i know Im asking the wrong place but does someone know of a method to log back into an Instagram account? I was dumb forgot my account password. I appreciate any help you can offer me
Robert, I came for the chicken feed and stayed for your commentary! You are willing to speak your mind and provide logic too. Thank you for facts and telling it like it is. Blessings!
I just stumbled on your video today (Feb 2023) and I can't believe you made this 8 years ago!! You must have seen the writing on the wall long before the rest of us. Homesteaders across the country are complaining about the purina brands they buy at TS and their chickens not laying. Your video could have been made yesterday! Thanks for your info.
Any time a "for profit" corporation gets involved with food, be it animal or human, quality and REAL nutritional needs take a backseat to stockholder dividends. "Crude protein" is a great example: while 25% crude protein may seem like a lot, USDA allows that to include feathers, hair, hooves & nails and more, ALL UNDIGESTABLE! Depending on the cost of the feed, one labelled at 25% (pick any number though) could have as little as 12% DIGESTABLE protein and THAT number is starvation for poultry. Just one of many examples of how the huge food lobby has us dazed and confused!
I got a comment from someone showing me HIS chickens waiting to feed and the "feeding frenzy" when he did! Unfortunately, I had to delete the comment due to his language during the video. Please folks, talk how you want with your "crowd", but on my channels there is NO profanity, NO direct personal attacks and NOTHING in poor taste. I drove truck most of my working life and can teach most new words and phrases. I choose not to. You should too!
+Sean Henderson My channel, my rules. Your channel, your rules. Foul language is cropping up everywhere and no one stands up to it because they don't want to embarrass themselves to total stranger by saying out loud what the stranger are thinking! This is not a channel about morals, so this is the end of this discussion. NO PROFANITY, NO PERSONAL ATTACKS, my rules and anyone who questions this rule, is themselves, questionable!
I get,"Your channel, Your rules." What eludes me is when, people stop a communication because of a word that they do no like. The point is the communication, the words are merely tools and some people have a limited tool set or vocabulary. Some people are less imaginative than others, but this does not mean that their communication is any less valuable or important. The expletives are real words and can be found in the dictionary. You can go ahead and delete my comment, which is neither a personal attack nor does it contain any profanity. But if you delete my comment you might as well add a 3rd criteria to your channel censoring, "the comments that you just don't like."
+Sean Henderson We will post this one last comment from Sean, not because of the last sentence challenge.... I do not respond to those, or dares..... but because the points made are points some language-impaired would think valid. But no other posts on this subject will be posted, as this channel is not about morality, it is about sustainable, out-of -the-box living. We all understand that some people do not have the vocabulary of others. My brother, with seven or eight degrees, for example, loves to use words that few people know, to describe something in five syllables that could be as easily described in two. But he and I, seldom use four letter words, profanity, or ethnic stereotyping, because this makes one appear ignorant and intolerant. We all know what profanity is, even the Slavey Indians I lived with in the Canadian NWT, who punctuated every sentence with one word that begins with an "F", several times...... until their wives appeared, then that word disappeared!I have traveled through more of North America than 99% of the people in the world and through much of Mexico and much of SE Asia. Even the least educated and conversant in the most remote of places, knows the difference between profanity and acceptable language. As many say, "If you are in doubt about the use of a word, it probably should not be used." My position has nothing to de with one's education level or vocabulary. It has to do with the fact that we all know what language is acceptable language in what company. Using it for shock value in public, within MY earshot, will get a rebuke that will bring tears to your eyes, without a single word of profanity. If this were done far more often, we would not have to be in public places hearing words that would shock a truck driver...... and remember that I was one for nearly 45 years. My channels attract many people, from the very religious, to the very conservative, to the ultra Liberal (like me) and most importantly, the young who are learning and testing language skills. We and this channel need to be and are, an example to follow. My deeds and knowledge are not enough. Respect, humility and more are on display with every video I post, every word I say. I know I have slipped a couple times with words and I let these pass instead of editing them. That I am human and make mistakes is an important part of the education I wish to offer: "it is OK to not be perfect, just strive for it." One of my favorite saying is: "I aimed for the stars. I missed. So I settled for the moon." So I try and sometimes miss in the video. However in writing, there is no excuse and there are MANY synonyms for EVERY curse word. Use them, or don't get posted here! I am NOT sending a message to people that ANY language is acceptable! We will be polite!
This video maybe old but wow look at what we are going thru right now, 2022/2023 with chicken feed and no egg production, coming here to say, HOW RIGHT YOU ARE ABOUT PURINA. I’m gonna try to use your mixture. Thank you so much. Agree with you on your point of view.
I live in Kentucky and have started feeding whole grains. My cost for 50 lbs of my recipe is $9.84. I'm using a recipe I adapted from yours. I use corn, soy, wheat, oats, and sunflower seeds. I have a local feed store that sales these ingredients very cheap and it's from local farmers on all products except sunflower. Thanks for your videos. I fully enjoy them!
Sadly, I HAVE to be gluten-free. The symptoms are VARIED, not just bathroom issues. But ALL of the symptoms cause extreme inflammation inside one's body, which sooner or later will likely cause cancer. I didn't start having issues until I was in my 40's. I believe with my whole heart that those of us that did get hit later in life is due to folks like Monsanto and all the GMO foods and additives to our processed foods. In researching why I was sick I learned that wheat is added as fillers to so many processed things that have no reason to have wheat in them. And the wheat grown these days have been bred to have nearly 80% more gluten in it than it did 100 yrs ago. Then you take the monster wheat and put it in EVERYTHING and VIOLA....a lot of people are basically "overdosed" to the point of no return. Just a little fyi. Thanks for the info. I'm a new subscriber!
Excellent video. I'm in Alberta so fortunately we don't have to deal with Purina. Local producers make local feeds much like yours with locally grown crops. I worked for a farm supply and feed mill in Grande Prairie where I worked the mill. All local grains bought from local farmers and we just ran it through the mixer and bagged it. Ran the corn through the roller of course. Under $20 a bag Canadian which is still cheaper then the big mills in Alberta.
I love Alberta. In 1975-6 I flew out of Edmonton to Echo Bay for a mining contract. Spent some time in Calgary & Banff as well. That was all LONG before there were any skyscrapers in Edmonton and no West Edmonton Mall either!
Hi Robert thanks for sharing, I am just about to start rearing chickens so your feed mix [once I buy the grain] will come in very handy. all the best keep the videos coming.
Thank you so much for this useful information!!!. I made the recommended mix using milo, wheat, corn and soybean meal. The birds are laying as usual and they seem to like this new mix a lot. Compared to the commercial stuff, this is CHEAPER, healthier and something I have noticed is that the birds eat less quantity, so a 50 pound bag lasts more than twice what the commercial feed used to last...!!!!. this is amazing and I'm very happy with the results. I wish I would have done this a long time ago... I'm using this mix for chicken, ducks, turkeys and even my guineas and pheasants!!
Thank you! I am always glad to hear that some of my information is of use and useful! On this feed, I have 4 1/2 year old hens that are laying like first year, so it does work and costs less!
Thank you for the great information as I'm just starting a little home/backyard chicken raising. Have four chickens ready to start laying and need to get feed so I'm going to try your recipe for feed.
Linda Kay Murphy I hope it works as good for as it does for us. Just remember that you still need to add a "premix" of vitamins and minerals, unless they are getting LOTS of greens and insect. My recipe is not complete without the premix and I neglected to say that in the video!
@@conniewojahn6445 thats what my chickens used to do when I started giving them mix grain but after a bit i started grinding their grain and till today they dont leave anything back
Thank you so much, I am starting to raise my own chickens, I only have 1 roster and 3 hens. They haven't started laying yet. Now I am going to get the feed you talked about. Thanks again.
We’ve been using Mc Murray for our birds every year since we started raising them! Always, and I mean always had good luck. Everyone is usually amazed by the fact that they mail them right to our little post office!
My hens are from McMurrays. They are now 3 years old In Oct. They quit laying about a month or so. I feed them crumble all scraps, sweet feed same as I feed my mini horse for the winter. If they don't start laying again before this bag of crumble is done they will be going into the pot!! I love what you feed but can't afford that much for feed for my nine girls!!!Good luck and please continue with the great videos!🐔🐔
+Gimpy Granny If your hens are in their molt, they will not lay eggs for 2-4 months. I lost the entire summer to the molt of our Dark Cornish this year, which destroyed our egg sales. Luckily the new hens started laying a month before the old ones started. Another thing you said was their age. At that age, they really are "spent hens" and unless you have an emotional attachment, they probably should be eaten. As a "granny" you probably knw this, but others don't, so...... in the "old days" , say pre-1980, you could buy a "stewing hen" in the grocery stores. These were usually "spent hens", hens past their laying prime that had been fattened a couple weeks then slaughtered. They were tough, but VERY flavorful and bigger and more expensive than fryers. Farms and semi-rural flock owners would also cull their spent hens in the Fall and hatch out new ones that would mature for Spring. This saved feed by feeding the new, soon-to-produce hens instead of low production old birds. Commercially, as more productive hybrids were developed, hens were worthless as eating birds, totally "spent" and just skin and bones when the first molt came. They are replaced at 16-20 months routinely (I transported these old and new birds when I was in commercial houses) and the spent hens usually go to dog food, soup makers, or some other kind of chicken meals for humans that don't require a "pretty" piece of meat, just flavor. The company I worked for sold the birds to Campbells for years. They lost the contract for some reason and could not find other buyers..... it is a bit more expensive to process these birds than fryers..... so they started bulldozing the birds into a pit and burying them! They had no reason why they would not give the birds to migrant workers, honest poor or create a niche market for the meat, they just buried them!!! This was hard for me to know and hurried us on the journey that continues here! If your birds are not pets, it IS time to process them and replace them!
