Posted: 11/25/2009 5:28:19 AM EDT
| i have alittle shed that i might turn into a chicken coop. but i'm wondering what i can grow in the garden to help cut feed cost. thank you. |
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If you can free range them in the warm months your feed bill will be very small with no work on your part.
The trick to feeding them in the cold months is to grow something that preserves well. Field corn, pumpkins and winter squash come to mind. Could try your hand at growing a grain also.....but that entails a lot of work. I'm sure you'll get other suggestions as well. Good luck with it! 
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Quoted:
...Could try your hand at growing a grain also.....but that entails a lot of work. It's not too bad, if harvesting for animal feed. Wheat is easy to grow, and doesn't have to be threshed or anything for chickens... just cut down and piled up somewhere, straw and all. A few armfuls thrown into a snowy, muddy chicken run both gives them supplemental feed from the grain, and a little dry straw on top of the muck. Our chickens love whole wheat grains - hardest part is keeping 'em from eating the seed wheat from the patch before it has a chance to germinate. 
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Quoted:
you dont need to grow anything. Your chickins will eat aything they can find. grass, flowers, bugs, etc...... Not during a Minnesota winter. You guys in the south have some advantages over us northerners. Of course, we don't have to deal 4 inch long stinging and biting insects and that's a trade I'm willing to make. 
We keep our layers laying year round, so I like to feed the most calorically dense feed available. They need as much energy, IMO, as possible to deal with the cold. I buy "layer crumble" at the mill and just put up with spending the money. |
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Quoted:
Quoted:
you dont need to grow anything. Your chickins will eat aything they can find. grass, flowers, bugs, etc...... Not during a Minnesota winter. You guys in the south have some advantages over us northerners. Of course, we don't have to deal 4 inch long stinging and biting insects and that's a trade I'm willing to make.
We keep our layers laying year round, so I like to feed the most calorically dense feed available. They need as much energy, IMO, as possible to deal with the cold. I buy "layer crumble" at the mill and just put up with spending the money. Our run is mostly in the shade so they eat some bugs but not much green except what we toss over the fence. We keep them supplied with layer crumbles year round and sell the excess eggs for $2 a dozen. Thus far we've not had any out of pocket feed expenses. We currently have 11 layers and 5 more in the pipe who'll start laying late spring. |
| All table scraps and garden waste go to our chickes they will eat nearly anything. Zuccinni are cheap n easy. Punkins are very healthy just smash and throw into the pen. Grass clippings waste grains from elevators the list is endless. I am meaning to go to a couple chinese resturants and see if they will save me some scraps. |
| i have 5 hens they ate most of the summer on zuchinie and squash and tomatoes from garden as well as picken around in the yard and pasture. winter time i let them out of pen during day and thay still scratch around. Monthly food is about 1 50 lb bag a month and a 5 lb bag of oyster shell. abput 12 buck a month. i get 4 to 5 eggs a day pretty good return on investment. |
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corn, sorghum and go to the day old bread store adn get a trunk load of bread for them. talk to folks around you that have hogs, ask where they get cheap feed.
also forgot, go to youtube and google worm bed, growing meal worms, and wax worms. I CANNOT grow wax worms as I am a beekeeper. 
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