You can also request a free revision, if there are only slight inconsistencies in your order. I mix it with my chicken feed (50%). Eggs are the best I’ve ever had. Plants that have gone to seed. Great post! My tip may not be for everyone, but it’s more conventional if you want that extra buck – cancel CABLE. I made koi self-feeders by sewing fiberglass window screen to hula-hoops with monofilament fishing line. I gave it up for the winter, because I was frustrated and also I couldn’t figure out how to keep it from freezing without keeping it inside where the smell would get to us (my daughter is a supper-smeller). Thank you for your blog and all the great information you share! Nice post with some great ideas. Shop around. Until they are several weeks old they will not be safe even on the water. Take A Sneak Peak At The Movies Coming Out This Week (8/12) New Movie Releases This Weekend: February 12th – February 14th; How Hollywood celebs are celebrating Lunar New Year One thing I know is to not feed a lot of corn as your will find them full of fat when they quit laying..lean and mean egg laying machines is what you want. and a lot of extra work cleaning out the coop. Ours love kale as well as spinach, green beans, small amounts of apples (no pips), cucumber, strawberry tops. I feed them fermented feed. We have a little, road-side market in our little town that is the best spot for free food. And not to forget pomogranets, these trees will also grow inside if you are in colder climates. Chickens love mulberries. I’ll have to do more research to see if stockfeed suppliers ferment their stockfeed. the most incorrect idea is that meal worms are yucky. We put all of our kitchen waste in there along with the trimmings from the garden and to be honest any of the pest animals that we trap and kill on the property. This is actually a topic with a bit of debate surrounding it… (Have you noticed everything causes a debate these days?) Free range as much as possible. Plus, it just happens to be (about) the same price per month as keeping 14 chickens and let’s face it, why are you watching tv when you’ve got so many chickens to entertain you?! It’s a bit of work keeping all the systems going but when it runs well it really saves us money on feed. It’s a feeding frenzy when I show up at the coop. She's also a YouTube star.…” So anything from a lawnmower or if you can cut grass and keep it for a while (or put it somewhere covered/in a bag/warm). Rats and mice think free-choice chicken feeding is the best thing ever, and if you struggle with rodent problems in your coop, it’s likely your all-you-can-eat grain buffet is to blame. - no pics cos they only come out to grab the spinach and scuttle back into their bed/hide! We also have a pond with tilapia in it that feeds a stilling basin. I didn’t know that you could ferment stockfeed! Learned this the hard way when i had a “compost bucket” out my back door. She sat on 1 egg. Elizabeth, Actually quite the contrary.. fruit will help with egg production. The BEST small pet for anyone. Thanks for chiming in, Richard. Great tips! Be sure to keep good hunting kitties around to deal with annoying rodents that are always attracted to chicken coops and the crops you plant to feed them. and I’m getting no eggs at all. Our piggies loved broccoli. Come morning my girls fight over who gets to the try first, and it is watched constantly all day when producing. It’s first come- first serve and a great way to supplement the feed for chickens, pigs or other critters around your place. doesn’t recognize them. Take A Sneak Peak At The Movies Coming Out This Week (8/12) New Movie Releases This Weekend: February 12th – February 14th Confused about the no grass, as ours also grazed on the lawn when the weather was warm and dry. He is usually up at 5.30 am. If you go the meal worm route, remember they need a constant temperature. I'd give them little treats of fruit that I was eating and never had a problem but advice around fruit is hit and miss. (Shh, don’t tell him.) Is it the same as chicken eggs? Please keep in mind this research is a High School project and result differ. 