+eco-ranch.us I don't make pets of live stock. Made that mistake when was young!! Your absolutely correct about them being a bit past their prime. Poor girls are still gorgeous but will be freezer food soon!! Thank you very much for your answer🐔🐔🐔🐔🐔
I'll pass on the GMO corn and soy, I've got kids and grandkids..... we are what our animals eat...Monsanto has been sued and lost as you probably know by now.. their Round up that is used with GMOs cause cancer and more lawsuits are in the works... So I'll just stay with Organic products. But you have done a good job with your video and I will adjust to my liking.... I agree with you about the feed monopolies, pretty much should be illegal... Thanks Robert for the information.
They didn't loose they settled. They did a cost analysis and descided it was cheaper to pay than drag out a trial. I farm for a living and have been around round up and other chemicals for a long time. If the world wants to eat they need GMO's and chemicals so that enough food can be raised to feed them.
Robert Earl, I was just going back over your feed video. I've had very good success with your mix. Several people recently have mentioned to me that I should look at fermenting the feed before feeding to stretch the feed and provide a more digestible feed. I was curious as to your experience and thoughts on fermenting chicken feed. Thanks, William.
Birds are what the dinosaurs turned into. No one gave dinosaurs "fermented feed" and I find it a waste of time that can be better spent elsewhere..... but if it makes YOU feel good, then do it. Gizzards insure great digestibility!
Hi there, watching your video in my summer house, your cockerel in the background, so I opened the door and all my birds ran over to see what's going on 😂😂 Kobe Ken UK
Christopher M I grind my "baby" food in a Waring Pro blender. Anything of lesser quality will burn out fast! Eventually, we will get a real grinder and motorize it (store.countrylivinggrainmills.com/grain-mill/). Then I will grind all my own whole grains.
+Jordan Nim I agree, that is why it is a "secret" and not a secret! With Purina dominating so many feed stores with their gift & trip bribes that have small feed store owners selling that overpriced crap they call animal feed, we all need to move back to mixing our own, as well as encouraging the small feed mills to continue to make feeds that do not have inert binders! I anyone finds, as we did, a small feed mill that uses heat extrusion and NO inert binders like bentonite clay, buy your base (corn & soy) ingredients from them, in the form of their layer feed. Then you can add the other grains and more soy to it for the variety and protein we want our flocks to have!
Rachel asked me about "fermented Chicken feed" (see the comment) For some damn reason, I cannot answer the comment directly! Someone please let me know what is up with that!!!!!!! Rachel, I have no experience with fermented chicken feed. I just watched several videos touting it that ended with the presenter showing us how much the chickens liked it as they gobbled it down. My chickens will gobble down Doritos, popcorn and potato chips. This is no indication of what is good for them, any more than letting your child choose own his dinner over what you are serving. Kids will invariably choose ice cream and chocolate over broccoli and fish. That does not mean they should have it daily! Nor should we feed our pets and livestock what they "like" either. Two of the videos said that fermented chicken feed created thicker eggs, as though calcium was magically created during a three day ferment. All said they drank less water........ um, yes....... if food is saturated with water and you eat it, you need less other water. Is this a health benefit? No. They eat less feed too. Yes, because it is saturated with water and they feel fuller sooner. They are NOT getting significantly more nutrients, just volume in their crops. I cannot speak to the "creation" of B vitamins. In fact, like the other fad diets I have seen in seven decades of life: B.A.R.F., vinegar diets, increasing longevity by being grossly underweight, processed & pelletized feed for parrots, vegetarian diets for dogs & cats and an endless list of others....... I WON'T speak to their benefits, mainly because other than making their creators wealthy, there are none! Fermented feed occurs naturally often in a chicken coop after a soaking rain and they love to eat it because it is different, not better. Live insects, green plants, seeds, grains, the occasional mouse or snake and more are all a chicken's natural diet. They have evolved to eat these thing over some 60 million years. What makes some wise guy with wet, spoiled food think he or she knows better than 60 million years of evolution? If it were that effective, commercial growers would be clambering to feed it. They are not! I worked in that business for a number of years. Corn, soy and premix... DRY, dominate the commercial grower/producers for a good reason: the feed to egg or meat conversion is the greatest! We smaller producers can afford to allow pasturing, free ranging and fodder & mealworm production because time is not our enemy like it is to commercial operations, so we can do these things and even jump on the latest fad that a washed-up celebrity sells at 4 AM. If it makes us happy to try, not much harm done other than your birds mature a bit slower or your potential egg production is lower. I say stay with the bird's natural diet as much as you can which by the way is NOT my "secret feed mix", but pasturing and free range. My birds do free range and if grass grew in the desert, they would pasture! In Florida, our poultry had around 10 acres of Bahia Pensacola grass to pasture on and my feed mix as a supplement. Stay natural, let the hipsters follow the wind direction. Your birds WILL appreciate it!
Great job my man. Keep doing wat ur doing, we support u. My moms flock only has 30 chickens but I love taken advice from real ppl who love the chicks instead of looking at them as money. We do sell them but take pride in wat they ingest
That is just a little over 4 eggs a week per hen. Usually, our hens laid 5-6 a week when we lived in Florida, but here Summer heat slows them and Winter slows them somewhat. I would not keep hens that laid less than 4 eggs a week though. It is too expensive to feed them. Thanks for the compliment too!
"Preppers are white people running around with guns & MREs" Man if I don't feel that, with the folk I used to know. Thanks for the good video with fantastic info! I hope your retirement is going great, and you enjoy it! Little trick for those viewers browsing these comments: I had been pondering how to go about feed bins on the cheap, and remembered everyone in my family has cats, and were able to give me around a dozen of the Tidy Cats plastic bins that close near airtight, and with a bit of easy modification, now can be left outside without worrying about humidity, pests etc (though I keep em inside still).
Disagree with me if you want! I also have not met a gun toter who could take me in a fist fight (and very few others that could either...... when I was under 60). Texas jaundiced me against "white people with guns" and rightfully so. In 55 years of traveling on my own, through EVERY ghetto and barrio in America, many sketchy areas of SE Asia and the wilds of the substance abusers of west Texas, I never, NEVER had an inkling that I needed a gun to protect myself from a HUMAN (bears, wolves, wolverines and coyotes were a different story.) I do love your idea on the Tidy CATs though!!!!
This was a wonderful informative presentation of My secret Chicken feed Mix, My husband found this and was so excited because we had just been talking about the subject earlier today, and there you were! Awesome, We have 8 dogs and were wondering what you feed your dog? Do you do the same thing with your feed for your dog? My husband Roy has been going into Spokane and buying whole Oats, Lentil's, Barley, white wheat, Rice, cracked corn and that's it. We mix it, no ratio. We are feeding chickens, ducks and Muscovy. All together we have 38 chickens, 15 Muscovy, 12 German Blue Ducks. They all get the same feed. Roy cooks the feed in a pressure cooker for 5 minutes to soften it up. We used to feed the granules from the feed store but it cost too much. Roy has been cooking the feed in a pressure cooker for 5 minutes because it seems they eat it better. Then he bought shaved Oyster shell just recently to help with the digestion. We are also impressed by your way you built your chicken coop out of bottles. Wow! Please tell us about this. We live in a cold country, but were thinking about the insulation you are creating. Roy has used 6 inch walls filled with pine saw dust, for insulation. The temperature gets to 45 degrees inside when the temperature is 15 below zero. How thick are your walls with the bottles. What does the temperature get inside of your pens? Thank you, Roy and Karen
WOW! That is a lot to request in a comment! I waited for a couple days to answer, as I wanted time to answer properly. First of all, your feed seems to be a bit low on protein, maybe as low as 10%, depending on how much lentil (around 25%) you mix in the diet. If they are thriving, thane something is OK, but poultry will SURVIVE on low protein, just not thrive, lay a lot of eggs and set eggs on low protein. We have five other dogs besides Cascade. They eat a standard "working dog" packaged diet. When I slaughter meat animals, all the decent organs go into a pot to stew for them, with lots of salt and water enough to make a thin stew. Then I add enough rice to set the whole thin thick, chill it and run it through the grinder. I then freeze it in one day portions and mix it with the packaged food. We have had several dogs live to be 16 years old nd no one has cancer, both signs of a good diet. Our construction here, won't work in a clod climate. We have thermal mass, not insulation. In a cold climate, once the walls get cold, they will stay cold and suck all the heat out of the house. Building like we are here, you would need to put a layer or two of insulation board on the inside of the outside wall, so the temperature inside does not migrate out. My method here works in a desert and at altitude in lower latitudes. This would apply to a chicken coop as well. Hay and straw will degrade with dirt and rock fill, so are not suitable. Most of our walls in the early construction, are 19" thick. The new construction and the house in particular, is 24" with that layer of insulating board. The insulating board, will stop the thermal mass migration of temperature and retain a constant temperature inside, year-around. Ceilings are about R-60. There is no roof.... yet... on the bottle coop, so I cannot comment on the temperature. The walls are always cool to the touch though, so since I have build a "solar chimney effect" into the walls & roof, I would imagine the interior will stay cooler than the Summer heat and when I block off the upper openings in Winter, warmer. But we seldom get real cold here, so for the livestock, I am more concerned with dealing with the heat. It dies sound like you have a good insulating set up though and did it using natural materials! Thanks for writing and watch for a new video about our hatching chicks (happening NOW). We are starting these off on a starter mix that uses Moringa powder to bring the protein level to 28%. I want to see if they are more vigorous on the Moringa mix than normally and will discuss that in the video.
Thank you for the info! I was able to find a mill that sold Soybean Meal for 14.35 a bag. they also had cracked corn for 9.10, both 50 pound bags. Here in my town I can get Triticale 100 bags for 10.00. The Triticale is said to be 12 to 13 protein. With my mix of right around 20 protein, it is costing me 8.35 per 50 pounds. That is less then half of what I was paying before for higher protein.
