I get asked all the time what we feed our chickens/pigs/cows. People want to know, and rightfully so. So here it is. This is the feed mix I came up with that I’m about to order for the chickens (the vast majority of which are pullets who are just starting to lay).
Green Machine Layer Feed
Corn – 750#
Barley – 500#
Roasted Soybeans – 300#
Linseed Meal – 200#
Alfalfa Meal – 100#
Oyster Shell – 100#
Premix – 50#
CP – 15.5%
Openness and transparency and all that.
But mainly I’m just an internet-dependent fellow who knows that if I put my feed recipes up on on the internet then I will always be able to find them.
Green Machine Gestating Sow Feed
Oats – 1750#
Linseed Meal – 100#
Alfalfa Meal – 100#
Premix – 50#
CP – 12%
I’ve been messing around with feed rations for a while now, trying to work as much of the corn & soy out of the mix as I can. The most frequent request from customers and prospective customers is that the feeds be GMO free. As I can’t buy any non-GMO corn or soybeans around here, that leaves me to experiment with the non-GMO feed ingredients I can get locally. The list is pretty short, though it’s a lot better than it was a year or two ago.
Oats – 11% CP
Barley 11.5% CP (farm-grown)
Alfalfa Meal – 18% CP
Linseed Meal – 34% CP
that is so WRONG,SCAREY, and a really BAD MARK on MINNESOTA…..that you can not buy NON-GMO Theres so many more local farmers selling at farmers markets(which is where I met you)cant you ban together and do some sort of BOYCOTT??
I’m not sure what a boycott would accomplish other than leaving me with a bunch of hungry critters. The problem is that we alternative-farming types are still too few and far between. The best option is to re-create all the conventional infrastructure (grain storage, feed grinding & mixing) on our own farm but that takes time and money. We’re making progress, but we aren’t there just yet.
Do you have this ground up???
I have all the mixes ground to varying degrees. Anything with a lot of oats that’s going into a bulk feeder will be ground more coarsely or have the oats left whole. Oats (and barley) have a high proportion of fibrous husk that tends to not flow well in bulk feeders.
Thanks Andrew. This is valuable. It’s great to see what someone is actually doing.
The feed posts on my blog are viewed most often. Readers are looking for this information.
Andrew, what does CP mean?
Crude Protein
What is the rations for layer mix, how much of each seed?
Corn – 750#
Barley – 500#
Roasted Soybeans – 300#
Linseed Meal – 200#
Alfalfa Meal – 100#
Oyster Shell – 100#
Premix – 50#