Chicken feed formula - mostly finished

We are often asked what we use for chicken feed, so here is a description of what we are currently doing with great success.

First let me stress that the primary feed source is from roaming our green grassy yard and pasture, about 3 acres worth.  In the summer we don't usually supplement at all, but in  the winter we do for two reasons:

1. fewer bugs - a chicken's natural diet consist of a lot of insects. There just aren't many in the winter so their protein intake goes down to where they don't produce eggs without supplementation.

2. lighting - in order to keep egg producing up as in their natural habitat, we must provide light for an additional 4 to 6 hours a day.  We do this by closing the chickens in the coop each night (they always collect in the coop roosts by themselves, we just close the door). the lights turn on at about 2am, and we open the coop doors when we get up in the morning. The problem is that they are in the coop unable to forage for food for a good 6 to 8 hours each day. If we didn't supplement that limits the hours they could collect food to the point where they under eat for lack of time.

So, we supplement in the winter.  Here is the current formula:

1/2 organic chicken feed
1/4 organic rabbit feed (about 80% alfalfa)
1/4 whole organic seeds (whatever is available sunflower, wheat, rye, oats, etc)

I simply pour those approximate amounts into a small metal trash can, lock on the lid, and shake, rattle, roll it around to mix. We aren't too concerned with the feed being identical every day, because it just isn't like that in nature. If  they eat mostly seeds or alfalfa for a day or two, its fine. No farm animals in the wild eat an identical mix of food every day of their lives, so if nature doesn't worry about it, I will scratch it off my worry list!

Then we add kitchen scraps on a daily basis. (we only eat organic ourselves so the scraps are also)

This mix gives winter eggs that are very close to the nutrient value of summer eggs. The yolks are usually bright orange with two obvious layers of whites, with nice thick hard shells.  Egg production remains at the standard 3 eggs per day for every 4 chickens.

We have installed a "BioPod"  to start growing our own insects in the winter. As soon as the insect colony gets going we will have a daily supply of natural protein for them. 

Next we are removing hte soy from their diet completely. As you can see, the soy in their diet is already about 1/4th of what a commercial chicken receives, but we want to remove it entirely. For information on why look for another blog post on that subject.

So that's it! Our chickens are healthy, happy, and producing a steady stream of amazingly healthy eggs all winter long.