Organic, GMO-free Homemade Chicken Feed

You can't even really see their heads because they're moving so fast! YUM!

I simply can't believe how big they've got!

I show people pics or a few people have come over to pick up some seedlings from our greenhouse and they're like "omgwut? They're so big!" I know. And they're not even full grown yet! We've got a few more weeks until they start laying and let me tell you, I'm so excited to one day walk into the coop, check the nesting boxes and find delicious, organic, pastured eggs.

I've wanted chickens for years. YEARS I say. I always said I'd have four kids, a giant garden and chickens. And sure enough, that's what I've got! I wasn't counting on three boys, but thus far I'm still living, so.......

And now I get to make my own organic chicken feed to ensure that our Ladies, as my littlest one calls them, get the best they can in this life. I will say it's easier to head down to your local feed store and just pick up a bag of pellets. But really, it's just not as healthy for them, and I want super healthy eggs for us!

We let our Ladies free range. They've got access to over 400 square feet of yummy clover, bugs and whatever they can scratch up, a lovely compost pile full of kitchen scraps and bugs, and now they've got their very own homemade, GMO free, organic-to-boot chicken feed. Now, as much as I'd love for the Ladies to forage all year long for their food, it's just not possible. Where we live, we have frozen ground for part of our winter, and that means no scratching for bugs or other goodies. Also, I like to give them a little treat every morning when I open the coop. I know, they've got me wrapped around their little chicken feet, but I love it!

Finding a feed mixture wasn't too hard. One just needs to know what a chicken eats. Chickens are omnivores. They eat grasses, seeds, fruit, grains like corn and wheat seeds, worms, bugs, and other insects. Most laying pellets you can buy at your local feed store are mainly composted of soy (which is almost 100% GMO in this country for commercial use) and corn (also mainly 100% GMO commercially). For us? GMO just isn't cool. So we source our grains wisely. The idea eventually when we get our 50 acres and a horse is just to grow our own. But until then, we use Amazon.com and Azure Standard. I actually use Azure exclusively, but should I not be able to source something there, or prices rise, I've got Amazon on backup.

With the recipe, I've listed price per pound that we pay so you can see how much this feed is going to cost. These prices are as of May 2014. Also, be aware these are the prices for the smaller packages. If you buy say 5 lbs of oat groats it's $1.15 per pound, but you can get it for 87¢ per pound if you buy 50 lbs at a time. It all depends on how much room and money you have.

So lets get to feeding the Ladies eh?

You will need: 
- 12 cups of oat groats ($1.15)
- 8 cups of hard red wheat (88¢)
- 8 cups of soft white wheat (74¢)
- 6 cups of whole corn (83¢)
- 4 cups of millet ($1.42)
- 4 cups of kamut ($1.45)
- 4 cups of lentils ($1.97)
- 4 cups of split yellow peas (60¢)
- 2 cups of sunflower seeds (60¢)
- 1 cup of large flake nutritional yeast ($8.60)
- 1 cup of kelp granuals ($6.15)

Now all you have to do is stick the ingredients in a bucket or tub (with a lid so nothing can get in!) and mix it up with your hands. Easy peasy. If you want, you can use a drizzle of coconut oil (I did) to make sure the  yeast and the kelp don't get lost in the bottom of the mix. These two things have vitamins, mineral and amino acids that are great for your chickens' health. This mixture has about 17% protein, which is what the laying feed at the feed store has and what is claimed to be needed for healthy laying chickens.

My ladies get only or two handfuls of this mixture a day (about a half cup). In the winter, the 6 of them will probably eat about 1.5 cups of the mixture based on some initial calculations. This recipe makes 52 cups of mixture (Im not counting the kelp and yeast as it sticks to the other grains). The entire mixture above costs $28.25. (And remember by buying in larger quantities, you can severely reduce your price!). This means that it's around 54¢ per cup.

You really can't beat organic, non-gmo feed for less than 30¢ a day. That's just over $9 a month (on average) to give your chickens the best you can, and you get eggs in the process and meat when they're done laying.

NOTE: Once we've made it through summer and into the winter months, these initial calculated will be reworked with new data.