Thanks Robert for all the things you share with us from far away Australia 🇦🇺 eternally grateful to you river’s of joy peace and kindness to you and your family
excellent inför.- The best I have heard- THANK YOU. I live in the Cariboo area of British Columbia and we raised chicken for our family for over 20 years. Thank You again.
Thank you! I try my best, particularly with poultry information. Check back later this month and I should have a newer feed video with more information and some surprise results from flocks in Asia!
Haha you remind me of my dad! keep talking it's joyful! thank you for the great video. we are new homesteaders only 4 monthes in so these videos have been so helpful. Blessings and thanks again.
I'm a subscriber and I just wanted to thank-you for doing such informitive vids. I have learned so much from your channel, my neighbors are amazed at how smart I am.😉
Thank you Lisa!!! You most likely started out very smart though! I will be building this place for another year, then on to the greenhouse and its plants, so there is a lot more to come!
Love the bucket buried with chicken wire over and let the sunflowers sprout up!!! Going to try that next to our wild bird feeder station just for the looks and fun of it! Great info, subscribed. THanks!
Hi Robert another great informative video, I will be using your [Adult, and chick mixes thanks a lot] you answered my question whilst writing to James Johnson regarding what is a premix, which I now understand is a vitamin and mineral supplement. thanks from Bulgaria.
+John Traynor John, I am glad you find the videos helpful! My chickens here are super healthy and active from the feed they are getting. Good luck with yours too!
Robert, thank you very very much for the information. Now I know why my chikens died!! We are trying to make our own mix and we lost some chiks when we introduced our mix. I´ve subcribed to your chanel. I´m from Venezuela live in the venezuelan andies. Keep it up! Nice job!
I am always very happy and humbled to be of help! Poutrly husbandry is not rocket science....... but it IS science unless your breed is a feral one. Watch for more on poultry soon. Right now I am working feverishly on the living quarters of the compound, but chickens, Vetiver and Moringa will start again in Februalry!
THANKS !! I _JUST_ discovered this content . FINALLY something with MORE *SUBSTANCE* and _LESS_ "CUTE"_ !! I've captured this link AND the one for the prequel and NOW plan to replace our Commercial mix with MY OWN , according to your _basic_ outline . I plan to also include Flax seed for the good omegas as its not _only_ about "Protein" , but this is the FIRST I've _seen_ with a _better_ mix-ratio of "cuteness" to *_SUBSTANCE_* !!
This is glorious, I been tryin to find out about "bantam chicken" for a while now, and I think this has helped. You ever tried - Machaaldity Coop Blaster - (should be on google have a look ) ? Ive heard some incredible things about it and my work buddy got amazing results with it.
PLEASE FOLKS, THIS VIDEO IS OVER FIVE YEARS OLD. DON NOT PHONE ME OR ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT IT ANY LONGER. HERE IS THE LINK TO MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE MIX: singingturkeys.com/POULTRYFEEDMIX.pdf THIS IS ALL THERE IS, I CANNOT RESPOND TO ANY MORE COMMENTS!!
Hello Robert! I was at my local Big Lots and found a all in one bag of Scott Pet Premium Blend Wild Bird Seed in a ten pound bag. It's ingredients are as follows; cracked corn, Milo, wheat and black oil sunflower seeds; shelled, of course. This bag of seeds was only $6! Now I now I can get a #50 bag of cracked corn for $7 at TSC and a #50 bag of scratch grains for about $13 but for the small backyard chicken farmer, like myself, that #10 bag of seeds goes a long ways when mixed with 12% crumble or pellets. And it does a very good job of making happy chickens and some awesome eggs. I mix in oyster shells and these girls are HAPPY!!! Looking forward to more of your videos my friend. One question for ya though. Where do you get your Portland Cement from out there?
+Noneya Buisness You still need ground soy or fish meal!!!!! That mix, which is a GREAT price, is still about 10% protein. You MUST get to 18-22%, so you need soy, as well as a vitamin/mineral pre-mix.. I get my Portland cement from McCoys, here in Alpine. They are a fairly small chain of lumber yards (but they have gift certificates). If I go to Odessa, I can get Portland for about $10 a bag, McCoys is about $10.50 a bag.
soybean meal -wheat -red millet -corn -vital -grit -oyster shell -bailed dried grass-has been my mix for 28 years. ....i mix and grind my own from my land and some from feed mill avg...$200 for 1550 lbs ........so if i increase wheat it slows down ,ill have to try that next mix and adjust accordingly.thank you for the information from down in Texas from Wisconsin were today it was 65 degrees and no breeze nice usually snowing by this time here.....
Hi and thanks for educating us on caring for our chickens. I really enjoy your videos! I would like to ask a question regarding the oyster shells. Can you tell me the ratio of oyster shells to premix? Again thanks for sharing your knowledge.
Premix is added to the finished feed according to the premix manufacturer's instructions. Many times it is about 40 pounds of premix to 1000 pounds of feed. Oyster shell should be offered in a separate container.
I have used your mix but have problems with the soybean meal and premix being left in the bottom of the feeder so ended up feeding mixed grain and with soybean meal over $2.00 kg here in Australia it is far to expensive to be left in the bottom of a feeder. They would eventually eat it if given nothing else but then egg production dropped off. I have six pens of different breeds with 10 chickens per pen and each pen had the same result.
There is a really good restaurant in terlingua...pretty sure it's Terlingua anyway. Pretty sure it's called The Cave, cool little place with great food!
Good morning, Great information, Thank you. The Vi-Tal vitamin and mineral pre mix you mentioned. Do you add that to the feed? The manufacture says add to water. or I'm I looking at the wrong stuff. Thank you again
Thank you for explaining your feed so well. just a question about the pe-mix. I assume these are vitamins and minerals. do you give that free choice as well or ad in the feed ?
Add it to the feed as an extra item. Use the maker's recommendation to mix it by weight of the total feed you are adding it to. I don't think the birds would eat it free choice.
Rice is an excellent and digestible substitute! Remember that it is about 8% protein. Keep watching..... I have lots of new nutritional information. I just need to make time to create a video about it!
first of all I appreciate you. I like the fact you have experiences in the chicken industry. you're obviously a smart common-sense man. Not to mention you have the same name as my grandfather Robert Earl. my question is I have a mixed flock of 20. Half are aound 10 months. the others range in age from 12 to 16 weeks and of course are not laying. the young ones of course are not laying. it's not economical for me to buy two different mixes or feed separately. should I just add a protein booster like soybean meal to my regular food? if so how much should I add to a 50 pound bag which is 16% protein? also a very interesting point that you brought up is hens being too skinny and unhealthy when they are spent and are moulding or have stopped laying. I would like to keep mine until at least their third molt. they are very much pets. how do I keep them as healthy as possible and with meat on their bones so to speak after they have laid 418 months or so. I don't want a skinny little hen that is not healthy? what is your advice on protein Exedra on hens that lay every day and will deplete all the nutrition in their bones and bodies without some extra help come their first moult. I feed ground corn and wheat and pure alfalfa pellets as treats as well as table scraps. I also feed a commercial layer food on top of this but like I said its only 16% protein. I'm also interested in the pig feed you mentioned. can eat buffet instead of the layer food? by the way I can also always supplement calcium....my email address is tobylowe111@gmail.com and text me at 256 577 7765 just to let me know if you put up a new video. I'm not one to get on the internet a whole lot but I sure don't want to miss another one of your videos especially if it pertains to my question. thank you very much my name is Joseph and I'm in Florence Alabama. That's in the very North part of Alabama almost in Tennessee. btw, how do you feel about buttermilk? I have access to as much of it as I need? I also try to feed one head of cabbage everyday. my egg production is good. do you think I'm doing a good job. thank you so much in advance for all your help and answering my questions. As I said before your videos are very much appreciated
We have had hens that were up to eight years old at our place in north Florida. Without the bands, we would not have been able to tell which they were! I preach using a feed of no less than 20% (my mix is 19.3%, so maybe no less than THAT). Yes, chickens can and do survive on less than that, but they become "worn-out" in appearance at about two years of age on a lower protein diet. Also, I did extensive research into HPAI (highly pathogenic avian influenza, or bird flu) last year and saw that one major and ever-present factor in the Asian mortality rates from it, was a LOW protein diet! Like humans, without some "fat" to draw off of when ill, their systems break down, resulting in death. If you just want to add soy, it is about 45% protein, so a ratio of 5-6 to 1 packaged feed to soy would be good. Use 5/1 in Winter and 6/1 in Spring-Fall. I found that if you ALWAYS have calcium carbonate (oyster shell or equivalent), you never have bone issues in non-Cornish Cross breeds. Our Florida farm sat on top of huge limestone deposits and I STILL offered the oyster shell! Never had bone problems....... unless I failed to offer it! Hog feed is an alternative only is certain circumstances. A processed and bagged feed from a multi-national isn't right. The mill we bought ours from, just mixed ground corn and ground soy with a pre-mix and that was all. So by buying that and adding the grains and more soy, we saved money. Here, the chickens will steal the alfalfa tops and "powder" from the horses' hay, as well as chomping the 4-5 mice that the cats bring us as presents every morning. The one thing that has made a big difference to our birds, is the meal worm farm. We are able to give the flock about 2 pounds of meal worms a week from that. I can try to drop you a note when there is a new video. But I am doing so much here that I often forget or don't have time. Figure there is at least one new one about every 10 days. Your Grandfather does have a very good name! However, remember that not everyone is so lucky....... There is a duck named Donald that is really pissed right now!
one thing I forgot to mention. the cause of predators a free-range my words about 1 hour before dark every other night. they absolutely love it but when I try to do it without me being out there I always lose one to a predator of some type. so it's mostly for exercise I don't think they're getting lots of nutrition for that short amount of time free ranging
I had a big predator problem in north Florida. Here, the coyotes are all I have to worry about and they avoid us most of the time because I seldom miss with the big gun!
Thank you Robert, for caring about what your chickens eat! Glad you like the premix. We hope you continue spreading the word. Let us know if there is anything else we can do for you. www.abcplus.biz
Hi Robert, is there any nutritional reason, not to use whole kernel corn for adult chickens and ducks? My poultry seems to like it better than cracked corn.
+Ginger Borgeson I got in the habit of using cracked corn to feed the birds when in Florida. We had field corn growing EVERYWHERE there, from the kernels the chickens missed. Also, cracked corn is the same size as milo and mixes better with the soy and other grains. Also, unscrupulous feed mills like to play "checkers" (note the word play) and remove 1/4-1/2 of the corn germ from their cracked corn, so you need to know, ask and trust your feed mill, not the feed dealer, he sometimes does not know, or worse, does not care because of the many gifts nd perks the checkerboard people give him for pushing their inferior products!
Great video Brewers grain. Is it good for my chickens as a treat or can it be used as a source feed ? I still have oyster shell and and free range. Thank you for help
Feed them anything they will eat. I don't see why brewer's grains would not be used, it is just a "lower grade" of grains. I even take the milo (sorghum) that I feed all birds and pop it like popcorn for a treat for us.
Where would I look for this 25-50 pound bags of soy milo millet wheat? I called Tractor supply, nothing, I called Round up, nothing. Which are the feedlot stores we have here Bakersfield, Ca. Any suggestions on where to look and buy?
+ShelsStudio I have always bought 50 pound bags of these from local feed stores. Tractor Supply is NOT the place to look for anything! They are a "transitional" type of almost a farm store, but not quite. They cater to those that are trying to become farmers, but seem more like "deer in headlights" in a real feed store! Typically the employees there know nothing unless the computer tells them.... kind of like the customer support guy in Mumbai! You need to find a place with a sign that says "FEED STORE", hay bales stacked out back, or on the side and a couple beat-up pick-ups parked out front. IF it is a store that has been corrupted by "Purina", you may still have trouble finding appropriate feed though as that corporation has gifts & gimmicks that encourage owners to push their products. But many checkerboard stores still care and will help. A typical local feed store........ not a feed lot, that is something entirely different..........will have access to all these grains. Bakersfield is getting developed, but is still rural enough that there should be feed stores! I found: Torres Feed, East Hill Feed, Fred C. Gilbert (looks promising), Granite Station Saddlery & Feed and Bugni Hardware & Feed. THESE are the places to look, not a "chain store". The guys that own these independents first of all are supporting the America we all remember & love and second of all, understand livestock and will carry what you need. They may even have a layer feed made by a local, independent feed mill that will be able to take the place of corn, soy and premix. Let me know, I am happy to help decide about a local blend!!
Hey Robert, No, you don't talk too much-just right! And I myself dress for work/comfort-not to impress. Anyway, my wife and I are just starting to raise 6 chicks for eggs-they're 3 weeks old. Can you give us a bit more clarification on the pre-mix? What's in it? Where do we find it? We live in the So. Cal area outside of L.A. Thanks so much for your vids-we love 'em!
+GrantKelly Okamoto As usual, California seems to be a problem area. However, I cannot find a premix around here either. Premix is a vitamin/mineral supplement that adds to your feed mix. Usually one 32 pound bag will treat 1000 pounds of feed. Chicken's natural food comes from grazing young plants and seed (not always mature seed like in a bag) and insects. They eat pebbles and hard objects to grind the food up in their gizzard. This original diet provided all the vitamins, minerals and other nutritional requirements naturally and the many different hard things they ingested would provide minerals in the gizzard. Unless a flock is 100% free range with no winter, they will need to supplement the vitamins and minerals through a premix, as this is lost in an all-grain diet. It is a good idea anyway for adults and a must for chicks under four weeks! Look at it an a vitamin/mineral insurance policy: what they don't require, they will excrete, same as us humans take expensive vitamin supplements and turn it into "expensive urine". But in the birds case, they need it! There are many places that sell a premix. It will run close to $50 a bag. We have used the organic ABC premix. Here is the URL to them: www.abcplus.biz/abc2.aspx?Id=Poultry_All_In_One_Premix Best of luck!
+James Johnson Pre-mix is a vitamin/mineral mix that is a nutritional supplement required for birds kept in coops, houses or small yards. My mix and every commercial mix does not offer enough in the way of vitamins or minerals with only the grains, the premix is required. That is, UNLESS the birds are pastured or free range in a lush, green environment with LOTS of grass and bugs and even then, chicks to 4 weeks should be fed a balanced feed with pre-mix and the rest of the flock will need it in winter. Here is more information: www.abcplus.biz/abc2.aspx?Id=Poultry_All_In_One_Premix
Great video, informative and well done. I downloaded the information pertaining to the mix and discussed it with the local grain mill. The mill was surprised to find out I wanted to make my own mix as they explained to me the individual grains might come to the same price as their poultry mix. It turns out they were right, its the same price! That being said and unless I can find a cheaper source of grains, I'd like to increase the protein value from 16 to 20% (which if memory serves me is your suggested protein percentage). How much cracked corn should I have to add to the commercial poultry mix in a five gallon bucket? (in cups if you please sir)
Depending on the quality of the grains the mill uses, you may be equal to my mix in QUALITY, or as in the case of the chessboard people, far LESS quality and far less DIGESTIBLE protein..... remember that all the values are in crude protein and feathers & hair are crude protein that is non-digestible. That being said and assuming you have a quality mix from the feed mill, you can never add enough corn (7-9% protein) to bring the mix UP, just down. So add five cups of soy meal to the mix, as I do and that will do it for you! OR, shelled peanuts, or hulled sunflower seeds!
I can obtain a complete list of ingredients for the mix, I think I'll do that. I wonder if Bentonite (fillers) will be in the list, I know feathers and hair will not. Thanks for your time. By the way, I live in New Brunswick, in the maritimes (eastern Canada).
I use 28% up to 4 weeks, 24% up to 7 weeks and 21% until slaughter.... or for life. This keep disease at bay and make for higher yields of meat AND eggs. I have five year old hens here raised on this and they lay 4-6 jumbo eggs weekly. (when they die, they still have some eggs in their system too) As far as premix goes, follow the manufacturer's instructions on adding it, but DON'T count it as a "part" or toward protein percentage.
