Grinding your own chicken feed

me&thegals

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Hi everyone--I wasn't sure which category to put this under, so I hope this fits.

We have 150 meat bird chicks in our garage right now. I had thought, living on a corn and soybean farm, we could surely grind and mix our own feed much more cheaply than buying it from our local Farm and Fleet.

We were shocked to find out that we would only save about $100/ton of feed, plus have a lot more time in the whole process.

Does anybody grind and blend their own feed for laying hens or meat birds for flocks at least 100 strong? I know it can be done easily on a smaller scale, but I'm looking for experiences in a flock more our size.

Thanks in advance for any insight you can give me! We can purchase our feed at our local F&F for $9.80/50-lb bag.
 

aggieterpkatie

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I can't be of any help here. My mill makes a custom broiler feed for me for only $8.75/50lb bag. There's no way I'm going to spend time grinding feed when I can buy it for that price. :)
 

Shiloh Acres

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And here I was thinking of asking you what your total feed bill was to raise all those chicks. :)

I checked this thread cuz I'd like to know too. I know people who HAVE done it, but not myself.

The lady who supplied eggs to our store kept a flock of maybe a couple hundred. They purchased corn and other grains from local Menonite farmers (they were Menonite as well and had a sort of local network that I REALLY admired and envied). The feed mill ground it for them. I know they used other grains, and added fish meal as well as bulk minerals. I'm afraid I don't know much more. I really wish I did.

Not sure if you could get a better deal from a farmer and just have the mill grind it for you?
(eta: I missed it, I guess you already grow your own so that's not helpful -- sorry!)

I know this family ground their own personal grains and had equipment for that but I guess doing it for feed was better handled by the mill.
 

me&thegals

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Last year it took us 1 ton of purchased feed for 100 birds, some of them grown to over 7 lb. This year, being cooler in fall (we raised in the heat of summer last year), I hope to get them out pasturing a LOT more, so I hope we can keep our feed for 150 birds at 1 ton again, or maybe slightly more. Time will tell.
 

Emerald

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I read in an article on chickens that they will eat and digest whole corn just fine and so I started feeding them with their crumbles some whole corn and they don't eat as much of the crumbles as before and it doesn't seem to bother them at all and I have yet to find undigested corn in the little poos.
I am hoping to build a chicken tractor like the ones that Polyface farms use(bit smaller and easy to open for egg layers) and then just slide them around the yard to offset feed bills.
 
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