Feeding chickens costs a lot more these days than it did when the term "chicken feed" was coined.
You want to save as much money as you can on organic poultry feed, especially if you need chick food for your new baby chicks or have a line of laying hens.
There is a fairly wide variety of chicken feeds to choose from depending on the age and nutritional needs of your flock. Many people choose organic chicken food because it doesn't contain chemicals and will produce many fresh organic eggs for the family. Families whose business is organic chicken farming almost always use this type of food, and you can too.
Feeding chickens economically is easy, especially if you can let them be free range chickens at least part of the day. Foraging for bugs, worms, slugs and snails is an excellent chicken feed addition to their diet, they are free, and we wanted to get rid of them anyway.
If you have the acreage, let them be Free Range Chickens during the day when you are home and can supervise their safety. If that is not possible, get a Chicken Tractor and keep moving it around. Poultry feed is often wasted as the chickens will throw it around and scratch on it. Most market feeders are too low and they toss food out everywhere. If you get a tube type feeder expect the chicken feed to pour over the side, making waste. I like to use a deep feeder. You can just use a bucket attached to the wall. Another tip is to feed another grain, usually corn alongside the regular laying chicken pellet.
What should you be feeding your chickens?
Free range chickens will eat all of the high calorie poultry feed they can find, such as seeds. Then they will go for all the high protein chicken feed they can find, like your bugs, slugs, worms and snails.
Finally, the hungry laying hens will finish off the supply of high vitamin foods, like clover and green grass. This will continue until there is no more forage, and at that time you must make up the diet with commercial poultry feed.
Baby Chicken Feed
Baby chickens eat chick starter rations. Youngsters that are not baby chickens nor adults are called Pullets, and they eat chick starter when 6-8 weeks, followed by grains in addition until they are introduced to the pasture and company of the adult hens, when they use a standard adult chicken feed pellet ration.
Meat birds eat broiler starter. Laying hens eat 20% protein layer feed. These are all balanced chicken feed, with one caveat. You want to buy from a quality mill,one who carries good quality Chicken Supplies. Do not settle for the cheap line most farm stores carry that is mainly bulk wheat by product filler material.
It will not save you money in the long or even short run, but a combination of free range chickens feed and a quality pellet will be a good start.
To provide an even better nutritional status for your laying hens, feed at a 50% ratio whole grain, like cracked corn. In other words, give half of their diet in pellet poultry feed, and half in grains.
On top of that, if you can make them free range chickens for part of the day they will benefit from the vitamins, minerals and proteins found in succulent green plants, and critters like slugs, bugs and worms.
Raising Free Range Chickens exclusively without benefit of added grains, you will need to supplement with calcium for your laying hens.
Medicated Poultry Feed
There is one positive medication you will find in commercial chicken feed, and that is a coccidiostat in medicated chick and turkey starter formulas. If you are new to feeding chickens, just go with the medicated chick starter. It keeps your baby chickens from coming down with coccidiosis, a potentially lethal disease that is 100% preventable.
Chicken feed is no longer full of hormones, so we can dispel that fallacy. Hormone supplementation was banned in 1959, and is now illegal, so no worries there.
Feeding Chickens at My Farm
We have 33 well loved and pretty ornamental laying hens and one knockout drop dead gorgeous rooster.
My baby chickens eat a grow gel packet the minute they arrive home, followed by medicated chick starter. Their water bowl is filled with marbles or small bouncy balls for two weeks until they stop throwing themselves into the water and take on a bit of height for safety.
My pullets get unmedicated chick grower with cracked corn on the side, and when they are big enough to fend for themselves, I introduce them to the adult flock and the big hen house. At that time they have free range outdoors under supervision against predators, and then go on the adult hens diet. This is a gentle transition method of feeding chickens after they grow out of babyhood.
Adult Hens and Roosters
Everyone here gets to be free range chickens part of the day, then will find four buckets in their hen house: 20% protein layer pellets, one of whole grains like cracked corn, one of oyster shell calcium and the last one of grit.
All the chickens here have access to fresh water at all times. It still amazes me how much they need to drink.
We have a large family so there are table scraps daily that go out to the chickens. They love everything, pancakes, meat, vegetable scraps, even their own eggs, cooked or from the leftover shells. I have heard rumors that feeding chickens their own egg shells promotes chickens eating their own eggs, but this has never been my experience, and since they are a good source of calcium, out to the chickens they go.
We also keep a garden going through the summer, replanting as needed to stretch the food through to November. The chickens get all manner of greens, squash and corn from the gardens. Since our local feed store charges quite a bit for layer pellets, this circle way of feeding chickens is frugal living at it's finest!
When raising free range chickens you need to keep in mind that chicken predators are a clear and present danger in all areas of the country. Don't forget to make a plan for Raising Baby Chicks in a secure Chicken Coop.