+Ken moody Ken, read down a few comments and I going into great detail about pre-mix and where we buy it. But when mixing your own feed for birds that do not have access to the natural world of grasses, bugs seeds, grit and soil, a premix is essential to your flock's health, as it contains the EGGxact amounts of vitamins and minerals requires for poultry!
+D Naz We lived in Branford and were able to find wheat and all the other ingredients at nearly every fee store. Central States in Lake City, the big feed store in Live Oak... forgot the name..... Branford Feed, nearly all of them. Right now, I pay $8-9.00 for 50 pounds of wheat here. It was a bit cheaper in Florida. Call all your area feed stores that DO NOT have that damn "chess board" as a logo and you will find good information and good prices. RUN LIKE HELL from any store with a cutesy girl on a computer though!
I am not sure. Although "biochar" has been around for millennia as a soil additive, I'll take a wait & see on it..... like I do with the other "fads of the moment".
We ordered our first chickens about 10 weeks ago. We have 7 RIR chickens and 15 Cornish Cross that ordered them by mistake so we had to raise them to harvest. Yesterday, we harvested 4 and they were shockingly SKINNY. We have been feeding these birds relentlessly (checkerboard crapolina medicated feed, homemade bread, soaked pinto beans chopped in a food processor w/a splas of sugar that they love, etc... So today, we were totally shocked to see how thin they were. I'm thinking of sprouting WHEAT into wheat grass with a good root mass. If we do that, how many lbs. of that per chicken do you feed and what do you add to that as a separate dry mix to make sure they are getting everything they need? Thanks for your help.
It is always hard to tell from a short explanation, but I will try. First of all, if you are going to grow birds for meat, any breed, but especially the "Frankenbirds" like Cornish Crosses, you need to feed them differently than layers or pets. Ten weeks is usually a bit soon to process for MOST backyard flocks. Twelve is better, but may not have made much difference here. Cornish Crosses, etc. (Frankenbirds) need to be confined with VERY LITTLE exercise. They literally should only walk to the feeder and the waterer and nothing else. If your birds got exercise, that made a difference. I always killed ours at 16-20 weeks, or just as soon as the first one died of "flip over", essentially a heart attack from being obese. This would give me a very tender, 10 pound finished CARCASS, at a conversion ratio of 3/1. At 10 weeks, your birds should have weighed in the 6-7 pound range "on the hoof". The breast should have looked like a very wide "V", definitely NOT a sharp defined "V".There are three possibilities for their being light. Based on what you fed them, they should have grown normally, so my first thought is that you did NOT have Cornish Crosses, but rather another breed like the Leghorn, which would have been scraggly at 10 weeks no matter the feed. My second thought was the exercise factor. These are a crop, not a pet. You pack them in an enclosure so they can't move and leave them for 8-12 weeks. Yes it is very inhumane, but that is how meat birds are grown, as a business, not a happy life. My third thought was that they lacked calcium or grit, or both. Lack of grit will cause them to not digest food. They try to digest it, using calories, but without grit, cannot, so food passes through undigested. This too would make a scrawny bird.For meat birds, start them on a medicated feed, unless you have a problem with that. At 3 weeks, switch to my mix, or supplement the protein in a commercial mix to 28%. At 6 weeks, drop the protein to 25% and keep it there until slaughter. Offer grit AND calcium carbonate (oyster shell) in separate, clean containers that they can get to free choice. NEVER mix either in the feed.If you are vigilant and keep the growing area clean, CLEAN, then try sprouting seeds if you wish. I am not a fan of that, but I am busier than most.On your last question, feed enough dry feed..... my mix or a commercial one.....so that the flock is being offered ALL the feed they need there. THEN offer or treat them with things like bread or beans....... but always make sure they have enough of the "normal" feed to thrive. Also, all this applies just to meat birds, layers are a different discussion!
Thanks for the reply. We have them in a chicken tractor and move it every 2 to 3 days to fresh ground and they peck relentlessly on the fresh bugs/grass. I do occasionally feed them chicken shells for calcium, but have not fed grit. I'll go and get some today at the feed store. Would they have pecked "grit" on the fresh ground? I was so disappointed w/their skinny bodies. We have 10 left. Also, if I kept on of the hens, and kept her on the thin side so she lives, would she lay eggs w/a rooster? Thanks.
Also, what are your thoughts on the MORINGA for CHICKEN FEED? And if one has access to plenty of it, how much would you provide per bird? We going to plant these super tress around the perimeter of the property.
I think the tractor is the issue. Attach two feeders to it and put grit in one and calcium... oyster shell, in the other. Every time we have tried to keep a Cornish Cross/Roaster, it dies before 20 weeks from flip over. This is genetic and there is nothing you can do. If one survives, it is just an anomaly, they are too big for their heart & lungs. A rooster has no control over whether or not a hen lays eggs. He just fertilizes them, crows and struts like a "gangsta", but does nothing to stimulate egg production.
I do not know how much Moringa to feed chickens in a controlled manner. No one is really doing it so it is hit and miss until we find a formula. This year, I did not water ours enough and don't have enough leaves to spare to feed the birds so my hands-on research will have to wait until next May. I know I would try to feed chickens Moringa from the beginning so they get a taste for it. Our adults don't like the fresh leaves, so I have to dry them before they will eat them and then hide it in their regular feed.
+Ahmon Watkins It is just vitamins and minerals that the birds need and may be absent in an all grain feed like my mix.. Here is a link to the place we buy ours from and it will tell you what you need to know: www.abcplus.biz/categories17.aspx?Id=Poultry_All_In_One_Premix
I cannot tell what else is in it other than the one amino acid! Poultry needs vitamins and minerals added to the grains. I m not sure this product has that.
+Sitdown BeQuiet I always forget peanuts!!!! When we lived in north Florida, it was a big peanut growing area. I could never get a good price on them though, so I seldom used them as more than a treat. Peanuts would be an excellent "grain" to add, but you would need to get the approximate protein value of them in the shell in order to calculate you protein content. I would probably NOT feed them to chicks under 4 weeks of age though, as the shell has little nutrition value and they may eat too much shell, being rather dumb birds! STILL add the vitamin/mineral premix. It is a heartache for you if young chicks lack these things in their early diet!
+eco-ranch.us Also, feeding them in the shell, whole, to birds as forage or scratch is not a bad idea. It gives the birds something to do, pecking the shells open and the few that they miss that sprout, will provide greens for the birds and even nuts if they are left alone! Great comment!! Thank you!!
We have two cats that go out every night. They take care of many of the mice. We don't have rats like you have there, just "kangaroo rats" and they stay away. We do get mice from time to time, mainly Fall through the Winter. I have to set traps. I keep the feed in a galvanized trash barrel with a tight fitting lid. The masonry feed bin I built would have allowed some mice to get into it, but we really do not have enough birds anymore to use the feed bin, so no mice get in the barrels. We had a one ton feed bin in Florida when we had over 400 birds, mice would get into that, but since the sun heated it during the day, even in Winter, we had a (or several that took turns) LARGE Rat Snake that would get in there every night. HE kept the mice and rat away!
Near the end, you said not to leave out "pre-mix" for chicks. What is that? Is it part of the check feed mix you described? Is it something else? Should we include "premix" in the chick-mix formula?
Alright, I found your reply to the same query below. We must add premix to your formula. (Still, though, what is it? Can we make it? Or is it a secret?)
Read the ingredients in the premix and the description here: www.abcplus.biz/categories17.aspx?Id=Poultry_All_In_One_Premix This is the one we use, however, ANY poultry premix is fine to use!
So it is ok for my babies to have calcium carbonate ? I keep hearing not until 5 weeks old ? I just got a grit and gravel that contains granit and 0.10 calcium is this ok to give a small amount or as much as they want ? mine are 2 weeks old now and I just added a small amount.
I have never heard of NOT offering calcium carbonate to young ones....... that doesn't mean it is right or wrong, just that I have not heard of it. That advice may be due to the size of the chunks, tiny ones cannot swallow anything too big. We have always started our chicks on a commercial, non-medicated starter for about four weeks. These, as you said, have the calcium added. When we switch to our feed, we provide oyster shell, but I grind it in the commercial blender and put it in a separate feeder. I offer grit in the same way, ground and in a separate feeder. Nature has given them genetic memory that tells them when to eat both!
I don't know how I missed this comment! Sorry for the delay! My free-range chickens really do not like fresh Moringa, unless it is very young. If raised feeding it to them, they will readily eat fresh though. If you dry the leaves partially or all the way and mix it with the feed, the birds will eat it. So do what suits you best!
Can you add MORINGA to your CHICKEN FEED? And if so, how much and how would you adjust your recipe? We just purchased 100 acres in Poplarville, MS. So we have some room to plant a lot of these trees. Thanks.
Plant a lot of them! Plan on harvesting for powder in the Fall and eat some every day yourself! There are lots of RUclips videos on how to do it and watching them will get you very excited to grow them! I eat about 1/2 cup of leaves or new shoots every day!
Do you feed the leaves fresh to the chickens? Dosage for powder application? What about the branches as perches? Tree canopy provides heat coverage for coop. Mulberry bush feed recommendations?
thx for ur vid i like to know if soy has to be washed before grinding it or it cud be done without it am asking this becoz of the shell and digestion also can i get best results in 45 days in broilers thx
I buy the soy already roasted and ground, so I cannot answer your question, sorry. Remember that there are good alternatives to soy, if they are not too expensive. These are: shelled peanuts (raw is fine), black-eyed peas, cowpeas, hulled sunflower seed, fish meal and of course, Moringa leaves and powder. I don't seem to get the super-fast growth with my broilers. I keep the protein for these at 25% and could have a five pound carcass at eight weeks. When I use Cornish Crosses though.... and these are for our own consumption, not for sale...... I wait until the first one dies of "flip-over" at 9-12 pounds (16-20 weeks) then process every bird THAT DAY. Here is MY reasoning and it applies across the board. Bones will grow first and fast. A six week old bird may be (just for comparison, not accurate) 20% bones, while my 10 pound, 16 week bird may be just 15% bones. That is 5% more meat per pound of body weight (about) for 15-18 pounds of feed (about $3.50). Or, one half pound of extra meat AND one and a half pounds of bones/organs for cooking into broth, as well as the remaining (cooked) bones, organs & bits of meat (about a pound) that is safe to feed back to your flock, ground or as is. 1/2 pound of extra meat @ $3.50 per pound....... an extra 1/2 gallon of broth @ $1.50 a pint..... a pound of "free" feed at $.25 per pound all equals a net gain to you of $8.00, for a $3.75, 10 week investment. Not super profitable for a business, but for filling your refrigerator, very nice. The biggest gain is that one breast now feeds TWO, a leg is a meal, as is a thigh and so on. This has worked for us for 16 years now.
eco-ranch.us i have access to soy but its raw commercial feed here in India is a bit costly so iam looking to make my own mix iam planning a 1000 bird shed thx for ur.reply
No. I have said several times that mine grow slower. This has to do with the lack of additions in our WATER. Let me explain: when I worked in the commercial chicken (egg) business, we fed our birds a straight mix of ground corn and ground soy, at around 20% protein. This is comparable to my own mix, which each of you can customize to what grains are inexpensive in your region. HOWEVER, in the commercial birds' water supply, the agri-business I worked for added antibiotics and steroids to increase growth rates and egg production. Our commercial hens, which were a patented hybrid breed, laid one egg every 16 hours. There was a BIG commotion at the farms when I actually captured and took home one of these ROOSTERS, that had gotten mixed in with the hens...... I would deliver up to 50,000 pullets at a time, so there as always a couple of late blooming roosters in there. Mine had escaped the house and I caught him outside. The farm was livid that I had one of these roosters! But he never got a chance to breed as we got a bobcat that ate 51 birds before I killed it. One of the last, was that rooster, trying to protect "his" flock.
I'm a bit confused on the pre mix, I didn't see you add the pre mix to any of the feeds you made. When do I give the chicks or chickens the premix? Thanks
NO!!!!! The bag of premix will have mixing directions on it. AFTER you mix my grains, add the premix. EXAMPLE: the premix says one bag treats 500 pounds. You have mixed 250 pounds of my grains (corn, soy, millet, milo, wheat). So you now add a half bag of premix. Follow the mixing directions on the premix and treat all the grains at the end.
I was wondering if you have a specific diet for roosters that are kept as "pets" but have their own breeding harems. I don't care about the cost of the ingredients. I want to keep them in tip-top shape. Since I live in a suburban neighborhood the boys are kept inside in large dog crates until 9 or 10 am, so they are eating a mix I make from grains, seeds, whole corn, oats, legumes and dried fruits, some fresh fruit, meal worms. This is what they eat while they are inside. I was also wondering about those "vitamins" like "Rooster Booster" and other additives I see at the feed store. Which grains or seeds are most important for a healthy working rooster? Do roosters need more or less protein than a layer? Once they are let outdoors they get to work foraging for their harems and chicks with full crops. I've always thought layer mash was not good for roosters cause of the high calcium content. (Like the checkerboard processed layer mash that has calcium added.)
My diet seems to work fine for our roosters.... some of which are pets! However, when you are keeping them as pets or "yard ornaments", it is really about what makes YOU happy. I don't use additives, beyond the vitamin/mineral pre-mix. My flocks gets all they need from their diet and foraging. Thanks!
Thank you for the quick reply! You stated to let a part be by weight and not volume but when you're mixing you use volume in your cheese container and SS bucket. Are the grains you use the same weight and if you substitute rolled oats in the chick feed do they have to be ground. Very helpful video! Thank you for the time you take to share.
Rolled oats do not need to be ground and I prefer rolled oats! I mix according to volume, as many grains are different weights. It is not exact, but close enough to work well world-wide!
+Cdngardengirl As you mix the grains, you should add the premix to it. That way it is mixed throughout the batch evenly. Don't bother to count the premix as any "part", just add it extra. Then just feed the birds as you always have and they will get the required nutrition. The mix as I showed it, is 19.3% protein. This is fine for layers, broilers & adult waterfowl, even layers. But chicks up to 4 weeks need about 28% protein, so you have to increase the soy level.
When will you be doing a video on feeding chicken fodder? I'm seeing a lot of videos where people are feeding their chickens wheat or barley fodder almost exclusively along with providing the Oyster shells. Many of these chickens are only eating 10%-20% of grain mixtures, if any at all. Is this safe for chickens since there is little or no premix vitamins and minerals in their diet?
