Feed and food prices are supposed to skyrocket again

[Bettacreek]

They just harvested the wheat in the middle field here. I'm going to go down as soon as they get all the straw to see if I can find anything that's worth getting. The other fields are feed corn, so that'll be easier to glean. They aren't showing heads yet, so it'll be awhile before they harvest and I can get in there to pick up missed ears. :/

As for trading, I wish. I didn't get enough of anything in this year. I'm going to be filling the rest of the garden with lettuce, bean and beet. We will probably have just enough... It's not a big garden at all... I think 16x29 or something. For a family of four, I just don't see how it could feed all of us, ESPECIALLY since the damn birds have stripped my pepper plants, my lettuces and my beans now. George just sent me to Lowes today with his card to go get fencing, and on the way back I filled the car with more compost. After spreading the compost, I just don't have the energy to get the fence up tonight. I'll be stuck here at home tomorrow morning waiting on the new birds, so I'll have plenty of time to play with the fencing early in the morning. I'm HOPING to get more compost as soon as the fence is up and the new birds are here and have everything done before the end of the day, with the new seeds that I need to get in this month. If I have to live off of salads with small bits of chicken then so be it. Honestly though, it's meat and veggies that we're hurting on. I have so much pasta stocked up that it's not even funny. For us, it's about a year and a half to two years worth of pasta. Breads and such are easy and really cheap.

I might try to get some broccoli into the garden too. Can it be started from seed straight into the garden? That's kind of a hard decision for me, our plants are doing really well, but they haven't even started heads yet. I've never done it before, so I'm not sure what to expect. I don't want to waste space on broccoli if it won't produce anything. The birds don't even seem to touch it, so I wouldn't even be able to feed them the greens to get SOMETHING out of it.

 

[Bettacreek]

I have about 30 hatched chicks from 4 mo. to l mo.....cannot decide how to cull adults...the older ones for sure and they are only 2 years old...have 16 Isa Browns 8 mo. (keeping for eggs)..the rest are yard hens, Bos - RIR - bsl - barred rock all great breeds.. killed all but 1 Roo...Buff Orpington... Rice mill sells cracked rice -- and rice bran....My husband said his grandparents fed the chickens bran and they called it LAYING MASH... we milk a cow and I feed the extra-extra to the chickens with bran mixed in....not wasting anything here either...by the way they love it ..So....is keeping the 30 chickes as my next year flock and layers wise...cannot determine the roos yet but they will deff. go ... praying for us all......G

I'm not entirely sure what to tell you. I personally think it's silly to take the six months of feeding to get them to POL, then butcher them out at two years, if they're still laying strong. At two, you *might* be better off trying to trade them off to someone for something else, if they're still laying well and you have the other birds to POL already anyways. Someone might be willing to trade off with rabbits or something for two year old hens, if they are starting out or don't have any hens that are laying yet.

 

[TanksHill]

Prices are on the up swing here as well. The 25# bag of sugar I bought for canning was 3 bucks more than usual. There are still some good deals but you have to look hard.

My Azure Standard order goes in next week. Perhaps I will order a bit more bulk grain.

As for some of your bulk prices, I think their still great. Cracked corn cost me $15 for a 50lb bag. Flock raiser is 18 and change.

Definitely time to cull the free riders.

G

 

[SSDreamin]

I have been doing some research on growing mangels. They're supposed to work great as feed for chickens, cows, goats, pigs and horses! I had been a little worried about them changing the taste of the milk but, since milking is still about a year out yet, I figure why not give them a try? It may be too late to start any here, although I may try starting them in a hoop house and see what I can get

 

[~gd]

I have been doing some research on growing mangels. They're supposed to work great as feed for chickens, cows, goats, pigs and horses! I had been a little worried about them changing the taste of the milk but, since milking is still about a year out yet, I figure why not give them a try? It may be too late to start any here, although I may try starting them in a hoop house and see what I can get

My Dad used to grow and feed mangels and he was located in western NY which has a climate like yours {depends where you are in your state} they are considered a cool season crop and he would plant in late winter-early spring and again once the summer started to cool off. both the tops and roots would be enjoyed by our live stock. I have no idea of where you could get seeds. Keep in mind that if you grow the very large ones you will need to cut or chop them down to a size that the stock can get their teeth into as they tend to be quite hard unless they had lots of water while growing. He was carefull feeding them to horses as they can cause colic if not properly chewed cows just added them to their cud and chewed and chewed. Chickens would peck away at them and it gave them something to do in the winter while confined. waterfowl had to have them cut to bite size their bills couldn't do the job of a beak! ~gd

 

[Joel_BC]

Chickens would peck away at them and it gave them something to do in the winter while confined. waterfowl had to have them cut to bite size their bills couldn't do the job of a beak! ~gd

Some kind of food grinder? We're not keeping chickens right now, but when we did it was obvious that the birds were utilizing a lot of their biological energy just to keep themselves warm enough through the winter temps.

I had neighbors who were growing mangels for goats. I have no experience growing them, but... If you're feeding chickens, and they have to do a lot of work to get the edible bits of mangels, seems counterproductive. So I wonder if some kind of a food grinder might not be a big help with preparing mangels in a good way for bird-livestock?

 

[SSDreamin]

Thanks for the insight gd!

Joel, on the one blog site I read, she used a big meat grinder to make them easier to eat

 

[Joel_BC]

Joel, on the one blog site I read, she used a big meat grinder to make them easier to eat

Just curious... Do you remember (or did she even say) whether that was a hand-turned or an electric meat grinder?

 

[Wannabefree]

You can get mangel seed on Ebay, and Amazon I think has them too.

 

[MyKidLuvsGreenEgz]

I'd been planning to get metal trash cans to store extra feed in them too. We have 50-lb-capacity feed tubs from pet stores that we use for our daily, but need something bigger for "back storage". however, i was just looking at home depot and it's impossible to find metal trash cans, with lids, for a decent price.

wondering... since we store our feed in the garage, could i just get big plastic trashcans with lids? we do have a problem with mice, but if we get the heavy plastic most trashcans are made of, and keep the lid firmly on, we should be ok, right?

thoughts?

btw, we too are going to heavily cull our flock. hubby just bought feed last night, and couldn't believe how much our bank account went down. we'll keep 4 goats this winter (2 boys, 2 girls), one small group of standard sized chickens and one large group of bantam sized chickens. we need to buy about 100 bales of hay, 8-10 bags of alfalfa pellets (we feed them when it's super snowy and the goats refused to go out to the hay feeders), and probably 10 bags of scratch and 10 bags of goat food. We just got a big bag of BOSS but will probably get another since it really helps sweeten the goat milk.