

Being satisfied that the homegrown feed was not the cause of their reduced egg counts, we put them back on the homegrown feed and they very quickly began to actually INCREASE their production. I do believe this is probably just the natural cycle and the feed likely had little to do with it. So right now we are satisfied that the homegrown feed is, at the very least, not hindering their egg production. And I think there might be an outside possibility that the homegrown feed might actually be superior.

I should also report that we ran out of our sunflower seed pretty quickly and are now feeding 100% homegrown CORN!! So on just corn ( and free range ) my chickens are producing as well, possibly better than what we got with expensive 'specially formulated' bag feed!

Another big bonus is that my chickens taste way WAY better than they did when I fed them 'Layena'. They are as plump and healthy but have less of that certain gamey 'fowl' flavor that I had come to believe was inevitable.

As far as I am concerned, unless things change ( and I will honestly report if they do ), I consider my little experiment as proof that the 'chickens need specially formulated feed' line has been DEBUNKED!

[jennigrey]

Are they still free-ranging now? Over what kind of land?

[unregistered168043]

Originally Posted by jennigrey

Are they still free-ranging now? Over what kind of land?

They are. They have access to pasture and woods and they seem to make use of both. We've had a warm snap and the ice/snow from last week has melted.

When butchering I take note of whatever I find in their crops and stomach. Seems to be mostly grass mixed with corn and some wild seeds and etc.

[potatoguru]

Originally Posted by Darntootin

Hello. Our chickens are going into winter on homegrown feed. So far so good. We grew about 1/4 acre of feed corn and some sunflowers. Sunflower fats and protein levels are high to help boost the corn. They also free range daily.

So far I have seen no change in their conformation or egg laying. Just butchered a few yesterday so we'll see about taste, but carcass looks the same as always. Cost to feed 50 chickens all winter will be about $20, which counts estimated tractor fuel and seed cost.



Darntootin

You guys are lucky to have the weather to dry corn out on the stalk. Here in Oregon were not so fortunate. I would grow my own corn for feed but I never could get any to dry on the stalk. So instead I buy wheat from a local farmer. This August I got 1200 pounds of wheat for a $100 bill.