+speechgirl36 Here in Terlingua, our main store sold "chicken scratch" as "chicken food". The employees did not even know they were not selling a proper diet! Only recently did the store finally begin to sell a more balanced, if cheaply made, "layer feed". Area flocks survived, but several people marveled at the fact that our birds laid eggs all winter with no appreciable decline. So poultry can be "starved" and still produce eggs and marginal meat. However, the lack of premix, or vitamins & minerals will catch up to the flock owner in reduced egg production, poorer quality eggs, bone development issues, lack of fertility and chick mortality. There are vitamins & minerals in fodder. However, if the ground the flock lives on has minerals, or the birds range outdoors, they will in most cases get enough vitamins & minerals to be healthy. Problems arise with coop-bound birds, or birds in areas like this desert, where there may well be a shortage of minerals in the soil AND little greenery with vitamins. Grains should always be available, as this provides a balanced, varied diet! Look at pre-mix as n inexpensive insurance policy for healthy development! I would say that if a flock owner raises live chicks to maturity with less than a 5% mortality rate, the diet is safe. Anything over 5%, even 6% is too much and there is a problem. Poor leg development will be one indicator, but also, healthy chicks dying for no apparent reason is a HUGE indicator. Rather than wait for expensive, cute chicks to die or have to crawl around, it is best to add a premix. It is NOT very expensive at all! I won't do a fodder video until I have a facility to grow fodder in: our greenhouse. However, I am a HUGE believer in fodder and/or pasturing chickens! This is how they evolved and this is what they need! As I have repeatedly said as well, maggot traps, mealworm farms and soldier fly larvae farms are excellent and should be part of EVERY flock owner's feeding regime! We had some of the healthiest poultry I have ever seen, when we lived in north Florida. But our birds free-ranged and ate HUGE amounts of insects ( we lived in a hardwood swamp) and had over 15 acres of Pensacola Bahia grass to graze on, in addition to my grain feed mix. In addition to oyster shell or other calcium carbonate, a real grit like granite or ground limestone (which is calcium carbonate, but yours may not be what poultry needs) MUST be available to the birds. The better they can grind up their food, the less PURCHASED food they require. In fact, we fed a 100% ground diet to the birds in the commercial houses, mainly because the finer the grind, the less energy is required to process the feed. Same goes for every flock of every size, the finer you can grind the feed the better it is digested! Investing in a grist mill ($00 and up) is one of the best investments you can make for your flock! I hope this helps!!!!chgirl36 Chickens are, as yet another documentary I saw today re-stated, the closest living thing to the "T"-Rex. Any creature that survived for over 70 millions years (albeit evolving), can survive on far less than it needs. This is why chicken has become the most popular protein source on the planet, even surpassing fish. In the commercial businesses, as well as poverty level villages, chickens are fed the barest minimum to keep them laying eggs and growing. These chicken, if they were humans, would be the poultry equivalent of the "starving Ethiopians" we were shown through the 1980's. Alive and able to reproduce, but not healthy. Here in Terlingua, our main store sold "chicken scratch" as "chicken food". The employees did not even know they were not selling a proper diet! Only recently did the store finally begin to sell a more balanced, if cheaply made, "layer feed". Area flocks survived, but several people marveled at the fact that our birds laid eggs all winter with no appreciable decline. So poultry can be "starved" and still produce eggs and marginal meat. However, the lack of premix, or vitamins & minerals will catch up to the flock owner in reduced egg production, poorer quality eggs, bone development issues, lack of fertility and chick mortality. There are vitamins & minerals in fodder. However, if the ground the flock lives on has minerals, or the birds range outdoors, they will in most cases get enough vitamins & minerals to be healthy. Problems arise with coop-bound birds, or birds in areas like this desert, where there may well be a shortage of minerals in the soil AND little greenery with vitamins. Grains should always be available, as this provides a balanced, varied diet! Look at pre-mix as n inexpensive insurance policy for healthy development! I would say that if a flock owner raises live chicks to maturity with less than a 5% mortality rate, the diet is safe. Anything over 5%, even 6% is too much and there is a problem. Poor leg development will be one indicator, but also, healthy chicks dying for no apparent reason is a HUGE indicator. Rather than wait for expensive, cute chicks to die or have to crawl around, it is best to add a premix. It is NOT very expensive at all! I won't do a fodder video until I have a facility to grow fodder in: our greenhouse. However, I am a HUGE believer in fodder and/or pasturing chickens! This is how they evolved and this is what they need! As I have repeatedly said as well, maggot traps, mealworm farms and soldier fly larvae farms are excellent and should be part of EVERY flock owner's feeding regime! We had some of the healthiest poultry I have ever seen, when we lived in north Florida. But our birds free-ranged and ate HUGE amounts of insects ( we lived in a hardwood swamp) and had over 15 acres of Pensacola Bahia grass to graze on, in addition to my grain feed mix. In addition to oyster shell or other calcium carbonate, a real grit like granite or ground limestone (which is calcium carbonate, but yours may not be what poultry needs) MUST be available to the birds. The better they can grind up their food, the less PURCHASED food they require. In fact, we fed a 100% ground diet to the birds in the commercial houses, mainly because the finer the grind, the less energy is required to process the feed. Same goes for every flock of every size, the finer you can grind the feed the better it is digested! Investing in a grist mill ($400 and up) is one of the best investments you can make for your flock! I hope this helps!!!!
+eco-ranch.us Thank you for that clarification. I'm new to owning chickens (10 beautiful little ladies!) and while I'm letting my 10 week old chicks roam my small back yard which I seeded with rye grass for the winter, I'm going to be turning most of the area into a vegetable garden this spring. I live in Texas as well, but I'm just north of Dallas so I don't have desert conditions. I've been feeding them chick crumbles but a few days ago I bought everything for your feeding system, except the premix. I forgot about it! So I'm going back tomorrow to see if any of my local agmarts carry it. If not I will order it from ABC. Does the type of sprout make a difference? I was thinking of doing 90% wheat and 10% black oiled sunflower seeds. How many pounds a day is healthy for 10 chickens to eat?
+speechgirl36 Wheat is good. I am having trouble with the wheat we get here, failing to sprout. Milo is a better choice and should be less expensive to buy.. If milo grows to maturity..... it loves this climate for some reason.... all the birds, wild & domestic, will love eating it! Sunflowers are excellent, but again, in a sprouter they don't do well. Sunflowers are fantastic if grown in soil and cut at 3-4" and fed to the flock. Another way is to have a small raised planter that you grow the sunflowers in. keep the soil about s" below the top and build a chicken wire cover for the top. The chickens cannot get in to scratch the seeds and soil out and cannot reach the sprouts until they are big enough to be nutritious. Ten adult birds should eat about 1-2 pounds a day, less if foraging. You should shop for feed every month (or more) but always keep enough feed to last 2 weeks longer than that, say six weeks of feed. That way if your supplier honestly runs out, you are not put in a bind because you still have two weeks left of feed.
You can mix oyster shell into the feed, but it is never recommended unless finely ground for very young chicks. It is best to offer oyster shell, or any other calcium carbonate in a separate feeder where the birds can eat it as they wish..... and they DO!
If you use my recipe, you MUST add a premix. Do a search to find one and add it to the total weight of the entire feed, per manufacturer's instructions.
Food supplies are getting less reliable because of floods, fires, droughts and covid. If you can't find it at the feed store, try searching Google for "whole grains in bulk." I found: www.ifsbulk.com/ Among a host of others, including Amazon, which I personally try to avoid as much as possible, even during covid.
I love the mix of your but my question is I'm still playing around with the mix. hens are laying which is good thing but I'm seeing a lot of waste, we feed everyday is that to much? how much does chicken eat a day I'm being told about 4oz a day ? second question trying mixes 100lbs at time how much of each grain? I'm mixing about 25lbs at time roughly about 6.25lbs of each grain and coming up with about 22%protein would that be correct.
Since we have always been a small (up to 300 birds) operation, I really do not know how much feed they eat daily. Our flocks have always free ranged, eating greens and insects as well as their feed. 4-6 ounces sounds close, but the caveat would be what else do they also eat? I know that we do not feed more feed than they can eat in a day. If there is waste, it lays on the ground until they eat it. THEN, we give them more.With about 120 chickens and 80-90 ducks, we go through 5-600 pounds of feed a month....... but there are so many wild birds eating it too, so I cannot be accurate.20-22% protein is where I recommend you go. This way your hens are healthy and laying well for YEARS and they all have resistance to disease.Best of luck!
eco-ranch.us thank u sir we have around 200 plus birds. I'm trying to make sure I'm mixing the feed right so they have the correct protien. So to do the mixes how would u mixes 50lbs at time? sorry for all the question but I'm getting hang up with it. because I'm using equal amount by weight of all 4 grains.
I do my mixing by hand, so I actually do 10 pounds of each at a time. If we had more birds, I might use the cement mixer, but this works and I only do it once a month! Try to stay about 20% on the protein. With that many birds, the extra 2% of soy can add up in cost monthly. Questions are how we learn! Stephen Hawking did not come out of the womb understanding the origins of this universe!
YES! Shelled peanuts, black-eyed peas, cow peas, shelled sunflower seed, Moringa, and almost any legume can substitute. I used soy in the video because it is the easiest to obtain here in the USA. But if anyone has issues with soy, use any of these others.
Hey my name Thomas locate in SC.So i found hog feed that is real find at 16 percent protein 50lbs bag can I use that and what to add it to bring up the protein levels?
Thomas, I think since you are out there in "hog country", you may have a hog feed like we used in north Florida. Ours was 18% (they sold 14,16 & 18%, but it all was the 18% as it was too expensive to mill it separately). This feed, which was ground corn & soy, with a premix added was our actual base for my mix. To it, we added to other ingredients to get the mix I show in my videos.To raise the protein, you can use ground soy, as we did, or depending on cost related to soy or personal preference: shelled peanuts, hulled sunflower seed, ground black-eyed peas, cow peas, lentils (if you have access to these fresh, that can be fed without grinding, but be conscious of the mold risk from the moisture). Fish meal & blood meal too, but here are cost prohibitive. Moringa, if you chose to grow it is a great addition, but needs to dry a few days and be mixed with the feed. Moringa actually in your climate is a fantastic resource for 45% vegetable protein that has virtually no cost to grow.Then of course there is: fish guts (from a neighbors catfish pond), "rough fish", shrimp heads, meal worms, soldier fly larvae & maggots. You feed these separately and remove , washing the containers daily. These daily leftovers can feed the maggot traps too (90%) protein). These alternatives can be fed "as available", same with culled fruits and vegetables. In north Florida, there were a LOT of commercial watermelon farms. In watermelon season, we bought "culls", the imperfect fruits the stores did not want, for $25 a pallet box. I would smash some every day in a corner of the poultry yard and the birds would eat this. I never picked up the rinds, so flies and bugs would lay eggs in them and create high protein larvae for about 3 weeks after the season ended. This can work for any fruit or vegetable.Since we live close to the "Pecos melon" growing area, I asked about "culls" at the farms there, but never seemed to run into someone who spoke English, unless I wanted to buy a melon at full retail.
eco-ranch.us Thank u sir love videos but I have other question for u with your mix can I use oath instead of wheat? I think that have around the same protein levels. also I using this scale to to determine the protein for each grain is this correct? for example. corn lbs 6.25 x protein of corn 7 decimal in front so .7 equals the amount of protein in the weight of the grain?
You can use oats, but use crimped oats, not whole oats, too much fiber. Just take the percent of protein off the nutritional label and go by the weight.
Thank you for your video. I really appreciated it. I was doing some research to substitute the soy in chicken feed. Any thoughts that you may have on acceptable alternative high protein sources?
I REALLY NEED TO DO ANOTHER FEED VIDEO!!!! From early last year, I was contacted by prospective and current poultry farmers in SE Asia, Africa & the Middle East, INCLUDING Syria and the Carribean. I did tons of research and actually tried many different forms of protein substitutes and came up with some great alternatives.Firstly, in 17 years of research, I must add that I found NO mainstream proof that GM foods, be they grains, legumes or animals are harmful to humans. LOTS from people like that twerp from INFOWARS, but nothing mainstream! But for those who still don't like soy for the GMO or other more valid reasons though, I have a LOT of chioces now!If you want to do the work, maggot traps are great (they stink, so place them away from your home). They provide 90% protien food for your flock AND great fly control! Also, when a chicken just dies, as they will, or if you process any birds, or have a surplus of eggs, stick all that in the maggot trap as maggot food). You can start a meal worm, soldier fly or other insect farm. Same very high protein. Choose the bug you "like" best there!A "chicken salad bowl" works fine too and can be any size you want. They just need to have a sturdy top on them (ruclips.net/video/S0ITiGx4jos/видео.html). Moringa trees are great, but not really that good in the frost belt.Moringa leaves are 45% vegetable protien. Chickens have to be trained from "chickhood" to eat them though, adults that are offered them don't much like the taste. Dry the leaves a couple days though and mix with the feed and they will eat them.As far a more mainstream alternatives go, chose the least expensive in YOUR area from these: shelled raw peanuts (best), black-eyed peas, cowpeas, pigion peas, shelled sunflower seed (second best), bloodmeal, fishmeal, vermiculture, fish guts (these will rot, uneaten portions must be removed daily) and fish (run whole through a grinder, removed daily to the maggot trap). There is a lot more too.I like Moringa best, if you can grow it, or grow enough to save dried leaves over Winter. This is a "miracle feed" for livestock AND humans! We eat a large portion each, every day!I hope this helps some and do watch fro a follow-up video discussing all this. Incidentally and probably MORE important: raising protein levels in chckens in a Cambodian flock, from the "normal" 12-14%, up to 20% reduced that flock's mortality from HPAI (bitd flu) from over 90% to less than 15%. PROTEIN is the key to raising healthy flocks. I do not know why it is not discussed more!
Oats are great! I left them out because I prefer rolled oats and out here they are over $26 for 50 pounds. I am going to do anther feed video with alternatives to the grains in this video that will satisfy those who don't want to use GM grains or corn. But it will be at least a week before I produce it.
so to get the recipe straight for adult chickens. one part corn, 2 parts soy, one part milo, one part wheat. on top of that you feed them pre mix in a separate container. Do you need to feed grit or oyster shells with this recipe. Thanks, cheers
+Joshua Smith Hi! Thanks for the comment! You need to mix the premix directly into the feed, but do not adjust the ratios, just add to the feed by weight. If you feed it separately, they may not eat it!!! Grit depends on your environment. If the birds go outside and you have enough gravel, small stones or limestone around, grit is unnecessary. Personally, we provide calcium carbonate in the form of oyster shell. There are three types of calcium carbonate, one is not acceptable and I cannot remember which it is. We do put the oyster shell in separate containers, but you can also toss it on the floor or just outside the pen. For young chicks, I grind it up. Chickens can use oyster shell as grit. Too much oyster shell can cause impaction issues. However, we have NEVER had any issues with it. I think so long as you have enough water available, all the time, any excess vitamins and minerals are just excreted by the birds, just like we humans do with about 95% of the "vitamins" we take, with no problems, except a lighter wallet!!
eco-ranch.us Thanks for the info. How do I know how much weight of pre mix to add? Subscribed to your channel and look forward hanging out. Cheers from the chilly north, Ontario, Canada.
+Joshua Smith Pre-mix is added by weight.... the weight of the feed. In other words, say you mixed 400 pounds of feed. The directions would say that one bag mixes with 1000 pounds of feed, so to your 400 pounds, you add 2/5 of the bag of premix and mix it in completely. By the way, being from the Detroit area originally, I travelled all through northern Ontario, even worked there for a time. My favorite fishing spot is Rocky Island Lake, about 80 miles north of Thessalon. I worked for a mining company out of Sudbury for a while. It was a developmental mining company and my mine was north of Pickle Lake, about 300 miles due north of International Falls, MN. Spent quite a bit of time in the Menako Lakes close to the mine. In 1970, I spent my entire summer vacation canoeing down the Albany River to Moosenee. Went back in 1971 and went down the Winisk River to Hudson Bay and back to Moosenee. THAT was the most difficult trip I ever took, through Polar Bear Pr. Park and 400 miles of salt flats to Moosenee. Come visit here anytime!
eco-ranch.us Thanks, awesome that you have been to Ontario. What an extreme difference to Texas. Woke up this morn to -17C with a wind chill feeling like -26C Gotta love it! Is there an alternative to using the soy meal? Do I need to worry about using soy meal? I have heard it isn't as good to consume as they first thought. Cheers!
+Joshua Smith Technology today can find toxicity in nearly anything. There is a lot written about soy being "bad". One has to wonder if much of that is due to the fact that agribusiness has complete control over the legume and our reaction to THAT is why soy is suddenly so "bad". My research does not show it to be bad for us, despite "studies". Remember that 3% of scientists think there is no such thing as man-made climate change too (interestingly, there has NEVER been a 97% consensus among scientists about ANYTHING before). Fish meal can be substituted, as can raw fish guts is you are near a fish processing plant (never let that spoil though). I just saw where some American company is processing insects like meal worms into a dried product like flour. Certainly this would be my choice over soy, but it is not widely available. Don't worry about soy! Cigarette smoke, high fructose corn syrup, MSG, lack of fiber; antibiotics, steroids, & hormones in meats; stress, urban air quality and more all rank higher than soy in the danger factor to us!