That is excellent! You are also getting 100% of the corn germ as well. Many commercial feed mills, like the "chessboard" people, remove up to 30% of the corn germ for other uses. This leaves the CRUDE protein the same 7-9%, but reduces the digestible protein by 1/4-1/2. It will take a few weeks, but you will notice an increase in quantity & quality of your eggs as well!
If fermenting grain pleases you, do it. If steaming a chicken breast with basil for your dog's food please you, do it. But neither has ANY effect on the nutritional uptake. Chickens and all birds, are what is left of the dinosaurs. They made the last 65 million years without humans fermenting their food! I raised 20 pound meat chickens on my feed mix of grains. Cannot see how any feed could improve that result!
Hello from Parrish Fl, i have enjoyed your video. i mix scratch and do use layer crumble. my birds (18) are out from nine am to dark. i use oats, wind bird seed, cracked corn for scratch, they get a few handfulls twice a day. i cook alot so they are healthy, in winter i make brown rice, ramen noodles dollar store sells by the case what ever cereal i have, you SHOULD write a book. enjoyed your video and i am passionate about Monsanto and the other butts out there that are not for farmers but their own pockets. thank you.
+connie bell and do not get me started about gluten free and dairy free crap. i worked in nutrition for 35 hospital years and i know it is the latest gimmick for most, some folks are truely affected by gluten i need to say, but it is like the Cpap machines, all about the mighty buck.
+connie bell Thanks for the kind words. I am considering writing a book, but it will have to wait until the construction is finished. If I do end up traveling to Haiti & Cambodia to help establish semi-intensive chicken houses, that will definitely be worthy writing about!
My chicken MacClovia is lonely so she escapes from her house and heads over to the kitchen door, braving 11 cats and 5 dogs jajaja and proceeds to chase them away from their food! She likes dog food. Ay Dios. Good grief what a crazy chicken. She needs a boyfriend.
Awesome video. Tons of info in here and I love your wit! Coming from a conservative minded family, I wholeheartedly support mixing your own feed and even growing your own feed crops. We'll definitely be feeding our flock this when they come off their grower feed. Thanks!
Thank you! Milo is also known as sorghum and is, in itself a wonder grain. We use it here because it is inexpensive to buy. Every region of the world has different demands for grains and we all can tailor our feed mixes to our regional availability. The mix I give you in this video is a 19% protein mix. For a general chick/duck starter and duck maintenance. the protein should be increased to 28% for the first 4-5 weeks, then lowered to around 23-25%. I feed this to ALL my birds, as the ducks free range with the chickens. The feed recipe can be downloaded here: eco-ranch.us/POULTRYFEEDMIX.pdf If you just add one extra part of ground soy to this mix, you will be around the 25% protein content. There are also many things you can substitute for soy. I have been working with a rancher in Nigeria to develop a feed mix for him. The research on grains and potential alternative feeds is priceless and I will be sharing all this in the next feed video, soon!
Lots of great, necessary information up to that point! Thanks for watching and for taking the time to point out that any good recipe requires a lot more information than just the ingredients!
Interesting mix. It’s different from game bird feeding. I feed racing pigeon feed, whole corn, hen scratch/with out crack corn, wheat, laying pellet, and the most important is soaked oats. Feed three times a day 2 with the dry mix and one with soaked oats. Nice video
Not really. Like vitamins, they just poop out what they don't need. The exception is the Cornish cross meat birds. You can feed them too much protein and they will gain more muscle mass than their developing bones can support.
hi I'm from kissimmee FL I love your video in I learned a lot from you I want to start grow chicken what is best advance,?we have a big back yard and I star growing frut trees and vegetables.
+Elizabeth Cruz Having lived in Branford, Florida for nine years, I think that north central Florida is an EXCELLENT place to have chickens! As far as feed goes, you have access to the feed we fed, from the Hillandale feed mill. Also there is a great variety of insects and wild grasses to eat. HOWEVER, predators are a huge problem and you must protect your flock from everything from hawks to skunks! I could write you a book of advice on raising chickens there, but here are a few pointers to get you started. Build a secure coop for the birds to be locked into at night. You must protect against owls, raccoons, possum, coyote, red wolf, bobcat, skunk and even snakes. It must be secure! Even if you live in a subdivision, these predators can and WILL come to the easy meal. Find ONE breed that you think suits you best if you are planning on hatching your own. This way you won't hybridize. If all you will be getting are hens, have fun and order several varieties. Each has its own traits and they are fun to have and watch. In Florida, you must take care that their coop floor and run floor do not stay wet. This will result in foot problems, like foot rot. Like I said, I could write a book, but this will get you started! Get your birds soon and have fun!
+Anyafulu Lasisi Abiodun No. Soy has some missing things, as does each grain individually. Only by combining do you get a decent balance. STILL, I recommend using a premix as insurance!
PLEASE FOLKS, THIS VIDEO IS OVER FIVE YEARS OLD. DO NOT PHONE ME OR ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT IT ANY LONGER. HERE IS THE LINK TO MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE MIX: singingturkeys.com/POULTRYFEEDMIX.pdf THIS IS ALL THERE IS, I CANNOT RESPOND TO ANY MORE COMMENTS!!
Being gluten intolerant isn't a sign of prestige? I work food service for a large corporate office. Lots of yuppies. Most are vegetarian, vegan, gluten free, sugar free, lactose intolerant, or allergic to such and such. So ridiculous. Like the gluten free guy, who eats white flour wraps, or the garlic allergy lady who eats our pizza everyday, with you guessed it, a big dose of fresh garlic in the sauce. Most look like they have cancer. Eat some red meat, on white bread, down it with a Coke, go get some natural sunlight, and grow a pair of testicles. I'm done.
+Hans “Hanzy4200” S. Being "special" IS a sign of "prestige" to the hipsters and young affluents of today! "My child is the best student with blonde hair between 60-70 pounds in his class at Hipster Elementary" bumper stickers are everywhere! We are dumbing down society, then discouraging excellence with "awards" for every participant, however mediocre! THEN, we complain when Asians who ARE taught that to excel is desirable, best us! Being a "vegan", glucose intolerant, lactose intolerant and so on, have become badges of honor for the mediocre masses, desperately seeking to create an identity. The consumer culture of the last 40 years has caused this. Personally, my life would have been a lonely one due to the shunning I get from these crowd following resource vampires, if it had not been for my Mother teaching us all that we were "so special" that the world needs to follow us, not us the world. It is only because of this upbringing that I found the courage to NOT do "what everyone is doing" and to grow into this lifestyle. You are correct. These "allergy sufferers"(many of them), vegans, glucose & lactose intolerants, synthetic fabric allergies, religious fanatics and "talking heads" who preach hatred for all whose politics are slightly different from their own; all need to grow a pair, forget what others think, dance like no one is watching and scratch what itches when it itches. The world would be a far better place! Thank you my friend!
+doug moore My condolences on the loss of your Father. Decades ago, the cartoon "Family Circle" had a Sunday cartoon where the kids were fighting in their bedrooms, running around the bedroom right after bedtime, jumping in and out of their beds. The father came in and sternly said to them to "Settle down! The next one of you that gets out of bed, gets a spanking!" He turned and was walking down the hallway, when Jeffy, the littlest one, came out of the bedroom, saying "I 'havta go to the bathroom". To every rule, there IS an exception. Your Father was a very unfortunate exception to my "rule". But from my generation forward, people somehow feel they must "stand out from the crowd", create a persona that makes them exceptional for some reason. That exceptionality make be one that is earned honestly, or fabricated like being a "vegan", "allergic to smoke" "lactose intolerant", "MSG intolerant", "fragrance intolerant", ADHD, "gluten intolerant", "public toilet intolerant", "bashful kidney", "fart anxiety", or some other thing I NEVER heard of until the 1990's! That does not mean these things are not real and don't exist! It just means that .00005% of the population suffers from them, not 50% of upwardly mobile," attention-needy", BMW driving, young professionals and particularly their children! Somehow, I know you understood that in my post, I am seldom vague! But that does nothing to ease the grief regarding the loss of your Father.
My personal thoughts and these are just MY thoughts, is that it is another fad someone thought up. Yes, on paper it is more nutritious appearing. But there are variables in the fermentation process, not the least of which is allowing bad bacteria to grow. Dinosaurs turned into birds: chickens, without us dreaming up new ways to market feed to ourselves. They ate bugs, greens and what grains they could find. IF anything, I advocate returning to that, by using meal worms, soldier flies & the like, sprouted, NOT fermented grains and fresh grasses. Supplement THAT with my recommended grain mixture. I have about 35, four year old hens that lay about five huge eggs a week, each...... as well as the younger girls. Whatever you do, keep that protein level up to or over 20% and ignore anyone that says to feed less.
Christine asked me if I grind my baby chick feed. For some reason the question does not appear here, but I will answer it and hope she reads the answer: I do grind the baby feed, "starter" much finer than the adult mix. I also make the mix 28% protein so that all baby poultry can eat it. I also neglected to add that if your chickens do NOT free range, you must also add a vitamin/mineral "premix" to the feed.
Well, before you mentioned Wheat and Honey as a complete food there is a man mentioned them through God Qur'an around 1400 years ago his name Prophet Muhammad. Read (Surah Yusif) the prophet to see how God told him to store the wheat to last forever. And read what God said about Honey 1400 years ago. Please do. Thanks for your video.
I find religion to be both Man's worst invention and Man's greatest weapon of mass destruction, so I won't read any further than I was forced to for the first 18 years of my life into these Bronze Age myths and deities. That being said, the Talmud, Quran and bible do possess much information that can help us survive in the case of societal calamity. Wheat, honey, dried beans and salted meats are wonderful survival foods. Pork, spoils quickly in heat. This is the reason it was shunned as a meat to eat in the hot desert areas where Islam, Christianity and Judaism flourished. Making its non-consumption a part of the religion, most likely kept many followers from falling ill from eating spoiled pork, so they could "go forth and propagate".. Same can be said of the "book" of Leviticus, where if a Man lay with a woman who has her disease, he is unclean for 20 days (or so). Nowadays, we can wash with unlimited water, so sex during a woman's menstruation is possible without fouling our clothing. These texts have a lot of great practical information in them..... but as guidance from some unseen creature who sees ALL the events in this entire 35 billion light year wide universe, not so much!