10 times better than rabbits, hamsters, Guinea pigs etc. 1. My birds don’t like fodder and it was a ton of work to make it. The sugars in it work quite well. I realize this isn’t possible for everyone, but if you can, allow your chickens to roam around your yard. Grow Fodder. They normally do not use GMO seeds or Roundup.Mobile shopping place. Ours eat better than us, the reduced veg section at Tesco (after 7pm ideally) is our friend. Milk powder in bulk from the dairy firms cheese factorys or pig milk powder,skim is best but beggars can’t be choosers, you can buy cultures to make yoghurt the chooks will love. The duckweed feeds off the ammonia (nitrogen) produced by the fish or decaying plants and helps to purify the water. They LOVE it. That sounds like a good idea, but in many states that is inviting bears in for a tasty treat.The smell might attract other predators in as well even just in curiosity. The 'No' ListPotatoOnionRhubarbmowed grass cutting, they fermentButtercups and daisiesOfficially biscuits that humans eat but in reality mine likes a tiny bit of plain Hobnob or Digestive.The Yes ListEverything everyone has already said plus strawberries including the leafy topsmelon and the skinbanana mine prefers the skin small portionblueberriesbeetroot particularly the sort shredded in posh saladbaby corn as well as sweetcornparsley. For us, it’s really about the quality of the product; our milk is fresh, beyond organic, and wonderfully raw. I buy non GMO or soy feed I mix with flax seed that you can buy for $1 lbs oyster crack shell and crack non GMO corn mix all together last me like 3 weeks $45 plus I feed them all the peels from my veggies that I cook that day, cook rice left overs, pasta left over, salmon left over you can give them the eggs shell after you cook your eggs, and When I have to much eggs,I make them scramble eggs in coconut oil, they are always hungry lol plus they eat hrass all day long, I love my 6 ladies and their orange yolk egg color they are so much fun. I must say that although I raise meat birds, these first 6 hens are the “Lucky Clucker Club” who will live out their natural lives and be buried in the back yard with grave markers next to the cat. We canceled about 3 years ago, and are no worse for the wear. Ferment your chicken feed. I use a shovelful of *fresh* horse manure in a cat litter bucket. We were growing the fodder. It is considered unsightly and an aggressive grower. And I can get it for $1 gallon. It reduces flies, as you are breaking their life cycle by having the maggots eaten. They love grass and dandelion leaves! . Delivery. Yes– they are hard on gardens! I'd avoid iceberg lettuce as it often causes upset stomachs and no onion type foods, think potatoes are a no go, otherwise most things are okay. Store your Carrots at 32 to 40 degrees F, or in fall and winter, just leave them in the garden until you want them. These products can store many books. Carrots, celery, cucumber, greens, peppers, cabbage, broccoli, corn on the cob, lettuce (not iceberg) eggplant, kale, spinach, courgettes. Most of the maggots will drop out over night, so I place a tray with a couple inches of sawdust under the bucket so the creepy feed will stay put long enough the chickens to find them. Zoomalia.pt é uma loja de animais online com preços baixos que propõe mais de 100 000 referências na alimentação, alimentos, produtos e … I’ve been poking around your blog a bit and I’m in love with it! P@H said not grass? This is great work. Thank you for what I anticipate to be a gold mine of helpful information! 5. Great article,,, in addition to what you have mentioned, I save the egg shells dry them and crash them to nearly powder and feed them this instead of buying oyster shells. When they defecate the IMO’s (Indigenous Micro Organisms) – that you collect and grow and then innoculate the floor with – eat the feces and prevent it from smelling which means you never have to clean out the chicken run but it never smells AND the floor actually becomes 10% of their healthy feed. ? When the maggots stop, I give it a few days and then dump the bucket and start again. Maggot buckets. I know this thought might cause some of you to recoil in horror, but keep in mind this is exactly what great-grandma would have done. I never smelled it once, flies go into the bucket through the holes, lay their eggs and very quickly the eggs hatch and the maggots eat the meat and fall out the holes and the chickens gobble them up. I have also found that if I feed the chickens pelleted feed instead of crumbled feed they don’t waste as much. He put the meat in the bottom of the bucket drilled holes in the side of the bucket, put a lid on it then hung it in the chicken area. As for weeding out the non- producers, that is a tough decision. Some folks also collect stale bread items from bakeries, but I personally avoid this. ... 