2parts corn, 3parts soy and 1part millet, gives 28%cp. But you said 28% is not good for chicks. So whats the right mix for chicks from day old to 4 weeks old?
I don't know why I would say that! 28%, 0-4 weeks, 24%, 5-8 weeks and 20-22% for life. My "life" mix is 20.7% right now. This keeps them healthy and ever resistant to "bird flu", HPAI
Do you have a secret dog food mix? I have 2 pits; 1 of which is severly allergic to pork and most mainstream dog foods have some amount of pork byproduct. Both dogs are around 80 pounds.
I really do not have a dog food recipe. I do mix mine the offal of what ever I am processing, be it pig, sheep, or poultry. I grind this with rice for a food base for them. But I have nothing that will work long term.
RAW food diet, look it up. Meat, fat, and bones. No carbs. My personal pit food is 10 pounds ground beef, ground egg shells, 10% chicken livers or other organ meat from what ever animal, a can if cooked spinach, and 2 cans of Makerel fish. Mix it all up by hand and make a softball size meat ball and feed twice a day. I also give them chicken leg quarters bone in. Dogs can eat and process raw chicken bones, NOT COOKED bones. feel free to contact me for more info
Thanks for sharing this great info... I am stumped on why you need the pre-mix. I have looked over the ingredients of it and besides the lactobacillus and kelp meal, it's just vitamins. The same vitamins you're getting from the whole grains you are using as the feed rather then the processed stuff used by the "chess board" people. If you were to add some kelp meal (which is in the pre-mix, but available at some feed stores) and supplement with some homemade yogurt or kefir (dairy or water) you should be fine... Or am I missing something?
+Chris Edward You are accurate. I find that most of us that are raising chickens are also doing other things, like running the rest of the farm and don't have time to monitor a dairy product's health in the feeder. It is easier to buy the premix, which cannot spoil on a warm day and add it to the feed. Also, much of the USA has enough grasses growing, bugs and diverse soil with minerals and a premix is like insurance, rather than a requirement. But again, it is difficult to determine if your conditions are correct enough, so the premix insurance is a smart idea. Living here in the desert, our soil is fairly sterile in many places, little grass grows and the bugs are sparse as well..... though the damn flies are everywhere here too! Our first batch of chicks raised on this, the SAME mix we used in north Florida for years, suffered from development issues, particularly leg problems from the lack of vitamins like "D". From day old to 3-4 weeks, most chicks are in a brooder or a corner a building and out of the sun, so they are not absorbing vitamin D. But if you have the time, extra cash and desire to add yogurts, kelp and other things, it is always best to do so! Your flock will thrive!
+eco-ranch.us Good points about the Vitamin D!!! The neat thing about kefir is that you can let it sit on a shelf and sort of forget about it for a couple days. IT can be done in water too, so you don't have to use milk. The kefir cultures keep the milk from spoiling. I live where it gets to over 100 degrees in the summer and I just chuck it in the fridge for part of the day, it just takes a second. The birds love it!!! They really seem to like bitter stuff and it's full of active cultures and vitamins and stuff.. Forgive me for sounding like an infomercial, that's not my intention,,,, I just figured there was a way around the pre-mix, which sort of makes you at yet one more feed companies mercy... The point of making your own feed is to know everything that goes into it, right? Speaking of which, have you ever looked into growing protein rich plants like duckweed or azolla? I just got some azolla (this afternoon actually) from J&J aquafarms in California and I am eager to try it out once it begins to grow. Speaking of bugs... There are two protein rich bugs, mealworms and dubia roaches (they don't climb and love the heat) that are super easy to raise off of kitchen scraps. They literally don't cost anything to raise once you have made the initial investment and the chickens can't seem to get enough of them... The cost of dubia roaches has really come down in recent years and mealworms should be able to be purchased locally... When I clean out the dubia bin, I will feed the chickens the "extras" and afterwards the chickens will come to the back door and make a lot of noise, begging for more.... The dubia's especially breed like crazy in the heat (they just need a little humidity which a piece of carrot takes care of and they eat it as well). They do slow down in the winter unless you supplement them with heat, but it isn't necessary. It just takes them a little while to get their numbers back up once it warms up and they start breeding again. The same goes with the mealworms. The only drawback with the mealworms is that they go through stages, from larvae to pupa, to beetle, all of which don't climb or fly. The chickens only seem to like the larvae. The bins do have a slight smell (it's not bad, it's unique) but honestly you have to stick your nose in them to notice and the mealworms or dubias don't make any noticeable noise. Sorry to write a novel but I love this topic!!! They say it's best to give your animals a varied diet and variety is the spice of life!!! Thanks again for posting the videos. Take care, Chris
+Chris Edward I make the mistake of letting people think that we are anti-society & civilization. Yes, overpopulation is THE biggest problem in the world, but we cannot speak to it without cries of racism since the developing world is primarily not "European white". What we are actually doing here is showing how, with some ingenuity and small sacrifices of "stuff" (which we really do not need anyway), we "New Homesteaders" can led the way into a world that we can groom to sustain the nine billion multi-colored inhabitants I will see here before I die. That being said, we are NOT anti feed stores, or any company that provides us with things we need. We are anti-MONOPOLIES, like "Urina" (chessboard people), WalMart, Cargill, Monsanto, Exxon/Mobil, BP and so on. The pre-mix I recommend, comes from a small, organic company that specializes in a few high quality products. They, and the small regional feed mills I deal with, do not have "contracts" and "contests" with independent feed stores that either force or lead the small guy struggling to make a living, into carrying the high cost, low nutrition crap the monopolies are constantly trying to tweak a few extra pennies out of every bag. The feed mill we now get our "layer feed" from....... the corn & soy portion of our mix, gives us the entire kernel of corn ground into their mix. They don't strip away 15-50% of the corn germ for other products, leaving chickens with the same 16-18% CRUDE protein, but less USABLE protein. THIS and the higher cost of the "name brand", are my major objections to the chessboard and others! Incidentally, the really inexpensive brands of poultry, dog, cat and other feeds do the same, but even worse! That word "crude" in front of "protein" can be VERY misleading and many dogs & cats are eating non-digestible chicken feathers and steer hair as 50% of the 25% of the "crude protein" in the super-cheap feeds!!! So if you are able to provide adequate vitamins & minerals without a premix, great! But if not, just choose your supplier carefully and always support the little guys who are in this to provide a superior product AND make a living, not eliminate the competition and set lower & lower standards. Everything that you addressed in your comment, is geared toward the small to medium flock owner, same as my information. I trained at a large operation and brought that knowledge to the smaller flock holders. So what you and I say is great for our "target audience", the Tyson's out there cannot "afford" to use our methods. I try to avoid "fad feeds". I feel fermented feed is a fad, so I don't like to discuss it. However, sprouted grains, fodder, all types of insect farming, pasturing and so on are fantastic in my opinion! One new thing..... new to me that is....... that we are going to try here, is the moringa oleifera tree. We will use it as a fodder for the birds and try some ourselves. We should always be open to trying new things, just use our brains to determine whether it is an unnecessary fad or not! We have a huge, working meal worm farm and feed our young birds from it. I am going to hang a couple of "maggot traps" in the chicken yard in the next few days as well. This seems to be both a great source of protein AND fly control for the farm. I am also constructing "chicken salad bowls", since we live in the desert and do not have grasses and sprouts for the flock to forage from. I think these "bowls" are a great, simple & inexpensive way to provide fresh greens. Writing a "novel" here is welcome, particularly when the information is good and accurate, please stay in touch!
+DL Spamalot The feed mill is Angelo Pellets. I am using their layer pellets, which I just have to add some ground soy to so that the protein level is where I want it. Everything else about this feed is what I would do if I made it. We raised chickens and guineas together for over 12 years and never had any problems with them getting along. Guineas act differently than chickens do and we had some issues with that, but they lived, brooded and fed in the same coops for years. I would love to have them here, but I am concerned that they way they range, we may lose most of them to predators.
+eco-ranch.us Thank you for the info. I need to run over there soon to get the layer pellets. Do they have the soy too? I only have 2 young guineas and getting ready to intergrate them into the pen in about a week. I have a pen in the pen for them lol.
+DL Spamalot They do not sell ground soy/soy meal. Call other feed stores, since these guys are a feed mill and don't do a lot of different things. Cut one guinea wing feather if you want, it will keep them from trying to fly until they grow back and by then, the pen will be imprinted as home!
+DL Spamalot Yes, it matters. In one video I show the exact place and how to cut the feathers. I think it was the "chicken moving day" one. But you are cutting the main flight feathers from the tip, down the where the second layer of feathers start, about 1/2-2/3 toward the body.
What's PREMIX? I am confused about that. I am sure I can make the chicken feed but just can't understand what you mean by PREMIX. I am not yelling I just want someone to see my question. Thank you all.
PREMIX is a separate vitamin/mineral that must be added to MY recipe. I initially forgot to mention it, but without it (or live insects & greens year around), the recipe is NOT complete.
+dc0145a There is no reason you cannot substitute, however you MUST reach that 20% protein threshold! You can do that by using fishmeal, bloodmeal, dried seaweed, mealworms and more, but you need to hit that 20% and be able to go to 28% if you raise chicks! Do not forget the premix either! I am experimenting right now with "drippings" from a barbeque restaurant. NOT spent oil, meat drippings. So far the flock goes nuts when they see me mixing it with their grains and have eaten every bit of it. I am not sure of the protein content, so it is a supplement, but since I get it at no cost, it may be a good supplement.
+Loren Bonds Treat the premix as something else, added AFTER you have mixed the feed. It is such a small amount that you need not count it in your mixture...... like salting food on your plate. When mixing the feed, you know how much it weighs (each bag is 50 pounds). Premix is added at the rate of one (32.5 pound) bag per 1000 pounds of feed. So for your mix, if each part is one, 50 pound bag (or 300 pounds TOTAL), you would add about 9.75 pounds of premix to the entire batch. (the amount is too small to count as a "part", so just add it as an extra thing)
Yes! After you mix the feed you add the premix. So if there is 500 pounds of total feed, you add the amount of premix the instructions say to add to 500 pounds.
Fantastic, comprehensive video! I made your mix and am having what I think is a problem. First Off the chickens love it! Egg production has doubled! The issue: when the feed is in the feeder the soy settles to the bitten of the feeder and eventually won't allow the other grains to fall into the tray. I don't think it's a matter of the chickens not liking the soy but it being finer than the other grains. Solutions? Thx bunches for your time and knowledge!
The only solution to this, is to grind the other grains. Without a grain mill, this is virtually impossible though. I find they do eat the feed, It can be an issue to use some feeders.
Thank you. Do you have a specific feeder that works best for the feed mix? Do you think it would be a problem long term to just leave everything like it is. Let them work on the soy until the other grains mix in slowly?
I would and DO let them eat it as they want. Chickens always seem to know they need more of something, be it protein or calcium and will seek it out when they need it most. So long as the soy is available, they will eventually eat it. For a feeder, we just use the 5-6" bottoms of an old container.
Where do you buy soy meal in Texas? I live near Waco and am having a hard time finding a feed and seed store that carries soy meal. I have the corn, wheat, milo but NO soy. Is Poultry Booster the pre mix you talk about? I found it in granules you mix with 50 lbs of feed. Thanks
I found a co-op place in New Braunfels that sells rosted soy bean and soy bean meal if you're still interested. I know it will be a drive but that is the only place I have found so far.
I'm not a chicken nutrition expert at all, so watch and read a lot more, but it appears to me soy is primarily used as a protein source. If your research find that to be true, look for videos on soldier flies. If you have a source, like a restaurant, for free scraps, and depending on the number of birds you have, you can get that element met for free. And you can order soy on-line if necessary.
Corn (3 parts), soy (1.25 parts) and premix will give you 18% protein. That is is all you really need if confined. Toss in a bale of alfalfa hay once in a while too.
I give you the recipe in "parts". A "part" can be of any weight, so for 50kg @ 5 parts, would be 10kg each grain. 100kg would be 20kg per grain and so on as weight increases or decreases.
Thanks much for posting your wisdom that a new student to raising chickens has needed from the start.
We use rice and lentils from supermarket that's had it's bag that has broken ore from the supplies
That is great. We do the same.
Thanks Robert for all the things you share with us from far away Australia 🇦🇺 eternally grateful to you river’s of joy peace and kindness to you and your family
Thank you for the kind words!
excellent inför.- The best I have heard- THANK YOU. I live in the Cariboo area of British Columbia and we raised chicken for our family for over 20 years. Thank You again.
Thank you! I try my best, particularly with poultry information. Check back later this month and I should have a newer feed video with more information and some surprise results from flocks in Asia!
Haha you remind me of my dad! keep talking it's joyful! thank you for the great video. we are new homesteaders only 4 monthes in so these videos have been so helpful. Blessings and thanks again.
Thank you and good luck too!!!!
I'm a subscriber and I just wanted to thank-you for doing such informitive vids. I have learned so much from your channel, my neighbors are amazed at how smart I am.😉
Thank you Lisa!!! You most likely started out very smart though!
I will be building this place for another year, then on to the greenhouse and its plants, so there is a lot more to come!
Love the bucket buried with chicken wire over and let the sunflowers sprout up!!! Going to try that next to our wild bird feeder station just for the looks and fun of it! Great info, subscribed. THanks!
You can make that as big as you want and it works great!
Thanks Robert, another great vid,cheers.
Wow! Thanks for the quick reply. I'll check with Lake City. It's 30 miles away.
Great info!!! God Bless and thank you so much!!!
Hi Robert another great informative video, I will be using your [Adult, and chick mixes thanks a lot] you answered my question whilst writing to James Johnson regarding what is a premix, which I now understand is a vitamin and mineral supplement. thanks from Bulgaria.
+John Traynor John, I am glad you find the videos helpful! My chickens here are super healthy and active from the feed they are getting. Good luck with yours too!
Ok I thank you for your response. Have a great day.
Robert, thank you very very much for the information. Now I know why my chikens died!! We are trying to make our own mix and we lost some chiks when we introduced our mix. I´ve subcribed to your chanel. I´m from Venezuela live in the venezuelan andies. Keep it up! Nice job!
I am always very happy and humbled to be of help! Poutrly husbandry is not rocket science....... but it IS science unless your breed is a feral one. Watch for more on poultry soon. Right now I am working feverishly on the living quarters of the compound, but chickens, Vetiver and Moringa will start again in Februalry!
THANKS !!
I _JUST_ discovered this content . FINALLY something with MORE *SUBSTANCE* and _LESS_ "CUTE"_ !!
I've captured this link AND the one for the prequel and NOW plan to replace our Commercial mix with MY OWN , according to your _basic_ outline .
I plan to also include Flax seed for the good omegas as its not _only_ about "Protein" , but this is the FIRST I've _seen_ with a _better_
mix-ratio of "cuteness" to *_SUBSTANCE_* !!
We will be back with more videos, but now from northern Michigan.
Thanks for your time
This is glorious, I been tryin to find out about "bantam chicken" for a while now, and I think this has helped. You ever tried - Machaaldity Coop Blaster - (should be on google have a look ) ? Ive heard some incredible things about it and my work buddy got amazing results with it.
thank you so much from Nigeria.
PLEASE FOLKS, THIS VIDEO IS OVER FIVE YEARS OLD. DON NOT PHONE ME OR ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT IT ANY LONGER. HERE IS THE LINK TO MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE MIX: singingturkeys.com/POULTRYFEEDMIX.pdf THIS IS ALL THERE IS, I CANNOT RESPOND TO ANY MORE COMMENTS!!
People are so needy lolol
Over 7 years now and RUclips is feeding it to me. Yay?
