I haven't exactly fed the birds in over a month now. When the feed hit $24/100lbs, I gave up. I still have that bag, but use it to feed the chicks and ducklings that I'm growing for spring. They are completely free-range. No fencing or anything here. The turkeys and ducks are the best rangers, plus I have a silkie mix and a few Ameraucanas that stick with them. The main laying hens (barred rocks, leghorns, brahmas) are fat lazy things that stick around the yard and only range around when I take the lamb out to the "field" (just grasses, weeds and bugs). The full rangers (turkeys/ducks) always come home with bulging crops. The cornish cross, despite what everyone says (they're stupid, won't move, etc, etc), are my best ranging chickens, minus the few that stick with the turkeys and ducks. I think the main reason that those ones stick with them is because everyone else picks on them because they are much smaller, and cannot compete with the fatties that just trample them. Anyways, the cornish cross are now pretty big, about four months old and 10-15lbs, and while I have a dozen of them, rarely do we actually see them in the yard, until it's time for bed. Free-ranging birds have a big advantage, their bodies will tell them what they need, and they can actually go out there and get it, for the most part. Winter, will obviously be an entirely different story. I've been looking around for grain from local farmers, and working on a deal with a farmer who has oats at $12/100lbs. Hopefully I can get other grains to keep everyone going well. As for what I DO feed the hoard here (we're at something like 60 birds), I always save the egg shells. I never do anything special, just toss them out in halves, and the hens are the ones who eat them. The others will eat bites, but usually turn their noses at it. I take acorns, load them up in a 5g bucket and let it sit for a few days. Then I dump the acorns out on our paved driveway, which we run over when we come/go, and they can snack on that. The reason I put them in the bucket first, is because all of the moth larvae will come out, cannot get out and end up jamming themselves into the bottom of the bucket. When you dump the acorns, the larvae stays in the bucket, which you can then tap out somewhere that the birds can snack.
When I butcher anything out, the rest of the hoard is right beneath my feet, lapping up the blood and entrails. About the only thing that doesn't get eaten by us or the birds would be the bones, head, feathers and feet. I'm sure if I processed it down enough, the only waste would be the feathers, but I haven't taken it to that extreme yet, lol.
I haven't raised mealworms in awhile, but they're super easy. I always used the wheat bran from Tractor Supply. I think it was $8 for 50lbs back then (not sure what it is now), and that was enough to last probably over three or four years, depending on how many you raised, fed, sold, etc. They were nice because if life (or depression) caught you, and you forgot to water them, it didn't matter, because they still survived, though production did drop some. Anyways, don't count on them being your main source of protein, or even a really high percent, because they are mostly exoskeleton and there's something in them that inhibits absorption of calcium (I forget what it was). You can also raise waxworms, silk worms (this is my next adventure), and if raising chicks or making mashes of feed, fruit flies are an AWESOME little bug. They are tiny, which makes it suck, but they breed like, well, like flies. When I harvested my fruit fly cultures, I simply tapped them out into hot water and froze them, then added that to dry food. Harvest them heavily once you start seeing larvae, because if you don't, they will overpopulate and kill themselves off too quickly.