8 dicks and a Guinea Fowl. A A's AMD AMD's AOL AOL's AWS AWS's Aachen Aachen's Aaliyah Aaliyah's Aaron Aaron's Abbas Abbas's Abbasid Abbasid's Abbott Abbott's Abby Abby's Abdul Abdul's Abe Abe's Abel Abel's I also had no idea that fermenting stockfeed increases nutrition for animals, I assumed it would be bad for them. Not all stores will allow this, but ask if you can have the wilted lettuce, squishy tomatoes, and bruised apples. Thanks for the tip! grapes and pear as treats.Absolutely give them grass, as they get use to being in there run they can have more + more, it's recommended 10 minutes the first day, then 20, then 30 etc to build up their tummys to it as it can cause bloat. I dont want then to get the eggs or the baby ducks when they hatch. As a teen with a job I bought them specific things.When googling I found that the best advice was often listed when searching for cavy rather than guinea pig, and found lots about adequate cage size, best kept indoors etc. Mine don't like but I know they would be allowed: cucumber, celery (there was something about the stringy bits but can't remember as mine wouldn't eat it), courgette. Homesteading | Self Sufficient Living | Living off the Land, 125 Comments | Jill Winger |    Last Updated: September 25, 2018, When you first realize your homegrown eggs are costing you more than what you’d pay for eggs at the store…. I don’t give mine any grapefruit, orange, lemon, lime, etc. They do like and get in moderation peppers, tomatoes, peppers, apples and grapes. We’ve begun to sell our extra eggs and that just about covers the cost of feed. One day my husband set out to make a maggot bucket for the chickens, and I was like ”oh yuck, another wacky experiment”. So we’re planning to have chickens as soon as we buy a home (in the next 4 months). Any more we get, I won’t promise that. We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us. Loja online de animais de estimação Zoomalia. To use this feature subscribe to Mumsnet Premium - get first access to new features see fewer ads, and support Mumsnet. Learn how your comment data is processed. Of course, if you do decide to do this, you will want to make sure that you have a nice, dry place to store the seed so that it does not start to mold. I plan to add a small room on the house-side of our future barn and wanted to see different set ups. Here in North East Montana it gets pretty chilly for the ladies to be out in winter. Too cold and you’;l lose the lot! He is a truck driver and plans to haul wheat this year so we may be able to find cheap feed to haul back home from other areas. This problem can be avoided by only feeding as much as your chickens can eat in one day. In Michigan we can get free duckweed from any body of standing water. Learn which crops are best for your garden, plus a step-by-step process so you know exactly WHEN and HOW to plant them! I also crush my eggs from cooking and feed them back to the chickens. Much healthier too. They will eat carrots but not keen on parsnips or courgettes. Thanks. Hilarious!! Oh and celery (at least when I had mine) was okay as long as cut widthwise into small pieces so that there were no long stringy bits as apparently this can be tough to break down and can cause problems (think long strong cheese wire/hair type situation in a sensitive delicate digestive tract... not pleasant). We do many of these same things to save money. They love to eat it direct from the lawn on a dry day. Another suggestion if to get food scraps from a local restaurant or, as I did, bring home the trash from the breakroom at work. We do alot of these things listed already. I could possibly even do the meal worms I know there will be gagging but anything for our animals…, Thank you again for a wonderful thought provoking post . 9. As this technology catches on it will encourage authors to by-pass traditional publishers, leading to a far cheaper product. They hate the snow and cold! Ours are sniffy about carrots. Talk widget showing discussions of the day & trending threads, Subscribe to Mumsnet emails direct to your inbox. Their ultimate paradise is fresh herbs. It is tested for 60 ingredients and certified nonGMO. They’ll eat the grass and eventually most of the sprouted grains, too, and it helps with the bright yellow yolks. I raise duckweed to feed my koi and keep the water clear (duckweed acts as a great filter), but I hadn’t thought about feeding it to the chickens. These long pieces can get trapped in the crop causing crop compaction and/or sour crop; they just can’t process them. We have lots of wild raspberry bushes right near our chicken coop. Our girls love the extra whey we give them from our goat cheese making. For gardening and chooks. No thanks. If you live near any Amish farms, they may be able to tell you where they get their feed. They were selling it as a winter cover crop. Why aren't they supposed to have it? While I like the thought of allowing my flock to self-regulate, it can be a problem if you have lots of rodents. Thanks for chiming in, David! The soldier grubs (Black Soldier Fly larvae) are amazing little things. In fact I had to bring one in the house yesterday because she hurt her leg, but she is standing