Hello Robert! I was at my local Big Lots and found a all in one bag of Scott Pet Premium Blend Wild Bird Seed in a ten pound bag. It's ingredients are as follows; cracked corn, Milo, wheat and black oil sunflower seeds; shelled, of course. This bag of seeds was only $6! Now I now I can get a #50 bag of cracked corn for $7 at TSC and a #50 bag of scratch grains for about $13 but for the small backyard chicken farmer, like myself, that #10 bag of seeds goes a long ways when mixed with 12% crumble or pellets. And it does a very good job of making happy chickens and some awesome eggs. I mix in oyster shells and these girls are HAPPY!!! Looking forward to more of your videos my friend. One question for ya though. Where do you get your Portland Cement from out there?
+Noneya Buisness You still need ground soy or fish meal!!!!! That mix, which is a GREAT price, is still about 10% protein. You MUST get to 18-22%, so you need soy, as well as a vitamin/mineral pre-mix..
I get my Portland cement from McCoys, here in Alpine. They are a fairly small chain of lumber yards (but they have gift certificates). If I go to Odessa, I can get Portland for about $10 a bag, McCoys is about $10.50 a bag.
Good video!!!!!
I like your video its very helpful
soybean meal -wheat -red millet -corn -vital -grit -oyster shell -bailed dried grass-has been my mix for 28 years. ....i mix and grind my own from my land and some from feed mill avg...$200 for 1550 lbs ........so if i increase wheat it slows down ,ill have to try that next mix and adjust accordingly.thank you for the information from down in Texas from Wisconsin were today it was 65 degrees and no breeze nice usually snowing by this time here.....
Who am I to disagree with a country gentleman like Hank Williams?
Hi and thanks for educating us on caring for our chickens. I really enjoy your videos! I would like to ask a question regarding the oyster shells. Can you tell me the ratio of oyster shells to premix? Again thanks for sharing your knowledge.
Premix is added to the finished feed according to the premix manufacturer's instructions. Many times it is about 40 pounds of premix to 1000 pounds of feed. Oyster shell should be offered in a separate container.
I have used your mix but have problems with the soybean meal and premix being left in the bottom of the feeder so ended up feeding mixed grain and with soybean meal over $2.00 kg here in Australia it is far to expensive to be left in the bottom of a feeder. They would eventually eat it if given nothing else but then egg production dropped off. I have six pens of different breeds with 10 chickens per pen and each pen had the same result.
just subbed i like your style of explaining things :)
+Major Greenz Thank you very much!
There is a really good restaurant in terlingua...pretty sure it's Terlingua anyway. Pretty sure it's called The Cave, cool little place with great food!
It is called LaKiva. I know the owner.
thank u for the info
Thank you!
from Oregon!
Sweet awesome awesome awesome......
Thank you :)
Good morning, Great information, Thank you. The Vi-Tal vitamin and mineral pre mix you mentioned. Do you add that to the feed? The manufacture says add to water. or I'm I looking at the wrong stuff. Thank you again
I never saw that. We added the premix to the mix. The chickens avoided it for a while, then ate it.... same with the ground soy.
Thank you for explaining your feed so well.
just a question about the pe-mix. I assume these are vitamins and minerals. do you give that free choice as well or ad in the feed ?
Add it to the feed as an extra item. Use the maker's recommendation to mix it by weight of the total feed you are adding it to. I don't think the birds would eat it free choice.
Hello sir. Thank you so much for taking your time to do the video. At my homeland , we grew rice twice a year. Can we use rice for any substitution?
Rice is an excellent and digestible substitute! Remember that it is about 8% protein. Keep watching..... I have lots of new nutritional information. I just need to make time to create a video about it!
first of all I appreciate you. I like the fact you have experiences in the chicken industry. you're obviously a smart common-sense man. Not to mention you have the same name as my grandfather Robert Earl. my question is I have a mixed flock of 20. Half are aound 10 months. the others range in age from 12 to 16 weeks and of course are not laying. the young ones of course are not laying. it's not economical for me to buy two different mixes or feed separately. should I just add a protein booster like soybean meal to my regular food? if so how much should I add to a 50 pound bag which is 16% protein? also a very interesting point that you brought up is hens being too skinny and unhealthy when they are spent and are moulding or have stopped laying. I would like to keep mine until at least their third molt. they are very much pets. how do I keep them as healthy as possible and with meat on their bones so to speak after they have laid 418 months or so. I don't want a skinny little hen that is not healthy? what is your advice on protein Exedra on hens that lay every day and will deplete all the nutrition in their bones and bodies without some extra help come their first moult. I feed ground corn and wheat and pure alfalfa pellets as treats as well as table scraps. I also feed a commercial layer food on top of this but like I said its only 16% protein. I'm also interested in the pig feed you mentioned. can eat buffet instead of the layer food? by the way I can also always supplement calcium....my email address is tobylowe111@gmail.com and text me at 256 577 7765 just to let me know if you put up a new video. I'm not one to get on the internet a whole lot but I sure don't want to miss another one of your videos especially if it pertains to my question. thank you very much my name is Joseph and I'm in Florence Alabama. That's in the very North part of Alabama almost in Tennessee. btw, how do you feel about buttermilk? I have access to as much of it as I need? I also try to feed one head of cabbage everyday. my egg production is good. do you think I'm doing a good job. thank you so much in advance for all your help and answering my questions. As I said before your videos are very much appreciated
We have had hens that were up to eight years old at our place in north Florida. Without the bands, we would not have been able to tell which they were! I preach using a feed of no less than 20% (my mix is 19.3%, so maybe no less than THAT).
Yes, chickens can and do survive on less than that, but they become "worn-out" in appearance at about two years of age on a lower protein diet. Also, I did extensive research into HPAI (highly pathogenic avian influenza, or bird flu) last year and saw that one major and ever-present factor in the Asian mortality rates from it, was a LOW protein diet! Like humans, without some "fat" to draw off of when ill, their systems break down, resulting in death.
If you just want to add soy, it is about 45% protein, so a ratio of 5-6 to 1 packaged feed to soy would be good. Use 5/1 in Winter and 6/1 in Spring-Fall.
I found that if you ALWAYS have calcium carbonate (oyster shell or equivalent), you never have bone issues in non-Cornish Cross breeds. Our Florida farm sat on top of huge limestone deposits and I STILL offered the oyster shell! Never had bone problems....... unless I failed to offer it!
Hog feed is an alternative only is certain circumstances. A processed and bagged feed from a multi-national isn't right. The mill we bought ours from, just mixed ground corn and ground soy with a pre-mix and that was all. So by buying that and adding the grains and more soy, we saved money.
Here, the chickens will steal the alfalfa tops and "powder" from the horses' hay, as well as chomping the 4-5 mice that the cats bring us as presents every morning. The one thing that has made a big difference to our birds, is the meal worm farm. We are able to give the flock about 2 pounds of meal worms a week from that.
I can try to drop you a note when there is a new video. But I am doing so much here that I often forget or don't have time. Figure there is at least one new one about every 10 days.
Your Grandfather does have a very good name! However, remember that not everyone is so lucky....... There is a duck named Donald that is really pissed right now!
Hi,
Thank you for the information.
I don’t want to use wheat and soy in my chicken feed. Can I substitute soymeal with field peas, please?
Yes, you can
I forgot we also use oil(cooking) grit and seashells for the eggshells
one thing I forgot to mention. the cause of predators a free-range my words about 1 hour before dark every other night. they absolutely love it but when I try to do it without me being out there I always lose one to a predator of some type. so it's mostly for exercise I don't think they're getting lots of nutrition for that short amount of time free ranging
I had a big predator problem in north Florida. Here, the coyotes are all I have to worry about and they avoid us most of the time because I seldom miss with the big gun!
Thank you Robert, for caring about what your chickens eat! Glad you like the premix. We hope you continue spreading the word. Let us know if there is anything else we can do for you.
www.abcplus.biz
Hi Robert, is there any nutritional reason, not to use whole kernel corn for adult chickens and ducks? My poultry seems to like it better than cracked corn.
+Ginger Borgeson I got in the habit of using cracked corn to feed the birds when in Florida. We had field corn growing EVERYWHERE there, from the kernels the chickens missed.
Also, cracked corn is the same size as milo and mixes better with the soy and other grains.
Also, unscrupulous feed mills like to play "checkers" (note the word play) and remove 1/4-1/2 of the corn germ from their cracked corn, so you need to know, ask and trust your feed mill, not the feed dealer, he sometimes does not know, or worse, does not care because of the many gifts nd perks the checkerboard people give him for pushing their inferior products!
Are you familiar with IFA or CAL Ranch? Are these true feed stores? Just trying to find one in Utah. Thanks so much for your video, this is great!
I am not familiar with them, but I looked them up on line and they both seem to be. I have seen feed stores in Utah, so I know they exist!
What is a good mix to make goat feed I now they don’t need much grain feed but I want to give as a treat and balance they grass and hay diet
Sorry, we have no experience with goats at all!!
How many "parts" of "Premix" to the corn, soy, milo, and wheat ???
Great video
Brewers grain. Is it good for my chickens as a treat or can it be used as a source feed ? I still have oyster shell and and free range.
Thank you for help
Feed them anything they will eat. I don't see why brewer's grains would not be used, it is just a "lower grade" of grains. I even take the milo (sorghum) that I feed all birds and pop it like popcorn for a treat for us.
"BREWER'S MIX " ? What's in it, what's the Protein % and where can we get it ? I'm fairly new to this (about a year in ... ) and am always "looking" !
Where would I look for this 25-50 pound bags of soy milo millet wheat? I called Tractor supply, nothing, I called Round up, nothing. Which are the feedlot stores we have here Bakersfield, Ca. Any suggestions on where to look and buy?
+ShelsStudio I have always bought 50 pound bags of these from local feed stores. Tractor Supply is NOT the place to look for anything! They are a "transitional" type of almost a farm store, but not quite. They cater to those that are trying to become farmers, but seem more like "deer in headlights" in a real feed store! Typically the employees there know nothing unless the computer tells them.... kind of like the customer support guy in Mumbai!
You need to find a place with a sign that says "FEED STORE", hay bales stacked out back, or on the side and a couple beat-up pick-ups parked out front. IF it is a store that has been corrupted by "Purina", you may still have trouble finding appropriate feed though as that corporation has gifts & gimmicks that encourage owners to push their products. But many checkerboard stores still care and will help.
A typical local feed store........ not a feed lot, that is something entirely different..........will have access to all these grains. Bakersfield is getting developed, but is still rural enough that there should be feed stores!
I found: Torres Feed, East Hill Feed, Fred C. Gilbert (looks promising), Granite Station Saddlery & Feed and Bugni Hardware & Feed. THESE are the places to look, not a "chain store". The guys that own these independents first of all are supporting the America we all remember & love and second of all, understand livestock and will carry what you need. They may even have a layer feed made by a local, independent feed mill that will be able to take the place of corn, soy and premix.
Let me know, I am happy to help decide about a local blend!!
Hey Robert, No, you don't talk too much-just right! And I myself dress for work/comfort-not to impress. Anyway, my wife and I are just starting to raise 6 chicks for eggs-they're 3 weeks old. Can you give us a bit more clarification on the pre-mix? What's in it? Where do we find it? We live in the So. Cal area outside of L.A. Thanks so much for your vids-we love 'em!
+GrantKelly Okamoto As usual, California seems to be a problem area. However, I cannot find a premix around here either. Premix is a vitamin/mineral supplement that adds to your feed mix. Usually one 32 pound bag will treat 1000 pounds of feed. Chicken's natural food comes from grazing young plants and seed (not always mature seed like in a bag) and insects. They eat pebbles and hard objects to grind the food up in their gizzard.
This original diet provided all the vitamins, minerals and other nutritional requirements naturally and the many different hard things they ingested would provide minerals in the gizzard. Unless a flock is 100% free range with no winter, they will need to supplement the vitamins and minerals through a premix, as this is lost in an all-grain diet. It is a good idea anyway for adults and a must for chicks under four weeks!
Look at it an a vitamin/mineral insurance policy: what they don't require, they will excrete, same as us humans take expensive vitamin supplements and turn it into "expensive urine". But in the birds case, they need it! There are many places that sell a premix. It will run close to $50 a bag. We have used the organic ABC premix. Here is the URL to them: www.abcplus.biz/abc2.aspx?Id=Poultry_All_In_One_Premix
Best of luck!
Hi Robert love your videos was wondering what you mean by premix, or is that just what you call your feed mix.
+James Johnson Pre-mix is a vitamin/mineral mix that is a nutritional supplement required for birds kept in coops, houses or small yards. My mix and every commercial mix does not offer enough in the way of vitamins or minerals with only the grains, the premix is required. That is, UNLESS the birds are pastured or free range in a lush, green environment with LOTS of grass and bugs and even then, chicks to 4 weeks should be fed a balanced feed with pre-mix and the rest of the flock will need it in winter. Here is more information: www.abcplus.biz/abc2.aspx?Id=Poultry_All_In_One_Premix
+eco-ranch.us Ok thank you glad I asked.
Great video, informative and well done. I downloaded the information pertaining to the mix and discussed it with the local grain mill. The mill was surprised to find out I wanted to make my own mix as they explained to me the individual grains might come to the same price as their poultry mix. It turns out they were right, its the same price! That being said and unless I can find a cheaper source of grains, I'd like to increase the protein value from 16 to 20% (which if memory serves me is your suggested protein percentage). How much cracked corn should I have to add to the commercial poultry mix in a five gallon bucket? (in cups if you please sir)
Depending on the quality of the grains the mill uses, you may be equal to my mix in QUALITY, or as in the case of the chessboard people, far LESS quality and far less DIGESTIBLE protein..... remember that all the values are in crude protein and feathers & hair are crude protein that is non-digestible.
That being said and assuming you have a quality mix from the feed mill, you can never add enough corn (7-9% protein) to bring the mix UP, just down. So add five cups of soy meal to the mix, as I do and that will do it for you! OR, shelled peanuts, or hulled sunflower seeds!
I can obtain a complete list of ingredients for the mix, I think I'll do that. I wonder if Bentonite (fillers) will be in the list, I know feathers and hair will not. Thanks for your time. By the way, I live in New Brunswick, in the maritimes (eastern Canada).
My guess would that all you have up there is great ingredients! Good luck!
How much premix do I add to mix and is this a good for meat chickens or do I need to add the one extra one scoop of soy to get protein up to 24 %
I use 28% up to 4 weeks, 24% up to 7 weeks and 21% until slaughter.... or for life. This keep disease at bay and make for higher yields of meat AND eggs. I have five year old hens here raised on this and they lay 4-6 jumbo eggs weekly. (when they die, they still have some eggs in their system too)
As far as premix goes, follow the manufacturer's instructions on adding it, but DON'T count it as a "part" or toward protein percentage.
You say to use premix but you didn’t mention how it is to be used. Do you add it to your feed? How do you use it?
Mic it in your feed ix according to the manufacturers instructions.
Robert what Eggxactly is premix and where do you get it.....
+Ken moody Ken, read down a few comments and I going into great detail about pre-mix and where we buy it. But when mixing your own feed for birds that do not have access to the natural world of grasses, bugs seeds, grit and soil, a premix is essential to your flock's health, as it contains the EGGxact amounts of vitamins and minerals requires for poultry!
I live in north florda. Where do I get wheat that doesn't cost an arm and a leg?
+D Naz We lived in Branford and were able to find wheat and all the other ingredients at nearly every fee store. Central States in Lake City, the big feed store in Live Oak... forgot the name..... Branford Feed, nearly all of them. Right now, I pay $8-9.00 for 50 pounds of wheat here. It was a bit cheaper in Florida. Call all your area feed stores that DO NOT have that damn "chess board" as a logo and you will find good information and good prices. RUN LIKE HELL from any store with a cutesy girl on a computer though!
Is the Premix you talked about the same thing Joe Salatin calls Nutri-Balancer?
Yes. He is using the brand name of a pre-mix.
Do you suppose addition of biochar to feed would benefit ? I hear it works quite well for pigs.