And the Almighty said, "Yusuf, friend, we've got seven fat cows eaten by seven lean, seven greens and another land, so I have to go back to people, maybe they know. He said you grow seven years, so you reap a climax in a spike in a little bit of what you eat. Then comes seven people who eat what you gave them a little bit of what they barricaded. Then comes a year later in which people are squeeze and there are a few of them» «Yusuf» «Verses 46-49». The scholars and commentators have argued that the meaning of love and Sanabel in these verses is wheat, although it enters with barley and some other grains, but the wheat remains its duration. and come
great video!! i was just wondering about grit..umm, do oyster shells count as grit? i feed my chickens crumble and scratch.. and grapes and greens too! i know that they need some sort of grit to go along with their diet. i had a few bags of concrete that got wet and hardened up.. soo, i smashed them up and they seem to really like it as grit. they really like it! is concrete bad for them? weird question, i know.. but my 10 chickens like small bits of concrete!
+scott helstrom That is not weird at all...... but it is a question many have but are afraid to ask! Almost anything can be grit. I have never had separate grit, even when our flock was 100% contained. We just made sure they had oyster shell, or other calcium carbonate. They used it as grit, for bone building and egg shell production. Almost anything will work, you are dealing with things that evolved from dinosaurs, so they have adapted over 65 million years! I don't like them to get into unmixed cement due to the alkalinity, but cured and crushed should be OK. I think it is better to provide calcium carbonate or other crushed rock. But if they free range or are outdoors where they can scratch, don't worry. However, every flock should have oyster shell available at all times. In fact, our north Florida farm sat on limestone (calcium carbonate) and it was everywhere at the surface and we STILL offered oyster shell!
Great video thanks for sharing your knowledge with us. I have a farmer friend who grows soy beans and yesterday I was on his farm while they trucked there harvest out to market. I was given approximately 150 pounds of this raw bean. How can I prepare this so it's palatable for my chickens? thanks you.
You got me there! I buy my soy already roasted and ground. I do know it has to be roasted first, due to a problem chemical that roasting destroys. So, I would imagine that you could look on-line for the temperature & time and roast it yourself in the oven in something like a huge turkey roaster. Then, you need to grind it yourself in a grist mill ($300 and up). In your circumstance, I would do that, since a grist mil is very handy to have anyway. You can feed it roasted and whole, but my birds won't eat much of it that way. Grinding in a commercial grade blender will work too. We use one to grind food for our chicks.
Thank you for the speedy reply. As for grinding I've seen people feed there chickens whole corn which is signfigantly larger ...I wonder why the soy has to be ground? also considering time and expenses roasting and grinding. first timer here so I eventually will make the investment though.
My chickens won't eat the whole soy for some reason. They even shy away from ground soy at first. This is why I recommend grinding. If you can get shelled peanuts, raw or roasted, at a reasonable price...... even dried black eyed peas, feed those instead. They have far more protein and poultry love them!
Wow! Nice presentation! Easy to understand, great setting, concise! I also appreciate you sharing your feed experience and knowledge. So that was two parts: Wheat Cracked corn Milo Then it’s 3 1/2 parts soy meal. Did I get it right? I also feed back any eggs and shells broken and mixed with scraps. Thank you from SW NM! Regards...
Nice Info Robert. We talk about some of this on the phone so in a way I got a sneak peak of what you was posting. I have 21 hens and one Roster. during the winter I go though 2 50 LB bags of Scratch grains and 2 50 lb bags of Layer Feed. a month, I use Hole corn and feed that to them once in the morning and once at night to help keep them warm during the winter. I like to learn how to raise Meal warms, and grow folder to feed my girls with what folder is I have know clue what that is have to research it. Once I sign the paper work on the 5 acres we are adding to out lot. I want to grow foods that will not only feed my family but also feed my animals. I would also like to raise honey bee's also they would provide the honey, witch is a natural sweetener. and help my gardens grow much better. Thanks for sharing this very informative video.
Thanks for the video, I learned so much and am excited to make my own feed. I was wondering what could be used instead of soy meal? I cannot have anything with soy so I try to keep that away even from my babies. Thanks again D
+wholistictouch We use soy to increase the protein content. So anything high in protein could be substituted. That is the problem though, as almost everything else is more expensive that soy. But, here is what can be substituted: fish meal; commercial fish food, floating or non-floating, but check this for soy; blood meal. There has to be more, but I just have not studied further. ALSO, if you live near fisheries, fish guts can be fed, but in a separate container that is cleaned daily. If you feel really enterprising, create a worm farm like we have. Meal worms are in the 22-26% protein range. Fly larvae, maggots are even higher and building and maintaining,a maggot trap is simple. Flies are seasonal though, mealworms can be grown year-around. I would very seriously look for fish meal or blood meal. Good Luck!
Would you have any suggestions? Reason I have to keep away from soy is that I had cancer and must stay away from certain items one of them being soy, just my luck
+wholistictouch I would look for fish meal first. That would be all dried fish in pellets. Check the ingredients of the 50# bags of fish food that your local feed store has also. We may be able to make a blend using one of these and some other grains!
Great video,,, there are a couple questions i have as we want to start making our own chicken feed,, first, do you think the Milo should be ground for better absorption in the birds or doesn't it matter, second, what kind of wheat do you use..Thanks in advance!
+Anthony Rafferty Honestly, it does not matter if the milo is ground or not, because the gizzard does that for the chickens. The finer the food the birds eat, the faster they digest it. With commercial egg layers and broilers, the feed is very finely ground so they absorb it faster. With egg layers, this speeds eggs through the system because they can draw off that energy sooner. With broilers like the Cornish Crosses, that want to grow freakishly fast, finely ground feeds will allow the to grow and keep some extra fat on them as well. Always grind seed for chicks up to about six weeks though, as there is a choking hazard, or at least the risk that the big seeds will pass through the bird undigested. This is not such a loss though as in typical chicken style, others will quickly eat the undigested grain and digest it the second time! I am not sure what kind of wheat we buy! I should know. I just ask the feed store for "wheat". I am glad you asked though, because if you or anyone has a wheat growing farm near them, go ask the owner about purchasing a supply of his harvested wheat for your birds. Even with a moderate sized flock like ours, if we were to buy a year's worth of wheat in this way, it would only be around 1000 pounds. Giving the farmer 50% or even 100% more than he gets from the coop or agribusiness puts a few extra dollars in his pocket, saves you at least 50% and is never missed by the main buyer. Try it folks! Same with corn, though this you may have to remove from the cob, or at least shuck!
Awesome video! Thank you so much for sharing this - question - can this ratio be fed to baby chicks also? We are getting laying hens as chicks soon and I would rather make my own feed than buy - I do for my dogs and cats and would prefer to do so for my hens, but I don't know if this would supply growing chicks or not.
+Beth S Yes, I feed it to my young chicks! However, there are three very important things you must do: 1) increase the protein to 28% for 4-6 weeks. 2) grind ALL the ingredients to a fine powder. 3) ADD A VITAMIN/MINERAL PREMIX. You must do all three things or you will have major problems with the chicks! Best of luck!
Have you ever fermented your feed? I've heard it can lower your feed cost significantly as it make the nutrients more readily available and results in the animals consuming less water (as the food is so hydrating from soaking in the water/ACV). I haven't done anything of this so this is all regurgitated information, but it seems to be a viable way of reducing your feed cost and keeping healthier birds :)
My mix is fine for Cornish crosses and the like. If you are growing them for profit, or just as your personal source of meat, I would use a corn/soy/premix mix of 3 parts corn, two parts soy and then the premix. With the phenomenal growth of the Cornish "Frankenbirds", too much protein will cause very young birds to "outgrow" their bones, so I just use this for the entire life. In Michigan, you have access to inexpensive whole corn, so I would definitely grind my own into a fine cornmeal. Same with the (roasted) soy. If you have issues with soy, then it gets complicated, but substituting dried black eyed peas, cowpeas, or (my choice) peanuts will do fine! Always grind it all into a fine meal, this is absorbed faster an compensates for the slightly lower protein for the 1-20 day olds. If you are so inclined, build and use maggot traps IN the growing pens and even start a meal worm or soldier fly farm. Our 600,000 meal worm farm takes up just one 5'x5' corner of a room and provides nearly free, 90% protein. Since you have a grinder too and IF you do not have "cannibalism" issues in your thinking. When you process your birds, unused organs, usually lungs & testicles, but anything not an intestine can be used..... as well as bones, head, comb and feet, can be tossed into a big stock pot and thoroughly cooked. Drain and use the broth on a separate feeder bowl, over their feed (cleaned DAILY). Take the rest, bones and all and run them through your grinder. Package this into daily serving sizes and put, frozen or thawed, into a separate feeder. Put the uneaten portion in the maggot trap. If this is unpalatable to you, just put it all in the maggot traps. Your feed bill will drop dramatically!
+Justin Maestas Justin, I am not familiar with them. They are not selling their feed in this area. I did look at their website. I cannot see whether they use inorganic binders like bentonite. My thought is no, but phone them and ask how they extrude the pellets, with binders or heat. I was impressed that they had a 22% laying feed, as well as gamebird feed. Gamebird feed is a great substitute for standard feeds, but can really be costly in some areas. Onate is a regional feed mill. I did not see an affiliation with agribusinesses like the checkerboard. This alone is a great reason to support them by buying their feeds! When you find out about the extrusion process, do let us know. I will link to them and ANY small or regional feed mill on our web site, that does not use inorganic binders.
