Recipes for homemade starter and grower chicken feeds

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.  Until then, check out our automatic chicken waterer that provides the other essential ingredient for healthy birds --- clean water.

This post is part of our Homemade Chicken Feed series.  Read all of the entries: What do chickens eat in the wild? The basics: Percent protein in three types of chicken feed Recipes for homemade starter and grower chicken feeds Recipes for homemade layer chicken feeds Protein content in chicken feed ingredients Vitamins and minerals in chicken feed Grains: Growing grains for chicken feed Sprouting and processing grain for chicken feed Alternative chicken feed ingredients: Chickweed is a winter pick-me-up for chickens Mealworms as chicken feed Japanese beetles as chicken feed Black soldier fly larvae as chicken feed Earthworms as chicken feed Duckweed as chicken feed Trash as chicken feed

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