I am not sure. Although "biochar" has been around for millennia as a soil additive, I'll take a wait & see on it..... like I do with the other "fads of the moment".
We ordered our first chickens about 10 weeks ago. We have 7 RIR chickens and 15 Cornish Cross that ordered them by mistake so we had to raise them to harvest. Yesterday, we harvested 4 and they were shockingly SKINNY. We have been feeding these birds relentlessly (checkerboard crapolina medicated feed, homemade bread, soaked pinto beans chopped in a food processor w/a splas of sugar that they love, etc... So today, we were totally shocked to see how thin they were. I'm thinking of sprouting WHEAT into wheat grass with a good root mass. If we do that, how many lbs. of that per chicken do you feed and what do you add to that as a separate dry mix to make sure they are getting everything they need? Thanks for your help.
It is always hard to tell from a short explanation, but I will try. First of all, if you are going to grow birds for meat, any breed, but especially the "Frankenbirds" like Cornish Crosses, you need to feed them differently than layers or pets. Ten weeks is usually a bit soon to process for MOST backyard flocks. Twelve is better, but may not have made much difference here. Cornish Crosses, etc. (Frankenbirds) need to be confined with VERY LITTLE exercise. They literally should only walk to the feeder and the waterer and nothing else. If your birds got exercise, that made a difference. I always killed ours at 16-20 weeks, or just as soon as the first one died of "flip over", essentially a heart attack from being obese. This would give me a very tender, 10 pound finished CARCASS, at a conversion ratio of 3/1. At 10 weeks, your birds should have weighed in the 6-7 pound range "on the hoof". The breast should have looked like a very wide "V", definitely NOT a sharp defined "V".There are three possibilities for their being light. Based on what you fed them, they should have grown normally, so my first thought is that you did NOT have Cornish Crosses, but rather another breed like the Leghorn, which would have been scraggly at 10 weeks no matter the feed. My second thought was the exercise factor. These are a crop, not a pet. You pack them in an enclosure so they can't move and leave them for 8-12 weeks. Yes it is very inhumane, but that is how meat birds are grown, as a business, not a happy life. My third thought was that they lacked calcium or grit, or both. Lack of grit will cause them to not digest food. They try to digest it, using calories, but without grit, cannot, so food passes through undigested. This too would make a scrawny bird.For meat birds, start them on a medicated feed, unless you have a problem with that. At 3 weeks, switch to my mix, or supplement the protein in a commercial mix to 28%. At 6 weeks, drop the protein to 25% and keep it there until slaughter. Offer grit AND calcium carbonate (oyster shell) in separate, clean containers that they can get to free choice. NEVER mix either in the feed.If you are vigilant and keep the growing area clean, CLEAN, then try sprouting seeds if you wish. I am not a fan of that, but I am busier than most.On your last question, feed enough dry feed..... my mix or a commercial one.....so that the flock is being offered ALL the feed they need there. THEN offer or treat them with things like bread or beans....... but always make sure they have enough of the "normal" feed to thrive. Also, all this applies just to meat birds, layers are a different discussion!
Thanks for the reply. We have them in a chicken tractor and move it every 2 to 3 days to fresh ground and they peck relentlessly on the fresh bugs/grass. I do occasionally feed them chicken shells for calcium, but have not fed grit. I'll go and get some today at the feed store. Would they have pecked "grit" on the fresh ground? I was so disappointed w/their skinny bodies. We have 10 left. Also, if I kept on of the hens, and kept her on the thin side so she lives, would she lay eggs w/a rooster? Thanks.
Also, what are your thoughts on the MORINGA for CHICKEN FEED? And if one has access to plenty of it, how much would you provide per bird? We going to plant these super tress around the perimeter of the property.
I think the tractor is the issue. Attach two feeders to it and put grit in one and calcium... oyster shell, in the other. Every time we have tried to keep a Cornish Cross/Roaster, it dies before 20 weeks from flip over. This is genetic and there is nothing you can do. If one survives, it is just an anomaly, they are too big for their heart & lungs. A rooster has no control over whether or not a hen lays eggs. He just fertilizes them, crows and struts like a "gangsta", but does nothing to stimulate egg production.
I do not know how much Moringa to feed chickens in a controlled manner. No one is really doing it so it is hit and miss until we find a formula. This year, I did not water ours enough and don't have enough leaves to spare to feed the birds so my hands-on research will have to wait until next May. I know I would try to feed chickens Moringa from the beginning so they get a taste for it. Our adults don't like the fresh leaves, so I have to dry them before they will eat them and then hide it in their regular feed.
Could you make a video about premix and exactly what it is
+Ahmon Watkins It is just vitamins and minerals that the birds need and may be absent in an all grain feed like my mix.. Here is a link to the place we buy ours from and it will tell you what you need to know: www.abcplus.biz/categories17.aspx?Id=Poultry_All_In_One_Premix
is DL Methionine 99% Additive For Animal Feed Premix a good premix for your checkens?
I cannot tell what else is in it other than the one amino acid! Poultry needs vitamins and minerals added to the grains. I m not sure this product has that.
How about using peanuts still in the hull but of course grinding it up?
+Sitdown BeQuiet I always forget peanuts!!!! When we lived in north Florida, it was a big peanut growing area. I could never get a good price on them though, so I seldom used them as more than a treat.
Peanuts would be an excellent "grain" to add, but you would need to get the approximate protein value of them in the shell in order to calculate you protein content. I would probably NOT feed them to chicks under 4 weeks of age though, as the shell has little nutrition value and they may eat too much shell, being rather dumb birds!
STILL add the vitamin/mineral premix. It is a heartache for you if young chicks lack these things in their early diet!
+eco-ranch.us Also, feeding them in the shell, whole, to birds as forage or scratch is not a bad idea. It gives the birds something to do, pecking the shells open and the few that they miss that sprout, will provide greens for the birds and even nuts if they are left alone!
Great comment!! Thank you!!
Can you make a clip how to mix feed for Texas quails ?..thanks your feeding mix show for chicken .
As I have said, I really have no experience with quail, sorry.
I live in scotland . would like to make my own mix as in your outdoor kitchen but how do you cope with the problem of rats and mice?
We have two cats that go out every night. They take care of many of the mice. We don't have rats like you have there, just "kangaroo rats" and they stay away. We do get mice from time to time, mainly Fall through the Winter. I have to set traps. I keep the feed in a galvanized trash barrel with a tight fitting lid. The masonry feed bin I built would have allowed some mice to get into it, but we really do not have enough birds anymore to use the feed bin, so no mice get in the barrels.
We had a one ton feed bin in Florida when we had over 400 birds, mice would get into that, but since the sun heated it during the day, even in Winter, we had a (or several that took turns) LARGE Rat Snake that would get in there every night. HE kept the mice and rat away!
Near the end, you said not to leave out "pre-mix" for chicks. What is that? Is it part of the check feed mix you described? Is it something else? Should we include "premix" in the chick-mix formula?
Alright, I found your reply to the same query below. We must add premix to your formula. (Still, though, what is it? Can we make it? Or is it a secret?)
Read the ingredients in the premix and the description here: www.abcplus.biz/categories17.aspx?Id=Poultry_All_In_One_Premix
This is the one we use, however, ANY poultry premix is fine to use!
What is the part for the premix in the finished feed ratio
no part, it is added per the manufacturer's recommendation for the TOTAL weight of the feed and NO more than that.
So it is ok for my babies to have calcium carbonate ? I keep hearing not until 5 weeks old ? I just got a grit and gravel that contains granit and 0.10 calcium is this ok to give a small amount or as much as they want ? mine are 2 weeks old now and I just added a small amount.
I have never heard of NOT offering calcium carbonate to young ones....... that doesn't mean it is right or wrong, just that I have not heard of it. That advice may be due to the size of the chunks, tiny ones cannot swallow anything too big. We have always started our chicks on a commercial, non-medicated starter for about four weeks. These, as you said, have the calcium added. When we switch to our feed, we provide oyster shell, but I grind it in the commercial blender and put it in a separate feeder. I offer grit in the same way, ground and in a separate feeder. Nature has given them genetic memory that tells them when to eat both!
thank you for the video, very interesting! I'm from Nigeria in the continent of Africa, sir have heard about including moringa leave to the feed mix?
I have been recommending to everyone to include Moringa leaves in their poultry feed. It is virtually free and 40+% protein! Thanks!
Awesome!!! One more question sir, the form should the moringa leaves be, Dried or Fresh green leaves?
I don't know how I missed this comment! Sorry for the delay! My free-range chickens really do not like fresh Moringa, unless it is very young. If raised feeding it to them, they will readily eat fresh though. If you dry the leaves partially or all the way and mix it with the feed, the birds will eat it. So do what suits you best!
It would be nice to actually post the recipe of the feed mix. I enjoy your videos ! Thank you!
I thought I had links to this posted: eco-ranch.com/POULTRYFEEDMIX.pdf
Can you add MORINGA to your CHICKEN FEED? And if so, how much and how would you adjust your recipe? We just purchased 100 acres in Poplarville, MS. So we have some room to plant a lot of these trees. Thanks.
Plant a lot of them! Plan on harvesting for powder in the Fall and eat some every day yourself! There are lots of RUclips videos on how to do it and watching them will get you very excited to grow them! I eat about 1/2 cup of leaves or new shoots every day!
Do you feed the leaves fresh to the chickens? Dosage for powder application? What about the branches as perches? Tree canopy provides heat coverage for coop.
Mulberry bush feed recommendations?
Can you use this to feed the grower chicks 2 months old and up until they start laying eggs?
+LEARNING NEW RECIPES That is actually what it is designed for! Use it, but do NOT forget the premix!
Can give me the components for meet cheken to increase the weight of the cheken
My mix for all natural rearing.
thx for ur vid i like to know if soy has to be washed before grinding it or it cud be done without it am asking this becoz of the shell and digestion also can i get best results in 45 days in broilers thx
I buy the soy already roasted and ground, so I cannot answer your question, sorry. Remember that there are good alternatives to soy, if they are not too expensive. These are: shelled peanuts (raw is fine), black-eyed peas, cowpeas, hulled sunflower seed, fish meal and of course, Moringa leaves and powder.
I don't seem to get the super-fast growth with my broilers. I keep the protein for these at 25% and could have a five pound carcass at eight weeks. When I use Cornish Crosses though.... and these are for our own consumption, not for sale...... I wait until the first one dies of "flip-over" at 9-12 pounds (16-20 weeks) then process every bird THAT DAY.
Here is MY reasoning and it applies across the board. Bones will grow first and fast. A six week old bird may be (just for comparison, not accurate) 20% bones, while my 10 pound, 16 week bird may be just 15% bones. That is 5% more meat per pound of body weight (about) for 15-18 pounds of feed (about $3.50). Or, one half pound of extra meat AND one and a half pounds of bones/organs for cooking into broth, as well as the remaining (cooked) bones, organs & bits of meat (about a pound) that is safe to feed back to your flock, ground or as is.
1/2 pound of extra meat @ $3.50 per pound....... an extra 1/2 gallon of broth @ $1.50 a pint..... a pound of "free" feed at $.25 per pound all equals a net gain to you of $8.00, for a $3.75, 10 week investment. Not super profitable for a business, but for filling your refrigerator, very nice. The biggest gain is that one breast now feeds TWO, a leg is a meal, as is a thigh and so on. This has worked for us for 16 years now.
eco-ranch.us i have access to soy but its raw commercial feed here in India is a bit costly so iam looking to make my own mix iam planning a 1000 bird shed thx for ur.reply
No. I have said several times that mine grow slower. This has to do with the lack of additions in our WATER. Let me explain: when I worked in the commercial chicken (egg) business, we fed our birds a straight mix of ground corn and ground soy, at around 20% protein. This is comparable to my own mix, which each of you can customize to what grains are inexpensive in your region. HOWEVER, in the commercial birds' water supply, the agri-business I worked for added antibiotics and steroids to increase growth rates and egg production. Our commercial hens, which were a patented hybrid breed, laid one egg every 16 hours.
There was a BIG commotion at the farms when I actually captured and took home one of these ROOSTERS, that had gotten mixed in with the hens...... I would deliver up to 50,000 pullets at a time, so there as always a couple of late blooming roosters in there. Mine had escaped the house and I caught him outside. The farm was livid that I had one of these roosters! But he never got a chance to breed as we got a bobcat that ate 51 birds before I killed it. One of the last, was that rooster, trying to protect "his" flock.
I'm a bit confused on the pre mix, I didn't see you add the pre mix to any of the feeds you made. When do I give the chicks or chickens the premix? Thanks
I did not add premix in the video..... I forgot it! Add it to the total amount of the grains as you mix them!
oh ok, so one scoop per scoop of each grain?
NO!!!!! The bag of premix will have mixing directions on it. AFTER you mix my grains, add the premix. EXAMPLE: the premix says one bag treats 500 pounds. You have mixed 250 pounds of my grains (corn, soy, millet, milo, wheat). So you now add a half bag of premix. Follow the mixing directions on the premix and treat all the grains at the end.
oh ok got it. Thanks so much
what is "pre mix" ??
I was wondering if you have a specific diet for roosters that are kept as "pets" but have their own breeding harems. I don't care about the cost of the ingredients. I want to keep them in tip-top shape. Since I live in a suburban neighborhood the boys are kept inside in large dog crates until 9 or 10 am, so they are eating a mix I make from grains, seeds, whole corn, oats, legumes and dried fruits, some fresh fruit, meal worms. This is what they eat while they are inside. I was also wondering about those "vitamins" like "Rooster Booster" and other additives I see at the feed store. Which grains or seeds are most important for a healthy working rooster? Do roosters need more or less protein than a layer? Once they are let outdoors they get to work foraging for their harems and chicks with full crops. I've always thought layer mash was not good for roosters cause of the high calcium content. (Like the checkerboard processed layer mash that has calcium added.)
My diet seems to work fine for our roosters.... some of which are pets! However, when you are keeping them as pets or "yard ornaments", it is really about what makes YOU happy. I don't use additives, beyond the vitamin/mineral pre-mix. My flocks gets all they need from their diet and foraging. Thanks!
Can I add soy and a premix to a bag of 3 grain 9% chicken scratch?
You can, just add enough soy to bring the total protein to 19-21%
How much premix goes in the ground starter mix for chicks? For ducklings and goslings? Thanks for the info.
If you are using the premix from ABC, then one bag will treat 1000 pounds of feed for all poultry.
Thank you for the quick reply! You stated to let a part be by weight and not volume but when you're mixing you use volume in your cheese container and SS bucket. Are the grains you use the same weight and if you substitute rolled oats in the chick feed do they have to be ground. Very helpful video! Thank you for the time you take to share.
Rolled oats do not need to be ground and I prefer rolled oats! I mix according to volume, as many grains are different weights. It is not exact, but close enough to work well world-wide!
How and where is the premix given? And are the mixes you give at all suitable for meat birds?
+Cdngardengirl As you mix the grains, you should add the premix to it. That way it is mixed throughout the batch evenly. Don't bother to count the premix as any "part", just add it extra. Then just feed the birds as you always have and they will get the required nutrition.
The mix as I showed it, is 19.3% protein. This is fine for layers, broilers & adult waterfowl, even layers. But chicks up to 4 weeks need about 28% protein, so you have to increase the soy level.
+eco-ranch.us Thanks.
Can you use corn meal instead of crack corn
Absolutely and it is easier to digest.
Is this mix to high in protein for pigs or will it be good to feed pigs
It is actually too high in protein for hogs. You would need to remove one part of soy to feed hogs.
When will you be doing a video on feeding chicken fodder? I'm seeing a lot of videos where people are feeding their chickens wheat or barley fodder almost exclusively along with providing the Oyster shells. Many of these chickens are only eating 10%-20% of grain mixtures, if any at all. Is this safe for chickens since there is little or no premix vitamins and minerals in their diet?
