What’s the recipe for ultra-low chicken feed costs? In the spring, at least, our neighbor’s flock barely wants to touch anything other than high-energy (and cheap) scratch feed because they have so much greenery and so many bugs to harvest out of the wild.
It doesn’t hurt that she also keeps cows, who sometimes spill a little feed, always have hay handy, and attract lots of worms to their patties. The goal is for the chickens to at least pay for themselves, and in the spring I’d say they definitely do.