on it this morning, so it is back to the hen house today. Another trick is to split a large order with a friend. Not freeloaders. I grow swiss chard and comfrey all year round and produce an organic salad every fall or winter day, mixing the greens with sprouted hard winter wheat (organic, from the grocery store, in 25 # bags). Cat little buckets would work pretty well for this too as they dont seal shut all the way. We use fermented gain with equal parts Duck Weed with the test group and the control group a commercially prepared chicken feed. They will eat it, but it is not their favorite food. We sell our excess eggs which pays our store bought grain bill. That’s a smart idea– I wish we had Amish here! I just learned about duckweed and azolla! Avoid potato.Hay is supposed to be given in pretty much unlimited amounts as it's the best thing for their teeth. I was told the other day by a farmer/rancher here in the Kern River Valley that black eyed peas are excellent feed for chickens, high in protein, much better then corn scratch. I live in AR where hardly anything is grown/produced so finding a farmer is next to impossible. Grass is great for pigs keeps their teeth down and fills the bellies! Jill, Our local coop will fill up our trashcans (in an open trailer) with grains or cracked corn or even specially-mixed feed, if we call ahead. Justin Rhodes from permaculture chickens and Geoff Lawton from Zaytona Farms have been very helpful in our efforts to cut cost and keep the girls happy and healthy.The girls seem more then happy and run to the compost before they run to the feed. Providing oyster shell can reduce feed consumption up to around 7% as hens will eat more feed than they need to obtain calcium. Even chicken parts that we don’t eat. My neighbor gives me the spent grains after he has brewed his beer. Potatos & tomatoes good for this, again. However, our turkeys eat more and we can’t keep up. They like grass too. I buy store brought laying pellets for $11.00 a bag. thanks for your info, as it has helped me a lot with my chooks. Thank you very much. Once or twice. I also like to take a bucket to the garden with me when I weed, and I collect all the weeds in the bucket and transport them to the flock as well. Plus, there is always someone wanting farm-fresh eggs! Watch breaking news videos, viral videos and original video clips on CNN.com. I don’t give them onions, garlic or chillies. I enjoy watching our chickens run around the property. Mix your own feed. If you’re a duckweed grower, please leave a comment and share your wisdom! 4. We cancelled everything long ago and don’t miss it, but I tend to be obsessively frugal with certain things and somehow your tip makes me feel better that I do still have to buy chicken feed… at least I get a return on my investment! Good for humans too. Sweet little animals - enjoy them! And the best eggs ever! It Sprouts great and lots cheaper than grains from Bob’s Red Mill where I use to buy sprouting grains. My grandfather took in his brothers whenever they lost their jobs in the city and they then helped him work the farm. Your writing is always rewarding and interesting for farmers like me. Never sacrifice your chickens’ health just to save a buck. to leave my TV on overnight so neighbour can hear? They will also dig little old all over the yard to display then and those can be a tripping hazard so if you have small children or you have any balance issues yourself that could present problems. We found that feeding pellets instead of crumbles, and garden greens really cut down on our cost, but it is great to have so many more ideas! No eggs to sell this time of year. My chickens have even been known to chase me down in the yard when they see me carrying any sort of white bucket. We went to the local Farmers Union and bought 30lb bag of Winter Rye for $12.00. Just remember– cheaper isn’t always better, and if you are feeding an ultra low-quality feed, it can be very hard on your birds. Apparently broccoli & kale in small amounts as it can make them a bit gassy. The Cowboy and I have been having this very same debate around here. I wish more cooks did this! I particularly like that the article recommends buying the feed in bulk. Kids tend to favor duck eggs over anything. I work part time at the feed store, so i get an employee discount lol. I think the bag is a 20 kilo bag. Use wheat bran or oatmeal for bedding. I distinctly remember our vet telling us to feed our pig mashed potato every day when she was elderly. We supply healthy and quality DOCs (broiler, cockerel, pullet and noiler) from reputable hatcheries such as REPUTE, ABIDAN, BTA, FG, ZARTECH, FIDAN, NASTECH, CASCADA, DAHMAS, CHI, FARM SUPPORT, AMO, NPG, AGRITED, CHIKUN (OLAM), e.t.c.