+speechgirl36 Here in Terlingua, our main store sold "chicken scratch" as "chicken food". The employees did not even know they were not selling a proper diet! Only recently did the store finally begin to sell a more balanced, if cheaply made, "layer feed". Area flocks survived, but several people marveled at the fact that our birds laid eggs all winter with no appreciable decline.
So poultry can be "starved" and still produce eggs and marginal meat. However, the lack of premix, or vitamins & minerals will catch up to the flock owner in reduced egg production, poorer quality eggs, bone development issues, lack of fertility and chick mortality.
There are vitamins & minerals in fodder. However, if the ground the flock lives on has minerals, or the birds range outdoors, they will in most cases get enough vitamins & minerals to be healthy. Problems arise with coop-bound birds, or birds in areas like this desert, where there may well be a shortage of minerals in the soil AND little greenery with vitamins. Grains should always be available, as this provides a balanced, varied diet! Look at pre-mix as n inexpensive insurance policy for healthy development!
I would say that if a flock owner raises live chicks to maturity with less than a 5% mortality rate, the diet is safe. Anything over 5%, even 6% is too much and there is a problem. Poor leg development will be one indicator, but also, healthy chicks dying for no apparent reason is a HUGE indicator. Rather than wait for expensive, cute chicks to die or have to crawl around, it is best to add a premix. It is NOT very expensive at all!
I won't do a fodder video until I have a facility to grow fodder in: our greenhouse. However, I am a HUGE believer in fodder and/or pasturing chickens! This is how they evolved and this is what they need!
As I have repeatedly said as well, maggot traps, mealworm farms and soldier fly larvae farms are excellent and should be part of EVERY flock owner's feeding regime! We had some of the healthiest poultry I have ever seen, when we lived in north Florida. But our birds free-ranged and ate HUGE amounts of insects ( we lived in a hardwood swamp) and had over 15 acres of Pensacola Bahia grass to graze on, in addition to my grain feed mix.
In addition to oyster shell or other calcium carbonate, a real grit like granite or ground limestone (which is calcium carbonate, but yours may not be what poultry needs) MUST be available to the birds. The better they can grind up their food, the less PURCHASED food they require. In fact, we fed a 100% ground diet to the birds in the commercial houses, mainly because the finer the grind, the less energy is required to process the feed. Same goes for every flock of every size, the finer you can grind the feed the better it is digested! Investing in a grist mill ($00 and up) is one of the best investments you can make for your flock!
I hope this helps!!!!chgirl36 Chickens are, as yet another documentary I saw today re-stated, the closest living thing to the "T"-Rex. Any creature that survived for over 70 millions years (albeit evolving), can survive on far less than it needs. This is why chicken has become the most popular protein source on the planet, even surpassing fish. In the commercial businesses, as well as poverty level villages, chickens are fed the barest minimum to keep them laying eggs and growing. These chicken, if they were humans, would be the poultry equivalent of the "starving Ethiopians" we were shown through the 1980's. Alive and able to reproduce, but not healthy.
Here in Terlingua, our main store sold "chicken scratch" as "chicken food". The employees did not even know they were not selling a proper diet! Only recently did the store finally begin to sell a more balanced, if cheaply made, "layer feed". Area flocks survived, but several people marveled at the fact that our birds laid eggs all winter with no appreciable decline.
So poultry can be "starved" and still produce eggs and marginal meat. However, the lack of premix, or vitamins & minerals will catch up to the flock owner in reduced egg production, poorer quality eggs, bone development issues, lack of fertility and chick mortality.
There are vitamins & minerals in fodder. However, if the ground the flock lives on has minerals, or the birds range outdoors, they will in most cases get enough vitamins & minerals to be healthy. Problems arise with coop-bound birds, or birds in areas like this desert, where there may well be a shortage of minerals in the soil AND little greenery with vitamins. Grains should always be available, as this provides a balanced, varied diet! Look at pre-mix as n inexpensive insurance policy for healthy development!
I would say that if a flock owner raises live chicks to maturity with less than a 5% mortality rate, the diet is safe. Anything over 5%, even 6% is too much and there is a problem. Poor leg development will be one indicator, but also, healthy chicks dying for no apparent reason is a HUGE indicator. Rather than wait for expensive, cute chicks to die or have to crawl around, it is best to add a premix. It is NOT very expensive at all!
I won't do a fodder video until I have a facility to grow fodder in: our greenhouse. However, I am a HUGE believer in fodder and/or pasturing chickens! This is how they evolved and this is what they need!
As I have repeatedly said as well, maggot traps, mealworm farms and soldier fly larvae farms are excellent and should be part of EVERY flock owner's feeding regime! We had some of the healthiest poultry I have ever seen, when we lived in north Florida. But our birds free-ranged and ate HUGE amounts of insects ( we lived in a hardwood swamp) and had over 15 acres of Pensacola Bahia grass to graze on, in addition to my grain feed mix.
In addition to oyster shell or other calcium carbonate, a real grit like granite or ground limestone (which is calcium carbonate, but yours may not be what poultry needs) MUST be available to the birds. The better they can grind up their food, the less PURCHASED food they require. In fact, we fed a 100% ground diet to the birds in the commercial houses, mainly because the finer the grind, the less energy is required to process the feed. Same goes for every flock of every size, the finer you can grind the feed the better it is digested! Investing in a grist mill ($400 and up) is one of the best investments you can make for your flock!
I hope this helps!!!!
+eco-ranch.us Thank you for that clarification. I'm new to owning chickens (10 beautiful little ladies!) and while I'm letting my 10 week old chicks roam my small back yard which I seeded with rye grass for the winter, I'm going to be turning most of the area into a vegetable garden this spring. I live in Texas as well, but I'm just north of Dallas so I don't have desert conditions. I've been feeding them chick crumbles but a few days ago I bought everything for your feeding system, except the premix. I forgot about it! So I'm going back tomorrow to see if any of my local agmarts carry it. If not I will order it from ABC. Does the type of sprout make a difference? I was thinking of doing 90% wheat and 10% black oiled sunflower seeds. How many pounds a day is healthy for 10 chickens to eat?
+speechgirl36 Wheat is good. I am having trouble with the wheat we get here, failing to sprout. Milo is a better choice and should be less expensive to buy.. If milo grows to maturity..... it loves this climate for some reason.... all the birds, wild & domestic, will love eating it!
Sunflowers are excellent, but again, in a sprouter they don't do well. Sunflowers are fantastic if grown in soil and cut at 3-4" and fed to the flock. Another way is to have a small raised planter that you grow the sunflowers in. keep the soil about s" below the top and build a chicken wire cover for the top. The chickens cannot get in to scratch the seeds and soil out and cannot reach the sprouts until they are big enough to be nutritious.
Ten adult birds should eat about 1-2 pounds a day, less if foraging. You should shop for feed every month (or more) but always keep enough feed to last 2 weeks longer than that, say six weeks of feed. That way if your supplier honestly runs out, you are not put in a bind because you still have two weeks left of feed.
can you mix Oster shell in the mix
You can mix oyster shell into the feed, but it is never recommended unless finely ground for very young chicks. It is best to offer oyster shell, or any other calcium carbonate in a separate feeder where the birds can eat it as they wish..... and they DO!
I don't understand the premix. How much of that is added to the mix? Did I miss something? Is it for both chick's and layers?
If you use my recipe, you MUST add a premix. Do a search to find one and add it to the total weight of the entire feed, per manufacturer's instructions.
From where I can buy a bag of whole wheat for my birds I couldn’t find anywhere?
Any independent feed store.
Food supplies are getting less reliable because of floods, fires, droughts and covid. If you can't find it at the feed store, try searching Google for "whole grains in bulk."
I found: www.ifsbulk.com/
Among a host of others, including Amazon, which I personally try to avoid as much as possible, even during covid.
I love the mix of your but my question is I'm still playing around with the mix. hens are laying which is good thing but I'm seeing a lot of waste, we feed everyday is that to much? how much does chicken eat a day I'm being told about 4oz a day ? second question trying mixes 100lbs at time how much of each grain? I'm mixing about 25lbs at time roughly about 6.25lbs of each grain and coming up with about 22%protein would that be correct.
Since we have always been a small (up to 300 birds) operation, I really do not know how much feed they eat daily. Our flocks have always free ranged, eating greens and insects as well as their feed. 4-6 ounces sounds close, but the caveat would be what else do they also eat? I know that we do not feed more feed than they can eat in a day. If there is waste, it lays on the ground until they eat it. THEN, we give them more.With about 120 chickens and 80-90 ducks, we go through 5-600 pounds of feed a month....... but there are so many wild birds eating it too, so I cannot be accurate.20-22% protein is where I recommend you go. This way your hens are healthy and laying well for YEARS and they all have resistance to disease.Best of luck!
eco-ranch.us thank u sir we have around 200 plus birds. I'm trying to make sure I'm mixing the feed right so they have the correct protien. So to do the mixes how would u mixes 50lbs at time? sorry for all the question but I'm getting hang up with it. because I'm using equal amount by weight of all 4 grains.
I do my mixing by hand, so I actually do 10 pounds of each at a time. If we had more birds, I might use the cement mixer, but this works and I only do it once a month! Try to stay about 20% on the protein. With that many birds, the extra 2% of soy can add up in cost monthly. Questions are how we learn! Stephen Hawking did not come out of the womb understanding the origins of this universe!
eco-ranch.us so u making about 40lbs feed at time. 10 lbs of each grain in bucket and mixes up well then feed.
No, I mix about 250 pounds at a time........ 40 pounds at a time!
Can you use another protein source besides soy?
YES! Shelled peanuts, black-eyed peas, cow peas, shelled sunflower seed, Moringa, and almost any legume can substitute. I used soy in the video because it is the easiest to obtain here in the USA. But if anyone has issues with soy, use any of these others.
Hey my name Thomas locate in SC.So i found hog feed that is real find at 16 percent protein 50lbs bag can I use that and what to add it to bring up the protein levels?
Thomas, I think since you are out there in "hog country", you may have a hog feed like we used in north Florida. Ours was 18% (they sold 14,16 & 18%, but it all was the 18% as it was too expensive to mill it separately). This feed, which was ground corn & soy, with a premix added was our actual base for my mix. To it, we added to other ingredients to get the mix I show in my videos.To raise the protein, you can use ground soy, as we did, or depending on cost related to soy or personal preference: shelled peanuts, hulled sunflower seed, ground black-eyed peas, cow peas, lentils (if you have access to these fresh, that can be fed without grinding, but be conscious of the mold risk from the moisture). Fish meal & blood meal too, but here are cost prohibitive. Moringa, if you chose to grow it is a great addition, but needs to dry a few days and be mixed with the feed. Moringa actually in your climate is a fantastic resource for 45% vegetable protein that has virtually no cost to grow.Then of course there is: fish guts (from a neighbors catfish pond), "rough fish", shrimp heads, meal worms, soldier fly larvae & maggots. You feed these separately and remove , washing the containers daily. These daily leftovers can feed the maggot traps too (90%) protein). These alternatives can be fed "as available", same with culled fruits and vegetables. In north Florida, there were a LOT of commercial watermelon farms. In watermelon season, we bought "culls", the imperfect fruits the stores did not want, for $25 a pallet box. I would smash some every day in a corner of the poultry yard and the birds would eat this. I never picked up the rinds, so flies and bugs would lay eggs in them and create high protein larvae for about 3 weeks after the season ended. This can work for any fruit or vegetable.Since we live close to the "Pecos melon" growing area, I asked about "culls" at the farms there, but never seemed to run into someone who spoke English, unless I wanted to buy a melon at full retail.
eco-ranch.us Thank u sir love videos but I have other question for u with your mix can I use oath instead of wheat? I think that have around the same protein levels. also I using this scale to to determine the protein for each grain is this correct? for example. corn lbs 6.25 x
protein of corn 7 decimal in front so .7 equals the amount of protein in the weight of the grain?
You can use oats, but use crimped oats, not whole oats, too much fiber. Just take the percent of protein off the nutritional label and go by the weight.
Hi Thomas! I'm in SC too and always looking to improve my feeding for the critters!
Thank you for your video. I really appreciated it. I was doing some research to substitute the soy in chicken feed. Any thoughts that you may have on acceptable alternative high protein sources?
I REALLY NEED TO DO ANOTHER FEED VIDEO!!!! From early last year, I was contacted by prospective and current poultry farmers in SE Asia, Africa & the Middle East, INCLUDING Syria and the Carribean. I did tons of research and actually tried many different forms of protein substitutes and came up with some great alternatives.Firstly, in 17 years of research, I must add that I found NO mainstream proof that GM foods, be they grains, legumes or animals are harmful to humans. LOTS from people like that twerp from INFOWARS, but nothing mainstream! But for those who still don't like soy for the GMO or other more valid reasons though, I have a LOT of chioces now!If you want to do the work, maggot traps are great (they stink, so place them away from your home). They provide 90% protien food for your flock AND great fly control! Also, when a chicken just dies, as they will, or if you process any birds, or have a surplus of eggs, stick all that in the maggot trap as maggot food). You can start a meal worm, soldier fly or other insect farm. Same very high protein. Choose the bug you "like" best there!A "chicken salad bowl" works fine too and can be any size you want. They just need to have a sturdy top on them (ruclips.net/video/S0ITiGx4jos/видео.html). Moringa trees are great, but not really that good in the frost belt.Moringa leaves are 45% vegetable protien. Chickens have to be trained from "chickhood" to eat them though, adults that are offered them don't much like the taste. Dry the leaves a couple days though and mix with the feed and they will eat them.As far a more mainstream alternatives go, chose the least expensive in YOUR area from these: shelled raw peanuts (best), black-eyed peas, cowpeas, pigion peas, shelled sunflower seed (second best), bloodmeal, fishmeal, vermiculture, fish guts (these will rot, uneaten portions must be removed daily) and fish (run whole through a grinder, removed daily to the maggot trap). There is a lot more too.I like Moringa best, if you can grow it, or grow enough to save dried leaves over Winter. This is a "miracle feed" for livestock AND humans! We eat a large portion each, every day!I hope this helps some and do watch fro a follow-up video discussing all this.
Incidentally and probably MORE important: raising protein levels in chckens in a Cambodian flock, from the "normal" 12-14%, up to 20% reduced that flock's mortality from HPAI (bitd flu) from over 90% to less than 15%. PROTEIN is the key to raising healthy flocks. I do not know why it is not discussed more!
How about oats? Here in the Northern states plenty to be found
Oats are great! I left them out because I prefer rolled oats and out here they are over $26 for 50 pounds.
I am going to do anther feed video with alternatives to the grains in this video that will satisfy those who don't want to use GM grains or corn. But it will be at least a week before I produce it.
Will there be need to add salt?
Not really. They should get enough from scratching in the yard.
I have farm to growing the meet cheken and want to create small factory to make feed can give suitable ingredients for the feed
My mix for all natural rearing.
@@ecoranchusa can send the components with percentages
My whatsapp is 00972525221577
Many thanks
so to get the recipe straight for adult chickens. one part corn, 2 parts soy, one part milo, one part wheat.
on top of that you feed them pre mix in a separate container. Do you need to feed grit or oyster shells with this recipe.
Thanks, cheers
+Joshua Smith Hi! Thanks for the comment! You need to mix the premix directly into the feed, but do not adjust the ratios, just add to the feed by weight. If you feed it separately, they may not eat it!!!
Grit depends on your environment. If the birds go outside and you have enough gravel, small stones or limestone around, grit is unnecessary. Personally, we provide calcium carbonate in the form of oyster shell. There are three types of calcium carbonate, one is not acceptable and I cannot remember which it is. We do put the oyster shell in separate containers, but you can also toss it on the floor or just outside the pen. For young chicks, I grind it up. Chickens can use oyster shell as grit.
