Here
are several different recipes for homemade chicken starter and grower
feeds. The numbers indicate a percent of the recipe by weight —
to make a hundred pounds of feed, just pretend those numbers are in
pounds.
| Modern – 19% protein |
Modern – 21% protein |
Generic – 15-18% protein |
Soy-bean free – 15% protein |
Moderate soybeans – 16-19% protein |
Low soybeans – 13-14% protein |
|
| Corn (shelled or meal) |
50.75 | 45.7 | 37.5 | 31 | 30 | |
| Soybeans (roasted or meal) |
31.25 | 28.1 | 10 | 5 | ||
| Oats | 5 | 4.5 | 10 | 10 | 10 | |
| Alfalfa meal (can be eliminated in on fresh pasture) |
5 | 4.5 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Fish meal and/or meat meal |
3.75 | 12.4 | 5 | 10 | 7.5 | 11.5 |
| Aragonite, ground limestone, marble, or oyster shells (for calcium) |
1.25 | 1.1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2.5 |
| Poultry nutri-balancer |
3 | 2.7 | ||||
| Combination of corn, milo, barley, oats, wheat, and/or rice |
46 | 30 | ||||
| Wheat bran, mill feed, rice bran, and/or milling byproducts |
10 | 10 | 10 | |||
| Soybean meal, peanut meal, cottonseed meal, safflower meal, and/or sesame meal |
39.5 | |||||
| Yeast and/or milk powder (for vitamins) |
2 | 5 | 2.5 | |||
| Salt with trace minerals (trace mineral salt or iodized salt supplemented with 1/2 oz. of managanese sulfate and 1/2 oz. of zinc oxide.) |
0.5 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 0.5 | ||
| Bone meal and/or deflourinated dicalcium phosphate |
2 | |||||
| Wheat middlings |
20 | 20 | ||||
| Dried whey | 4 | |||||
| Cod oil (especially for chicks raised entirely indoors and out of the sun) |
0.2 |
I know this chart may seem a little daunting,
but I thought it would be
useful to take a look at a bunch of different feed formulas reported on
the internet. First of all, notice that many of the recipes don’t
actually fit into the protein recommendations for starting chicks —
18 to 20%. The lower protein feeds should be considered grower
rations.
Next, notice that the
components can be broken down into grains for
carbohydrates; fish meal, wheat meal, alfalfa meal, or soybeans for
protein; and
alfalfa meal, aragonite, ground limestone, oyster shells, poultry
nutri-balancer, yeast, milk powder, salt, bone meal, dicalcium
phosphate, and whey for vitamins and minerals.
Of course, we all know
that we’re healthier if we eat a lot of
different types of foods, so it’s easy to draw the same conclusions
about chickens. Feeding them a constant mixture based primarily
on soybeans and corn (like the commercial feeds) isn’t going to be as
good for them as mixing it up and tossing in different grains and
ingredients in different batches. If you live on a farm, chances
are that some ingredients are easier to come by than others at
different times of the year — be willing to change your formula over
time! In a later post, I’ll list the percent protein of each
ingredient so that you’ll know how to keep your percent protein steady
while changing ingredients.
Stay tuned for homemade chicken layer recipes.
| This post is part of our Homemade Chicken Feed series. Read all of the entries:
|