Have you thought about sprouting your wheat and raising Black Soldier Fly Larvae to provide protein (46%) and calcium for your chickens instead of soy meal? Comfrey is great too. These components would produce more nutrition for them as well as you and your wife. The two of you could also eat these things if It came down to it.
imasurvivornthriver Exactly! If there were a complete societal collapse, we would have no qualms about eating insect protein. Comfry as a human food, I am sure you know more than I on this, has something that is troublesome to us, but it is excellent as a chicken feed. Right now, we really cannot grow anything until we have the greenhouse completed. It is too hot in the open or under a shade cloth for fruit to set. You get growth, but no fruits. Once I complete the chicken yard, I am setting several "maggot traps" around for the extra protein for the poultry, as well as installing a complete fodder system......... but I am several months away from that at the moment. THANKS for your input!!!!
Thank you for that information, look forward having chicken in the future, just gather information before I start 😀. Keep up the great work your doing to help us new be to have a successful start 🙏❤ God bless P.s New subscriber
Ask 20 people and you will get 20 different breeds! I prefer Dark Cornish and Rhode Island Reds. However, I hate the Dark Cornish roosters, so I usually end up with Cornish hens that hybridize with the RIR roosters. For meat and eggs, it all provides great dual purpose production!
eco-ranch.us Thanks for the tips. I have been writing everything down in a notebook. Hopefully it all becomes second nature so I won't have to look things up as often. RIR Roosters & Dark Cornish hens it is then. Thanks for the advise. There's another video idea for you...choosing a chicken that is right for your needs. Cheers.
+darkangelforever 007 Sorry for the delay, I stopped getting message notifications for some reason! I am not sure what birds to use as production broilers in the tropics. The humidity makes our experience here irrelevant. Since a coop is required and ventilation, I imagine you could choose from several breeds. I would also think that the most efficient, the Cornish crosses would NOT be able to tolerate the heat and humidity well. This is only a guess, but I would look into the Mediterranean breeds, Red Ranger (a hybrid) Dark Cornish and Rhode Island or New Hampshire Reds. What you are looking for, of course is a breed with a substantial enough breast to make it viable. The "village chickens" and "jungle fowl" don't have the breast, but do have the flavor. Using these is less expensive to raise, but not desirable locally. If it were us, I would see if I could develop an export market for the Village & jungle fowl type birds. Sorry I am not more help, but good luck!
+Sharon Bayona The protein I use IS total (crude) protein. Usable protein depends on the quality for the feed. For us here, usable protein is about the same as the crude. In prepared feeds though, things like hair and feathers which are built from protein CAN be included and these are NOT usable. Here, this is usually found in prepared feeds, not the base ingredients. If you were to use my feed for quail, I would substitute millet for milo ( good idea anyway) and increase the soy to bring the protein up to the 28% quails require........ or more if yours need higher, like 32%
Can I feed the same ingredients and proportions for baby chicks (grinded, except)? Or do I need to raise protein percentage by adding more soy meal? Or there is something else that I should add for my chick starter feed? All help will be greatly appreciated! Thank you!
+Grace C. We grind the mix in a restaurant quality blender and that works fine. Takes some time though, a home sized mill ($400) would be faster. For chicks, just add soy, or fish meal if you have soy issues, to raise the protein level to 25% or 28-30% for waterfowl and remember to add your premix or you are inviting developmental problems! Here again is the link to the premix we buy: www.abcplus.biz/abc2.aspx?Id=Poultry_All_In_One_Premix Any is fine, so check with your local feed store to see if they carry one though. That way you are not paying for shipping! Just be prepared for a blank look from the hired help when you ask about a premix, these young, Purina-trained people in most feed stores now, will think you are speaking Swahili!
+eco-ranch.us Thank you so much, your reply was very helpful! I will definitely go visit the website! Sorry, I don't know what 'Swahili' is, nor have any opinions about 'Purina', so I don't understand your last sentence about what to prepare for. That's alright!
+Grace C. Agribusinesses are controlling our food supply and it goes right down to the local feed stores. If a feed store has a big banner on it with the "Purina" name and checkerboard, it means that the feed store has signed a contract with Purina to sell Purina products. Part of that agreement is to NOT carry products that we can substitute for Purina branded or owned products. So the employees are trained to sell only Purina products and NOT help you to build a feed that is equal to or better than Purina that can cost 50% less. Asking for a "premix" in one of these stores, to one of the young Purina trained employees with get you a blank look, an eye roll and they will look at you as if you are speaking a foreign language, like Swahili (from southern Africa). After that they will go into a prepared, memorized pitch about the "virtues" of Purina Layena chicken feed, which at my local feed store, sells for $19 a 50 pound bag........ or $7.00 MORE per 50 pound bag than what I have, with LESS nutrition and the inert binder additive, bentonite clay.A small feed store or feed mill feed store is the best way to buy your feeds and to get the best, most experienced information regarding animal nutrition and care. That checkerboard banner on a feed store is your guarantee of higher prices and less useful information! Avoid it!
Thanks for sharing your experience and knowledge with all of us. I have raised Texas A & M quail for the past two years in my back yard. I plan to stop raising them this winter to raise about 6 laying hens. I may also get a couple ducks to keep the slug and bug problem under control. Can you recommend a breed of chicken based on egg production? I'm not concerned about the meat since they will ( knowing us ) be more like pets than livestock and we won't be able to kill them. Another thing...just saying...I don't understand why the 22 people would give your video a thumbs DOWN. Of course with the more than a thousand thumbs UP I guess the negatives show just how much they know. I gave you a thumbs up and have subscribed to your channel. Have a great day !
Thank you for the kind words! Actually I am surprised there are not MORE of the "thumbs down". Purina and Southern States alone could ask their employees to hit me and there would be a couple thousand! I do not care about multi-nationals, or corporations in general. They are the problem, not the solution. My videos try to show the solutions to issues that we will have to deal with whether or not "they" acknowledge them! As far a s the kind of bird you are seeking, there are many. Most of these are American made breeds like the Rhode Island Red and Wyandotte. Our American breeds tend to have better tempered roosters that older breeds. McMurray has a hybrid that we love both sexes of, but they will not breed true if you want to propagate them. That breed is the "Pioneer". I recommend that and the RIR for backyard poultry people!
I have had difficulties with my mix and young chicks....HERE.... not in Florida though. So, I would recommend using a commercial starter for up to four weeks, then moving to adult feed. If you have waterfowl, do NOT use commercial starter though, as the medicine for coccidian can kill waterfowl. Instead use a game bird starter, or just use it anyway. I am using game bid starter for our chicks this season and they are doing really well!
It should be fun. But like cats, not everyone is a "chicken person" and you won't knw that until you have some! We love the calm, quiet of the hens and have tamed them into pets in the past. Roosters.... not so much! But I like them OK! Keep me posted on your progress!
I love what you are doing here! Just wondering tho why don't you grow fodder and get more out of your wheat? I just know I am going to be doing this for my rabbits, goats and chickens. Just wondering what your thoughts are on it?
Donnie Ross I know that you got me thinking about mixing my own. I use a layer pellet from X-Cel feed and give other stuff. Its a 16% plust I give them fodder and other veggie scraps from my organic garden.
Donnie Ross Donnie, Thanks for subscribing by the way!!! I love the idea and cost savings of a fodder system. With all we a re doing now, we cannot set one up YET, but greenhouse will have a very large fodder system. It is great nutrition, water management and seed usage.
eco-ranch.us If the ingredients in the feed are acceptable to you, stay with it and supplement it! I am VERY fussy and finally found a feed mill that is up to my standards that makes me a soy/corn/premix feed at 17%. To this, I add some cotton seed and extra soy for growers and young chicks. Everyone should give their birds EVERYTHING organic to eat that they can. Grass clippings, weeds vegetable stalks, even mice and lizards! Just don't give egg producers garlic, onion or hot peppers as this can flavor the eggs. Otherwise, let them eat it all!!!! Good luck and PLEASE stay it touch!
eco-ranch.us That will be awesome to see! I have started a small urban farm myself. I have a facebook page for it at the moment but maybe I will start uploading my videos to youtube. If you do want to see what I have going you can check it out on here facebook.com/c1urbanfarm?ref=hl . Its nothing super special yet I am just gathering some funds to build everything. A lot will be happening over the next couple of months. I will be doing the fodder system and I will show a video on that so you can check it out. Thanks for the info on the mix you did and I will be looking into what that will cost me to do as well. I buy everything by the ton so It will an expensive start to do my own blend but save so much money in the long run. Talk to you soon I am going to be taking my wife on a trip today for her birthday.
Useful video properly delivered. Does this feed apply to all stages of the chicken? Like from chicks, maintenance, then fattening before being sent to the abattoir.
Yes! Adjust your protein levels to the growth stage though.... 28% 0-4 weeks, 24% to slaughter or 8 weeks, 20% for layers for life. Staying with this mix will reduce your losses and more than make up for the extra cost for the protein rick ingredient, by reducing your losses dramatically!
Thank You for this insight. I am aware that clay is rich in minerals, I wonder how the baking effects the minerals in the clay? Once again Thank You for sharing your knowledge and experience with the rest of us. Tom.
Not sure myself. If you are referring to the clay added to Purina and other feeds though, it is NOT cooked, that is the reason it is there, to form pellets without heat (and take about 15% of your money away).
“We need to share secrets - that’s how we grow” = instant subscriber
i know Im asking the wrong place but does someone know of a method to log back into an Instagram account?
I was dumb forgot my account password. I appreciate any help you can offer me
I love your comment and agree 100% God bless
Was exactly what I thought as well. So I hit the subscribe button 😂
Me, too.
Robert, I came for the chicken feed and stayed for your commentary! You are willing to speak your mind and provide logic too. Thank you for facts and telling it like it is. Blessings!
Thanks! I will be back with more and varied videos soon!
I just stumbled on your video today (Feb 2023) and I can't believe you made this 8 years ago!! You must have seen the writing on the wall long before the rest of us. Homesteaders across the country are complaining about the purina brands they buy at TS and their chickens not laying. Your video could have been made yesterday! Thanks for your info.
