Growing your own chicken feed

[CHICKENHEAD]

I have been wanting to try and grow my own chicken feed. I only raise around 10-25 chickens max through the winter. With the prices of corn going through the roof its quite silly. I live on 20 acres of mostly timber. I have a few acres cleared out that I have been planting winter wheat, and clover for the deer. I have an idea to plant some corn, milo, and nekkid oats all seperate. My idea is to be able to harvest the 3 crops and store the grain for winter. Problem is I have no tractor. Do you think it will even be worth while to do this? It will be a lot of work. As I will be doing it all with a 4x4 atv, and by hand. I thought about buying the grain in bulk and storing it, but I cant even find a grain mill in my area. Whats some tips or ideas I should think of? I was even thinking about field peas, any other crops that may be easier?

[Deberosa]

I have been wanting to try and grow my own chicken feed. I only raise around 10-25 chickens max through the winter. With the prices of corn going through the roof its quite silly. I live on 20 acres of mostly timber. I have a few acres cleared out that I have been planting winter wheat, and clover for the deer. I have an idea to plant some corn, milo, and nekkid oats all seperate. My idea is to be able to harvest the 3 crops and store the grain for winter. Problem is I have no tractor. Do you think it will even be worth while to do this? It will be a lot of work. As I will be doing it all with a 4x4 atv, and by hand. I thought about buying the grain in bulk and storing it, but I cant even find a grain mill in my area. Whats some tips or ideas I should think of? I was even thinking about field peas, any other crops that may be easier?


I am looking at the same strategies but I only have 4.5 acres and I have a tractor... However the ideas may be the same. I am going to plant spelt and Comfrey. You may want to think about comfrey because that's a perrenial so once it's established it there is less maintenance. Another idea is pumpkins. Chickens like them and they can be stored for quite a while.

I wasn't planning on using a grain mill, I figured I would store the spelt cut and dried and feed it to the chickens right on the stalks.

Are chickens the only animals you have?

[CHICKENHEAD]

All I have is chickens. I dont know what spelt and Comfrey is, but I am fixing to google it. I am wanting something easy like milo where I can just go and cut the end of grain of the stalks. I dont have to mill it either I could just store it in barrels or something.

[CHICKENHEAD]

How do you store pumkins to last a long time? What about squash? I had some squash laying around that dried out from last year and they were full of seeds, how could you dry squash out to where it would dry out and still have all the seeds? I thought maybe if you could hang it?

[Deberosa]

Not sure where you are but here they store just fine in the garage because we don't get that cold. I just tossed out the last squash. they like squash too. So I don't dry it out for them, just feed it in pieces. They love the seeds.

[dreams_in_color]

I found this site while looking for articles on how to build a chicken coop. http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/silveira44a.html
Gives directions on how to grow a garden/coop combo to feed both the garden and the chickens. I am sure you will have to still supplement but this would help out a lot.

I am working on plans to build one based on the article and plan to put a hot-frame to start plants somewhere on the side of the coop. I am thinking in the front.

Susan

[CHICKENHEAD]

Hey! thats an awesome article. Thats how my coop is setup. Almost exactly, this will be the first time I will try it, it should work nice. The only thing I am doing different I am making it where my chickens will be able to free range in my garden when I let them.

[dreams_in_color]

I was talking to a friend at work today about letting the chicken run through the garden side to eat bugs. How big do the plants need to be in order to let the chicken range through the plants without them destroying them?

[Deberosa]

I don't know - but my chickens destroy any garden! It's amazing how much they can rototill!

[CHICKENHEAD]

Here is a picture of my coop and my garden, and the fence I put around both.

http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/3429/dsc00230il2.jpg

[bee_pipes]

Nice looking coop. Here's a post with some links to excellent articles about alternative goat feed - has info about feed for other livestock and talks about comfrey:

http://www.backwoodshome.com/forum/yabb/forum2.pl?board=fau-livestock;action=display;num=1197929534;11#11

Regards,
Pat

[dreams_in_color]

CHickenhead,

Your coop looks great. Where did you find the plans for the actual coop? Outside looks easy but not sure exactly how the inside has to be setup.

Susan

[CHICKENHEAD]

I made my own plan. It is a simple 8x8 shed, using 2x4's Nothing fancy