Too much oyster shell can cause impaction issues. However, we have NEVER had any issues with it. I think so long as you have enough water available, all the time, any excess vitamins and minerals are just excreted by the birds, just like we humans do with about 95% of the "vitamins" we take, with no problems, except a lighter wallet!!
eco-ranch.us
Thanks for the info. How do I know how much weight of pre mix to add? Subscribed to your channel and look forward hanging out. Cheers from the chilly north, Ontario, Canada.
+Joshua Smith Pre-mix is added by weight.... the weight of the feed. In other words, say you mixed 400 pounds of feed. The directions would say that one bag mixes with 1000 pounds of feed, so to your 400 pounds, you add 2/5 of the bag of premix and mix it in completely.
By the way, being from the Detroit area originally, I travelled all through northern Ontario, even worked there for a time. My favorite fishing spot is Rocky Island Lake, about 80 miles north of Thessalon. I worked for a mining company out of Sudbury for a while. It was a developmental mining company and my mine was north of Pickle Lake, about 300 miles due north of International Falls, MN. Spent quite a bit of time in the Menako Lakes close to the mine.
In 1970, I spent my entire summer vacation canoeing down the Albany River to Moosenee. Went back in 1971 and went down the Winisk River to Hudson Bay and back to Moosenee. THAT was the most difficult trip I ever took, through Polar Bear Pr. Park and 400 miles of salt flats to Moosenee.
Come visit here anytime!
eco-ranch.us
Thanks, awesome that you have been to Ontario. What an extreme difference to Texas. Woke up this morn to -17C with a wind chill feeling like -26C Gotta love it!
Is there an alternative to using the soy meal?
Do I need to worry about using soy meal?
I have heard it isn't as good to consume as they first thought. Cheers!
+Joshua Smith Technology today can find toxicity in nearly anything. There is a lot written about soy being "bad". One has to wonder if much of that is due to the fact that agribusiness has complete control over the legume and our reaction to THAT is why soy is suddenly so "bad". My research does not show it to be bad for us, despite "studies". Remember that 3% of scientists think there is no such thing as man-made climate change too (interestingly, there has NEVER been a 97% consensus among scientists about ANYTHING before).
Fish meal can be substituted, as can raw fish guts is you are near a fish processing plant (never let that spoil though). I just saw where some American company is processing insects like meal worms into a dried product like flour. Certainly this would be my choice over soy, but it is not widely available.
Don't worry about soy! Cigarette smoke, high fructose corn syrup, MSG, lack of fiber; antibiotics, steroids, & hormones in meats; stress, urban air quality and more all rank higher than soy in the danger factor to us!
What is in the pre mix??
VITAL vitamins and minerals!
Pre mix? Do u mean same as mineral mix i use in hog feed
Yes sir, same thing!
2parts corn, 3parts soy and 1part millet, gives 28%cp. But you said 28% is not good for chicks. So whats the right mix for chicks from day old to 4 weeks old?
I don't know why I would say that! 28%, 0-4 weeks, 24%, 5-8 weeks and 20-22% for life. My "life" mix is 20.7% right now. This keeps them healthy and ever resistant to "bird flu", HPAI
eco-ranch.us ok thanks for clarify thay. Which of the mix can be used for broiler?
Keep broilers to 28%. The extra cost for the extra protein is well worth the survival rate!
Do you have a secret dog food mix? I have 2 pits; 1 of which is severly allergic to pork and most mainstream dog foods have some amount of pork byproduct. Both dogs are around 80 pounds.
I really do not have a dog food recipe. I do mix mine the offal of what ever I am processing, be it pig, sheep, or poultry. I grind this with rice for a food base for them. But I have nothing that will work long term.
eco-ranch.us
Ok, thanks
RAW food diet, look it up. Meat, fat, and bones. No carbs. My personal pit food is 10 pounds ground beef, ground egg shells, 10% chicken livers or other organ meat from what ever animal, a can if cooked spinach, and 2 cans of Makerel fish. Mix it all up by hand and make a softball size meat ball and feed twice a day. I also give them chicken leg quarters bone in. Dogs can eat and process raw chicken bones, NOT COOKED bones. feel free to contact me for more info
ReverendDaveULC I also would say look into raw food diet. If you raise chickens, eggs go a long way in dog food.
Thanks for sharing this great info...
I am stumped on why you need the pre-mix. I have looked over the ingredients of it and besides the lactobacillus and kelp meal, it's just vitamins. The same vitamins you're getting from the whole grains you are using as the feed rather then the processed stuff used by the "chess board" people. If you were to add some kelp meal (which is in the pre-mix, but available at some feed stores) and supplement with some homemade yogurt or kefir (dairy or water) you should be fine... Or am I missing something?
+Chris Edward You are accurate. I find that most of us that are raising chickens are also doing other things, like running the rest of the farm and don't have time to monitor a dairy product's health in the feeder. It is easier to buy the premix, which cannot spoil on a warm day and add it to the feed.
Also, much of the USA has enough grasses growing, bugs and diverse soil with minerals and a premix is like insurance, rather than a requirement. But again, it is difficult to determine if your conditions are correct enough, so the premix insurance is a smart idea.
Living here in the desert, our soil is fairly sterile in many places, little grass grows and the bugs are sparse as well..... though the damn flies are everywhere here too! Our first batch of chicks raised on this, the SAME mix we used in north Florida for years, suffered from development issues, particularly leg problems from the lack of vitamins like "D". From day old to 3-4 weeks, most chicks are in a brooder or a corner a building and out of the sun, so they are not absorbing vitamin D.
But if you have the time, extra cash and desire to add yogurts, kelp and other things, it is always best to do so! Your flock will thrive!
+eco-ranch.us
Good points about the Vitamin D!!!
The neat thing about kefir is that you can let it sit on a shelf and sort of forget about it for a couple days. IT can be done in water too, so you don't have to use milk. The kefir cultures keep the milk from spoiling. I live where it gets to over 100 degrees in the summer and I just chuck it in the fridge for part of the day, it just takes a second. The birds love it!!! They really seem to like bitter stuff and it's full of active cultures and vitamins and stuff..
Forgive me for sounding like an infomercial, that's not my intention,,,,
I just figured there was a way around the pre-mix, which sort of makes you at yet one more feed companies mercy... The point of making your own feed is to know everything that goes into it, right?
Speaking of which, have you ever looked into growing protein rich plants like duckweed or azolla?
I just got some azolla (this afternoon actually) from J&J aquafarms in California and I am eager to try it out once it begins to grow.
Speaking of bugs...
There are two protein rich bugs, mealworms and dubia roaches (they don't climb and love the heat) that are super easy to raise off of kitchen scraps. They literally don't cost anything to raise once you have made the initial investment and the chickens can't seem to get enough of them... The cost of dubia roaches has really come down in recent years and mealworms should be able to be purchased locally...
When I clean out the dubia bin, I will feed the chickens the "extras" and afterwards the chickens will come to the back door and make a lot of noise, begging for more.... The dubia's especially breed like crazy in the heat (they just need a little humidity which a piece of carrot takes care of and they eat it as well). They do slow down in the winter unless you supplement them with heat, but it isn't necessary. It just takes them a little while to get their numbers back up once it warms up and they start breeding again.
The same goes with the mealworms. The only drawback with the mealworms is that they go through stages, from larvae to pupa, to beetle, all of which don't climb or fly. The chickens only seem to like the larvae.
The bins do have a slight smell (it's not bad, it's unique) but honestly you have to stick your nose in them to notice and the mealworms or dubias don't make any noticeable noise.
Sorry to write a novel but I love this topic!!!
They say it's best to give your animals a varied diet and variety is the spice of life!!!
Thanks again for posting the videos.
Take care, Chris
+Chris Edward I make the mistake of letting people think that we are anti-society & civilization. Yes, overpopulation is THE biggest problem in the world, but we cannot speak to it without cries of racism since the developing world is primarily not "European white". What we are actually doing here is showing how, with some ingenuity and small sacrifices of "stuff" (which we really do not need anyway), we "New Homesteaders" can led the way into a world that we can groom to sustain the nine billion multi-colored inhabitants I will see here before I die.
That being said, we are NOT anti feed stores, or any company that provides us with things we need. We are anti-MONOPOLIES, like "Urina" (chessboard people), WalMart, Cargill, Monsanto, Exxon/Mobil, BP and so on. The pre-mix I recommend, comes from a small, organic company that specializes in a few high quality products. They, and the small regional feed mills I deal with, do not have "contracts" and "contests" with independent feed stores that either force or lead the small guy struggling to make a living, into carrying the high cost, low nutrition crap the monopolies are constantly trying to tweak a few extra pennies out of every bag.
The feed mill we now get our "layer feed" from....... the corn & soy portion of our mix, gives us the entire kernel of corn ground into their mix. They don't strip away 15-50% of the corn germ for other products, leaving chickens with the same 16-18% CRUDE protein, but less USABLE protein. THIS and the higher cost of the "name brand", are my major objections to the chessboard and others! Incidentally, the really inexpensive brands of poultry, dog, cat and other feeds do the same, but even worse! That word "crude" in front of "protein" can be VERY misleading and many dogs & cats are eating non-digestible chicken feathers and steer hair as 50% of the 25% of the "crude protein" in the super-cheap feeds!!!
So if you are able to provide adequate vitamins & minerals without a premix, great! But if not, just choose your supplier carefully and always support the little guys who are in this to provide a superior product AND make a living, not eliminate the competition and set lower & lower standards.
Everything that you addressed in your comment, is geared toward the small to medium flock owner, same as my information. I trained at a large operation and brought that knowledge to the smaller flock holders. So what you and I say is great for our "target audience", the Tyson's out there cannot "afford" to use our methods.
I try to avoid "fad feeds". I feel fermented feed is a fad, so I don't like to discuss it. However, sprouted grains, fodder, all types of insect farming, pasturing and so on are fantastic in my opinion! One new thing..... new to me that is....... that we are going to try here, is the moringa oleifera tree. We will use it as a fodder for the birds and try some ourselves. We should always be open to trying new things, just use our brains to determine whether it is an unnecessary fad or not!
We have a huge, working meal worm farm and feed our young birds from it. I am going to hang a couple of "maggot traps" in the chicken yard in the next few days as well. This seems to be both a great source of protein AND fly control for the farm. I am also constructing "chicken salad bowls", since we live in the desert and do not have grasses and sprouts for the flock to forage from. I think these "bowls" are a great, simple & inexpensive way to provide fresh greens.
Writing a "novel" here is welcome, particularly when the information is good and accurate, please stay in touch!
What place in San Angelo did you find the pellets and what did you call them again? Also, Does chickens and guineas get along in same pen?
+DL Spamalot The feed mill is Angelo Pellets. I am using their layer pellets, which I just have to add some ground soy to so that the protein level is where I want it. Everything else about this feed is what I would do if I made it.
We raised chickens and guineas together for over 12 years and never had any problems with them getting along. Guineas act differently than chickens do and we had some issues with that, but they lived, brooded and fed in the same coops for years. I would love to have them here, but I am concerned that they way they range, we may lose most of them to predators.
+eco-ranch.us Thank you for the info. I need to run over there soon to get the layer pellets. Do they have the soy too? I only have 2 young guineas and getting ready to intergrate them into the pen in about a week. I have a pen in the pen for them lol.
+DL Spamalot They do not sell ground soy/soy meal. Call other feed stores, since these guys are a feed mill and don't do a lot of different things. Cut one guinea wing feather if you want, it will keep them from trying to fly until they grow back and by then, the pen will be imprinted as home!
+eco-ranch.us Does it matter what feather to cut? I mean like one at the tip or farther back? Thank yo very much for the info.
+DL Spamalot Yes, it matters. In one video I show the exact place and how to cut the feathers. I think it was the "chicken moving day" one. But you are cutting the main flight feathers from the tip, down the where the second layer of feathers start, about 1/2-2/3 toward the body.
What's PREMIX? I am confused about that. I am sure I can make the chicken feed but just can't understand what you mean by PREMIX. I am not yelling I just want someone to see my question. Thank you all.
PREMIX is a separate vitamin/mineral that must be added to MY recipe. I initially forgot to mention it, but without it (or live insects & greens year around), the recipe is NOT complete.
I don't feed soy or corn. Can I substitute corn, soy in your mix? I'm thinking millet, milo, wheat, field peas, barley.
+dc0145a There is no reason you cannot substitute, however you MUST reach that 20% protein threshold! You can do that by using fishmeal, bloodmeal, dried seaweed, mealworms and more, but you need to hit that 20% and be able to go to 28% if you raise chicks! Do not forget the premix either!
I am experimenting right now with "drippings" from a barbeque restaurant. NOT spent oil, meat drippings. So far the flock goes nuts when they see me mixing it with their grains and have eaten every bit of it. I am not sure of the protein content, so it is a supplement, but since I get it at no cost, it may be a good supplement.
wow, lucky find on the meat drippings. I ordered 50lbs kelp today. Thanks for your advice.
+Loren Bonds Treat the premix as something else, added AFTER you have mixed the feed. It is such a small amount that you need not count it in your mixture...... like salting food on your plate. When mixing the feed, you know how much it weighs (each bag is 50 pounds). Premix is added at the rate of one (32.5 pound) bag per 1000 pounds of feed. So for your mix, if each part is one, 50 pound bag (or 300 pounds TOTAL), you would add about 9.75 pounds of premix to the entire batch. (the amount is too small to count as a "part", so just add it as an extra thing)
So you add your mix to the premix?
Yes! After you mix the feed you add the premix. So if there is 500 pounds of total feed, you add the amount of premix the instructions say to add to 500 pounds.
is it good to feed chicken layjing hens cooked rice
Cooked rice is fine....... actually, anything cooked is OK to feed them, just stay away from onions, peppers and garlic!
Can I add aragonite to your mix or free choice?
Never add anything to the feed mix. Offer calcium, grit and anything else in separate bowls.
@@ecoranchusa will do. Thanks again
Fantastic, comprehensive video! I made your mix and am having what I think is a problem. First Off the chickens love it! Egg production has doubled! The issue: when the feed is in the feeder the soy settles to the bitten of the feeder and eventually won't allow the other grains to fall into the tray. I don't think it's a matter of the chickens not liking the soy but it being finer than the other grains. Solutions? Thx bunches for your time and knowledge!
The only solution to this, is to grind the other grains. Without a grain mill, this is virtually impossible though. I find they do eat the feed, It can be an issue to use some feeders.
Thank you. Do you have a specific feeder that works best for the feed mix? Do you think it would be a problem long term to just leave everything like it is. Let them work on the soy until the other grains mix in slowly?
I would and DO let them eat it as they want. Chickens always seem to know they need more of something, be it protein or calcium and will seek it out when they need it most. So long as the soy is available, they will eventually eat it. For a feeder, we just use the 5-6" bottoms of an old container.
Where do you buy soy meal in Texas? I live near Waco and am having a hard time finding a feed and seed store that carries soy meal. I have the corn, wheat, milo but NO soy. Is Poultry Booster the pre mix you talk about? I found it in granules you mix with 50 lbs of feed. Thanks
I found a co-op place in New Braunfels that sells rosted soy bean and soy bean meal if you're still interested. I know it will be a drive but that is the only place I have found so far.
I'm not a chicken nutrition expert at all, so watch and read a lot more, but it appears to me soy is primarily used as a protein source. If your research find that to be true, look for videos on soldier flies. If you have a source, like a restaurant, for free scraps, and depending on the number of birds you have, you can get that element met for free. And you can order soy on-line if necessary.
What is a good mix ratio for hog feed we raise Berkshire pigs and feed bill is get up there
Corn (3 parts), soy (1.25 parts) and premix will give you 18% protein. That is is all you really need if confined. Toss in a bale of alfalfa hay once in a while too.
what u share the farmula for 50kg bags...
I give you the recipe in "parts". A "part" can be of any weight, so for 50kg @ 5 parts, would be 10kg each grain. 100kg would be 20kg per grain and so on as weight increases or decreases.