Any time a "for profit" corporation gets involved with food, be it animal or human, quality and REAL nutritional needs take a backseat to stockholder dividends. "Crude protein" is a great example: while 25% crude protein may seem like a lot, USDA allows that to include feathers, hair, hooves & nails and more, ALL UNDIGESTABLE!
Depending on the cost of the feed, one labelled at 25% (pick any number though) could have as little as 12% DIGESTABLE protein and THAT number is starvation for poultry. Just one of many examples of how the huge food lobby has us dazed and confused!
I got a comment from someone showing me HIS chickens waiting to feed and the "feeding frenzy" when he did! Unfortunately, I had to delete the comment due to his language during the video.
Please folks, talk how you want with your "crowd", but on my channels there is NO profanity, NO direct personal attacks and NOTHING in poor taste.
I drove truck most of my working life and can teach most new words and phrases. I choose not to. You should too!
+Sean Henderson Profanity is profanity, regardless the intent. To post on my channels, people need to use acceptable adjectives.
Ok. Judge away.
+Sean Henderson My channel, my rules. Your channel, your rules. Foul language is cropping up everywhere and no one stands up to it because they don't want to embarrass themselves to total stranger by saying out loud what the stranger are thinking!
This is not a channel about morals, so this is the end of this discussion. NO PROFANITY, NO PERSONAL ATTACKS, my rules and anyone who questions this rule, is themselves, questionable!
I get,"Your channel, Your rules." What eludes me is when, people stop a communication because of a word that they do no like. The point is the communication, the words are merely tools and some people have a limited tool set or vocabulary. Some people are less imaginative than others, but this does not mean that their communication is any less valuable or important. The expletives are real words and can be found in the dictionary. You can go ahead and delete my comment, which is neither a personal attack nor does it contain any profanity. But if you delete my comment you might as well add a 3rd criteria to your channel censoring, "the comments that you just don't like."
+Sean Henderson We will post this one last comment from Sean, not because of the last sentence challenge.... I do not respond to those, or dares..... but because the points made are points some language-impaired would think valid. But no other posts on this subject will be posted, as this channel is not about morality, it is about sustainable, out-of -the-box living.
We all understand that some people do not have the vocabulary of others. My brother, with seven or eight degrees, for example, loves to use words that few people know, to describe something in five syllables that could be as easily described in two. But he and I, seldom use four letter words, profanity, or ethnic stereotyping, because this makes one appear ignorant and intolerant.
We all know what profanity is, even the Slavey Indians I lived with in the Canadian NWT, who punctuated every sentence with one word that begins with an "F", several times...... until their wives appeared, then that word disappeared!I have traveled through more of North America than 99% of the people in the world and through much of Mexico and much of SE Asia. Even the least educated and conversant in the most remote of places, knows the difference between profanity and acceptable language. As many say, "If you are in doubt about the use of a word, it probably should not be used."
My position has nothing to de with one's education level or vocabulary. It has to do with the fact that we all know what language is acceptable language in what company. Using it for shock value in public, within MY earshot, will get a rebuke that will bring tears to your eyes, without a single word of profanity. If this were done far more often, we would not have to be in public places hearing words that would shock a truck driver...... and remember that I was one for nearly 45 years.
My channels attract many people, from the very religious, to the very conservative, to the ultra Liberal (like me) and most importantly, the young who are learning and testing language skills. We and this channel need to be and are, an example to follow. My deeds and knowledge are not enough. Respect, humility and more are on display with every video I post, every word I say. I know I have slipped a couple times with words and I let these pass instead of editing them. That I am human and make mistakes is an important part of the education I wish to offer: "it is OK to not be perfect, just strive for it." One of my favorite saying is: "I aimed for the stars. I missed. So I settled for the moon." So I try and sometimes miss in the video. However in writing, there is no excuse and there are MANY synonyms for EVERY curse word. Use them, or don't get posted here! I am NOT sending a message to people that ANY language is acceptable! We will be polite!
This video maybe old but wow look at what we are going thru right now, 2022/2023 with chicken feed and no egg production, coming here to say, HOW RIGHT YOU ARE ABOUT PURINA. I’m gonna try to use your mixture. Thank you so much. Agree with you on your point of view.
Any time corporations get involved in food, animal or human, nutrition takes a back seat to shareholder dividends. The Checkerboard is the worst!!!!!!
I live in Kentucky and have started feeding whole grains. My cost for 50 lbs of my recipe is $9.84. I'm using a recipe I adapted from yours. I use corn, soy, wheat, oats, and sunflower seeds. I have a local feed store that sales these ingredients very cheap and it's from local farmers on all products except sunflower.
Thanks for your videos. I fully enjoy them!
I just found you and I must say you are the most honest and educational
person I have found yet!!! Thank you for the info.
Sadly, I HAVE to be gluten-free. The symptoms are VARIED, not just bathroom issues. But ALL of the symptoms cause extreme inflammation inside one's body, which sooner or later will likely cause cancer. I didn't start having issues until I was in my 40's. I believe with my whole heart that those of us that did get hit later in life is due to folks like Monsanto and all the GMO foods and additives to our processed foods. In researching why I was sick I learned that wheat is added as fillers to so many processed things that have no reason to have wheat in them. And the wheat grown these days have been bred to have nearly 80% more gluten in it than it did 100 yrs ago. Then you take the monster wheat and put it in EVERYTHING and VIOLA....a lot of people are basically "overdosed" to the point of no return. Just a little fyi. Thanks for the info. I'm a new subscriber!
Excellent video. I'm in Alberta so fortunately we don't have to deal with Purina. Local producers make local feeds much like yours with locally grown crops. I worked for a farm supply and feed mill in Grande Prairie where I worked the mill. All local grains bought from local farmers and we just ran it through the mixer and bagged it. Ran the corn through the roller of course. Under $20 a bag Canadian which is still cheaper then the big mills in Alberta.
I love Alberta. In 1975-6 I flew out of Edmonton to Echo Bay for a mining contract. Spent some time in Calgary & Banff as well. That was all LONG before there were any skyscrapers in Edmonton and no West Edmonton Mall either!
Hi Robert thanks for sharing, I am just about to start rearing chickens so your feed mix [once I buy the grain] will come in very handy. all the best keep the videos coming.
Thank you very much for sharing good information with every one.
Thank you so much for this useful information!!!. I made the recommended mix using milo, wheat, corn and soybean meal. The birds are laying as usual and they seem to like this new mix a lot. Compared to the commercial stuff, this is CHEAPER, healthier and something I have noticed is that the birds eat less quantity, so a 50 pound bag lasts more than twice what the commercial feed used to last...!!!!. this is amazing and I'm very happy with the results. I wish I would have done this a long time ago... I'm using this mix for chicken, ducks, turkeys and even my guineas and pheasants!!
Thank you! I am always glad to hear that some of my information is of use and useful! On this feed, I have 4 1/2 year old hens that are laying like first year, so it does work and costs less!
Thank you for the great information as I'm just starting a little home/backyard chicken raising. Have four chickens ready to start laying and need to get feed so I'm going to try your recipe for feed.
Linda Kay Murphy I hope it works as good for as it does for us. Just remember that you still need to add a "premix" of vitamins and minerals, unless they are getting LOTS of greens and insect. My recipe is not complete without the premix and I neglected to say that in the video!
I add black oil seeds to my chicken feed and a bit of diatomaceous earth as well. Chickens will pick out the black oil seeds first! They love them.
My five ladies refuse to eat any kind of sunflower seeds. Silly girls!
@@conniewojahn6445 thats what my chickens used to do when I started giving them mix grain but after a bit i started grinding their grain and till today they dont leave anything back
I use DE as well last 30 years
Thank you so much, I am starting to raise my own chickens, I only have 1 roster and 3 hens. They haven't started laying yet. Now I am going to get the feed you talked about. Thanks again.
+Sylvia McDonald Very happy to be of help! I will be posting a new, follow-up feed video late this week.
We’ve been using Mc Murray for our birds every year since we started raising them! Always, and I mean always had good luck. Everyone is usually amazed by the fact that they mail them right to our little post office!
You've opened my eyes to the feed industry, I'll be mixing mine for now on. thanks
Robert Earl you are great 👍. Thank you VERY much.
have u tried hemp seeds high amout of omega 3 and protein etc.
My hens are from McMurrays. They are now 3 years old In Oct. They quit laying about a month or so. I feed them crumble all scraps, sweet feed same as I feed my mini horse for the winter. If they don't start laying again before this bag of crumble is done they will be going into the pot!! I love what you feed but can't afford that much for feed for my nine girls!!!Good luck and please continue with the great videos!🐔🐔
+Gimpy Granny If your hens are in their molt, they will not lay eggs for 2-4 months. I lost the entire summer to the molt of our Dark Cornish this year, which destroyed our egg sales. Luckily the new hens started laying a month before the old ones started.
Another thing you said was their age. At that age, they really are "spent hens" and unless you have an emotional attachment, they probably should be eaten.
As a "granny" you probably knw this, but others don't, so...... in the "old days" , say pre-1980, you could buy a "stewing hen" in the grocery stores. These were usually "spent hens", hens past their laying prime that had been fattened a couple weeks then slaughtered. They were tough, but VERY flavorful and bigger and more expensive than fryers. Farms and semi-rural flock owners would also cull their spent hens in the Fall and hatch out new ones that would mature for Spring. This saved feed by feeding the new, soon-to-produce hens instead of low production old birds.
Commercially, as more productive hybrids were developed, hens were worthless as eating birds, totally "spent" and just skin and bones when the first molt came. They are replaced at 16-20 months routinely (I transported these old and new birds when I was in commercial houses) and the spent hens usually go to dog food, soup makers, or some other kind of chicken meals for humans that don't require a "pretty" piece of meat, just flavor.
The company I worked for sold the birds to Campbells for years. They lost the contract for some reason and could not find other buyers..... it is a bit more expensive to process these birds than fryers..... so they started bulldozing the birds into a pit and burying them! They had no reason why they would not give the birds to migrant workers, honest poor or create a niche market for the meat, they just buried them!!! This was hard for me to know and hurried us on the journey that continues here!
If your birds are not pets, it IS time to process them and replace them!
+eco-ranch.us I don't make pets of live stock. Made that mistake when was young!!
Your absolutely correct about them being a bit past their prime. Poor girls are still gorgeous but will be freezer food soon!! Thank you very much for your answer🐔🐔🐔🐔🐔
Thanks for this video. it was very helpful
Love your long wind, nothing but information, including the comments. Thanks.
Thank you very much! Lately the "trolls" have been out there with negativity and it always means a lot to me to hear something positive!
I'll pass on the GMO corn and soy, I've got kids and grandkids..... we are what our animals eat...Monsanto has been sued and lost as you probably know by now.. their Round up that is used with GMOs cause cancer and more lawsuits are in the works... So I'll just stay with Organic products. But you have done a good job with your video and I will adjust to my liking.... I agree with you about the feed monopolies, pretty much should be illegal... Thanks Robert for the information.
They didn't loose they settled. They did a cost analysis and descided it was cheaper to pay than drag out a trial. I farm for a living and have been around round up and other chemicals for a long time. If the world wants to eat they need GMO's and chemicals so that enough food can be raised to feed them.
Thanks for the informative video and your directness. Appreciate your style and delivery. God bless you sir.
Robert Earl, I was just going back over your feed video. I've had very good success with your mix. Several people recently have mentioned to me that I should look at fermenting the feed before feeding to stretch the feed and provide a more digestible feed. I was curious as to your experience and thoughts on fermenting chicken feed.
Thanks, William.
Birds are what the dinosaurs turned into. No one gave dinosaurs "fermented feed" and I find it a waste of time that can be better spent elsewhere..... but if it makes YOU feel good, then do it. Gizzards insure great digestibility!
Hope you are still growing chickens!!!! Great advice!!! THANKS!!!!
Hi there, watching your video in my summer house, your cockerel in the background, so I opened the door and all my birds ran over to see what's going on 😂😂 Kobe Ken UK
That is cute! It is so easy to fool those roosters!
Very interesting, and I'll be mixing up my chickens feed like yours once they start laying!! Thanks!!!!
Christopher M I grind my "baby" food in a Waring Pro blender. Anything of lesser quality will burn out fast! Eventually, we will get a real grinder and motorize it (store.countrylivinggrainmills.com/grain-mill/). Then I will grind all my own whole grains.
Hi Sir I really liked your video i am from pakistan and i appreciate your efforts .. I am also a farmer
Best thing I heard all day we don't need to keep it as a secret we need to keep growing!
+Jordan Nim I agree, that is why it is a "secret" and not a secret! With Purina dominating so many feed stores with their gift & trip bribes that have small feed store owners selling that overpriced crap they call animal feed, we all need to move back to mixing our own, as well as encouraging the small feed mills to continue to make feeds that do not have inert binders! I anyone finds, as we did, a small feed mill that uses heat extrusion and NO inert binders like bentonite clay, buy your base (corn & soy) ingredients from them, in the form of their layer feed. Then you can add the other grains and more soy to it for the variety and protein we want our flocks to have!
Rachel asked me about "fermented Chicken feed" (see the comment) For some damn reason, I cannot answer the comment directly! Someone please let me know what is up with that!!!!!!!
Rachel, I have no experience with fermented chicken feed. I just watched several videos touting it that ended with the presenter showing us how much the chickens liked it as they gobbled it down.
My chickens will gobble down Doritos, popcorn and potato chips. This is no indication of what is good for them, any more than letting your child choose own his dinner over what you are serving. Kids will invariably choose ice cream and chocolate over broccoli and fish. That does not mean they should have it daily! Nor should we feed our pets and livestock what they "like" either.
Two of the videos said that fermented chicken feed created thicker eggs, as though calcium was magically created during a three day ferment. All said they drank less water........ um, yes....... if food is saturated with water and you eat it, you need less other water. Is this a health benefit? No. They eat less feed too. Yes, because it is saturated with water and they feel fuller sooner. They are NOT getting significantly more nutrients, just volume in their crops.
I cannot speak to the "creation" of B vitamins. In fact, like the other fad diets I have seen in seven decades of life: B.A.R.F., vinegar diets, increasing longevity by being grossly underweight, processed & pelletized feed for parrots, vegetarian diets for dogs & cats and an endless list of others....... I WON'T speak to their benefits, mainly because other than making their creators wealthy, there are none!
Fermented feed occurs naturally often in a chicken coop after a soaking rain and they love to eat it because it is different, not better. Live insects, green plants, seeds, grains, the occasional mouse or snake and more are all a chicken's natural diet.
They have evolved to eat these thing over some 60 million years. What makes some wise guy with wet, spoiled food think he or she knows better than 60 million years of evolution?
If it were that effective, commercial growers would be clambering to feed it. They are not! I worked in that business for a number of years. Corn, soy and premix... DRY, dominate the commercial grower/producers for a good reason: the feed to egg or meat conversion is the greatest! We smaller producers can afford to allow pasturing, free ranging and fodder & mealworm production because time is not our enemy like it is to commercial operations, so we can do these things and even jump on the latest fad that a washed-up celebrity sells at 4 AM.
If it makes us happy to try, not much harm done other than your birds mature a bit slower or your potential egg production is lower. I say stay with the bird's natural diet as much as you can which by the way is NOT my "secret feed mix", but pasturing and free range. My birds do free range and if grass grew in the desert, they would pasture! In Florida, our poultry had around 10 acres of Bahia Pensacola grass to pasture on and my feed mix as a supplement.
Stay natural, let the hipsters follow the wind direction. Your birds WILL appreciate it!
thanku sir,
We have been fermenting whole grains for 1yr plus and it has been amazing!
Great job my man. Keep doing wat ur doing, we support u. My moms flock only has 30 chickens but I love taken advice from real ppl who love the chicks instead of looking at them as money. We do sell them but take pride in wat they ingest
We have always been proud of our birds! We will get just a few here.
That rooster might have been shooting a video of his own.
awesome info your attitude reminds me of my dad dang I miss him. 7dz a week of of 20 egg layers? wow that is some wonderful feed they are munching on
That is just a little over 4 eggs a week per hen. Usually, our hens laid 5-6 a week when we lived in Florida, but here Summer heat slows them and Winter slows them somewhat. I would not keep hens that laid less than 4 eggs a week though. It is too expensive to feed them.
Thanks for the compliment too!
"Preppers are white people running around with guns & MREs" Man if I don't feel that, with the folk I used to know. Thanks for the good video with fantastic info! I hope your retirement is going great, and you enjoy it!
Little trick for those viewers browsing these comments: I had been pondering how to go about feed bins on the cheap, and remembered everyone in my family has cats, and were able to give me around a dozen of the Tidy Cats plastic bins that close near airtight, and with a bit of easy modification, now can be left outside without worrying about humidity, pests etc (though I keep em inside still).
Disagree with me if you want! I also have not met a gun toter who could take me in a fist fight (and very few others that could either...... when I was under 60). Texas jaundiced me against "white people with guns" and rightfully so. In 55 years of traveling on my own, through EVERY ghetto and barrio in America, many sketchy areas of SE Asia and the wilds of the substance abusers of west Texas, I never, NEVER had an inkling that I needed a gun to protect myself from a HUMAN (bears, wolves, wolverines and coyotes were a different story.)
I do love your idea on the Tidy CATs though!!!!
This was a wonderful informative presentation of My secret Chicken feed Mix, My husband found this and was so excited because we had just been talking about the subject earlier today, and there you were! Awesome, We have 8 dogs and were wondering what you feed your dog? Do you do the same thing with your feed for your dog? My husband Roy has been going into Spokane and buying whole Oats, Lentil's, Barley, white wheat, Rice, cracked corn and that's it. We mix it, no ratio. We are feeding chickens, ducks and Muscovy. All together we have 38 chickens, 15 Muscovy, 12 German Blue Ducks. They all get the same feed. Roy cooks the feed in a pressure cooker for 5 minutes to soften it up. We used to feed the granules from the feed store but it cost too much. Roy has been cooking the feed in a pressure cooker for 5 minutes because it seems they eat it better. Then he bought shaved Oyster shell just recently to help with the digestion.
We are also impressed by your way you built your chicken coop out of bottles. Wow! Please tell us about this. We live in a cold country, but were thinking about the insulation you are creating. Roy has used 6 inch walls filled with pine saw dust, for insulation. The temperature gets to 45 degrees inside when the temperature is 15 below zero. How thick are your walls with the bottles. What does the temperature get inside of your pens?
Thank you,
Roy and Karen
WOW! That is a lot to request in a comment! I waited for a couple days to answer, as I wanted time to answer properly. First of all, your feed seems to be a bit low on protein, maybe as low as 10%, depending on how much lentil (around 25%) you mix in the diet. If they are thriving, thane something is OK, but poultry will SURVIVE on low protein, just not thrive, lay a lot of eggs and set eggs on low protein.
We have five other dogs besides Cascade. They eat a standard "working dog" packaged diet. When I slaughter meat animals, all the decent organs go into a pot to stew for them, with lots of salt and water enough to make a thin stew. Then I add enough rice to set the whole thin thick, chill it and run it through the grinder. I then freeze it in one day portions and mix it with the packaged food. We have had several dogs live to be 16 years old nd no one has cancer, both signs of a good diet.
Our construction here, won't work in a clod climate. We have thermal mass, not insulation. In a cold climate, once the walls get cold, they will stay cold and suck all the heat out of the house. Building like we are here, you would need to put a layer or two of insulation board on the inside of the outside wall, so the temperature inside does not migrate out. My method here works in a desert and at altitude in lower latitudes. This would apply to a chicken coop as well. Hay and straw will degrade with dirt and rock fill, so are not suitable. Most of our walls in the early construction, are 19" thick. The new construction and the house in particular, is 24" with that layer of insulating board. The insulating board, will stop the thermal mass migration of temperature and retain a constant temperature inside, year-around. Ceilings are about R-60.
There is no roof.... yet... on the bottle coop, so I cannot comment on the temperature. The walls are always cool to the touch though, so since I have build a "solar chimney effect" into the walls & roof, I would imagine the interior will stay cooler than the Summer heat and when I block off the upper openings in Winter, warmer. But we seldom get real cold here, so for the livestock, I am more concerned with dealing with the heat.
It dies sound like you have a good insulating set up though and did it using natural materials!
Thanks for writing and watch for a new video about our hatching chicks (happening NOW). We are starting these off on a starter mix that uses Moringa powder to bring the protein level to 28%. I want to see if they are more vigorous on the Moringa mix than normally and will discuss that in the video.
The feed is suitable for which growth stage of chickens?
From four weeks to death.
It is advisable to feed my broilers this?
Thank you for the info! I was able to find a mill that sold Soybean Meal for 14.35 a bag. they also had cracked corn for 9.10, both 50 pound bags. Here in my town I can get Triticale 100 bags for 10.00. The Triticale is said to be 12 to 13 protein. With my mix of right around 20 protein, it is costing me 8.35 per 50 pounds. That is less then half of what I was paying before for higher protein.
That is excellent!
You are also getting 100% of the corn germ as well. Many commercial feed mills, like the "chessboard" people, remove up to 30% of the corn germ for other uses. This leaves the CRUDE protein the same 7-9%, but reduces the digestible protein by 1/4-1/2. It will take a few weeks, but you will notice an increase in quantity & quality of your eggs as well!
I keep a mealworm colony . Excellent source of protein for the chickens .
I love the bottle house behind you! I've wanted to build one after seeing one in Southern Nevada near 50 years ago now.
I really is a work of art!
Hi Robert from Downunder Australia...just asking if u ever ferment grains..tc..I know it's hot now..🤔🇦🇺
If fermenting grain pleases you, do it. If steaming a chicken breast with basil for your dog's food please you, do it. But neither has ANY effect on the nutritional uptake. Chickens and all birds, are what is left of the dinosaurs. They made the last 65 million years without humans fermenting their food! I raised 20 pound meat chickens on my feed mix of grains. Cannot see how any feed could improve that result!
LOL; your definition of a prepper was interesting 🙂 I didn't know that about the clay in the pellets; thanks for the info.
Hello from Parrish Fl, i have enjoyed your video. i mix scratch and do use layer crumble. my birds (18) are out from nine am to dark. i use oats, wind bird seed, cracked corn for scratch, they get a few handfulls twice a day. i cook alot so they are healthy, in winter i make brown rice, ramen noodles dollar store sells by the case what ever cereal i have,
you SHOULD write a book. enjoyed your video and i am passionate about Monsanto and the other butts out there that are not for farmers but their own pockets. thank you.
+connie bell and do not get me started about gluten free and dairy free crap. i worked in nutrition for 35 hospital years and i know it is the latest gimmick for most, some folks are truely affected by gluten i need to say, but it is like the Cpap machines, all about the mighty buck.
+connie bell Thanks for the kind words. I am considering writing a book, but it will have to wait until the construction is finished. If I do end up traveling to Haiti & Cambodia to help establish semi-intensive chicken houses, that will definitely be worthy writing about!
My chicken MacClovia is lonely so she escapes from her house and heads over to the kitchen door, braving 11 cats and 5 dogs jajaja and proceeds to chase them away from their food! She likes dog food. Ay Dios. Good grief what a crazy chicken. She needs a boyfriend.
Awesome video. Tons of info in here and I love your wit! Coming from a conservative minded family, I wholeheartedly support mixing your own feed and even growing your own feed crops. We'll definitely be feeding our flock this when they come off their grower feed. Thanks!
Thanks! Just do not forget your pre-mix!
THANK YOU VERY MUCH BROTHERS MUCH APPRECIATED!!!🥉🥈🥇🏆🥀♥️👍😃🌻
Just found this channel. I love it! New subscriber for sure.
If it was $14 back then what the world would it be today 🤔
loved ur video. can u plz explain what milo is and guve me a recipe for chick feed and duck feed
Thank you!
Milo is also known as sorghum and is, in itself a wonder grain. We use it here because it is inexpensive to buy. Every region of the world has different demands for grains and we all can tailor our feed mixes to our regional availability.
The mix I give you in this video is a 19% protein mix. For a general chick/duck starter and duck maintenance. the protein should be increased to 28% for the first 4-5 weeks, then lowered to around 23-25%. I feed this to ALL my birds, as the ducks free range with the chickens. The feed recipe can be downloaded here: eco-ranch.us/POULTRYFEEDMIX.pdf
If you just add one extra part of ground soy to this mix, you will be around the 25% protein content.
There are also many things you can substitute for soy. I have been working with a rancher in Nigeria to develop a feed mix for him. The research on grains and potential alternative feeds is priceless and I will be sharing all this in the next feed video, soon!
Recipe kinda starts at 3:40....
Lots of great, necessary information up to that point! Thanks for watching and for taking the time to point out that any good recipe requires a lot more information than just the ingredients!
Interesting mix. It’s different from game bird feeding. I feed racing pigeon feed, whole corn, hen scratch/with out crack corn, wheat, laying pellet, and the most important is soaked oats. Feed three times a day 2 with the dry mix and one with soaked oats. Nice video
Can you feed chi cken's to much protien??
Not really. Like vitamins, they just poop out what they don't need. The exception is the Cornish cross meat birds. You can feed them too much protein and they will gain more muscle mass than their developing bones can support.
Thank you
hi I'm from kissimmee FL I love your video in I learned a lot from you I want to start grow chicken what is best advance,?we have a big back yard and I star growing frut trees and vegetables.
+Elizabeth Cruz Having lived in Branford, Florida for nine years, I think that north central Florida is an EXCELLENT place to have chickens! As far as feed goes, you have access to the feed we fed, from the Hillandale feed mill. Also there is a great variety of insects and wild grasses to eat. HOWEVER, predators are a huge problem and you must protect your flock from everything from hawks to skunks!
I could write you a book of advice on raising chickens there, but here are a few pointers to get you started. Build a secure coop for the birds to be locked into at night. You must protect against owls, raccoons, possum, coyote, red wolf, bobcat, skunk and even snakes. It must be secure! Even if you live in a subdivision, these predators can and WILL come to the easy meal. Find ONE breed that you think suits you best if you are planning on hatching your own. This way you won't hybridize. If all you will be getting are hens, have fun and order several varieties. Each has its own traits and they are fun to have and watch.
In Florida, you must take care that their coop floor and run floor do not stay wet. This will result in foot problems, like foot rot.
Like I said, I could write a book, but this will get you started! Get your birds soon and have fun!
+eco-ranch.us thanks I will be a good idea.
Can we produce chicks without vaccination?
I do.
Thanks for the info, I understand the chicken need some vitamins, does the soy supply all the needed vitamins?
+Anyafulu Lasisi Abiodun No. Soy has some missing things, as does each grain individually. Only by combining do you get a decent balance. STILL, I recommend using a premix as insurance!
PLEASE FOLKS, THIS VIDEO IS OVER FIVE YEARS OLD. DO NOT PHONE ME OR ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT IT ANY LONGER. HERE IS THE LINK TO MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE MIX: singingturkeys.com/POULTRYFEEDMIX.pdf THIS IS ALL THERE IS, I CANNOT RESPOND TO ANY MORE COMMENTS!!
Wow
What an awesome man. Thank you from New Zealand
Being gluten intolerant isn't a sign of prestige? I work food service for a large corporate office. Lots of yuppies. Most are vegetarian, vegan, gluten free, sugar free, lactose intolerant, or allergic to such and such. So ridiculous. Like the gluten free guy, who eats white flour wraps, or the garlic allergy lady who eats our pizza everyday, with you guessed it, a big dose of fresh garlic in the sauce. Most look like they have cancer. Eat some red meat, on white bread, down it with a Coke, go get some natural sunlight, and grow a pair of testicles. I'm done.
+Hans “Hanzy4200” S. Being "special" IS a sign of "prestige" to the hipsters and young affluents of today! "My child is the best student with blonde hair between 60-70 pounds in his class at Hipster Elementary" bumper stickers are everywhere! We are dumbing down society, then discouraging excellence with "awards" for every participant, however mediocre! THEN, we complain when Asians who ARE taught that to excel is desirable, best us!
Being a "vegan", glucose intolerant, lactose intolerant and so on, have become badges of honor for the mediocre masses, desperately seeking to create an identity. The consumer culture of the last 40 years has caused this.
Personally, my life would have been a lonely one due to the shunning I get from these crowd following resource vampires, if it had not been for my Mother teaching us all that we were "so special" that the world needs to follow us, not us the world. It is only because of this upbringing that I found the courage to NOT do "what everyone is doing" and to grow into this lifestyle.
You are correct. These "allergy sufferers"(many of them), vegans, glucose & lactose intolerants, synthetic fabric allergies, religious fanatics and "talking heads" who preach hatred for all whose politics are slightly different from their own; all need to grow a pair, forget what others think, dance like no one is watching and scratch what itches when it itches. The world would be a far better place! Thank you my friend!
+Hans “Hanzy4200” S. Ever shopped at a health food store? You'll see the pastiest, scrawny, uptight looking neurotic folks you'll ever see.
squire haggard Yeah, I went into one to buy beeswax. The clerk looked like he was going to pass out at any moment.
+BmillTheGamer no they dont...
+doug moore My condolences on the loss of your Father.
Decades ago, the cartoon "Family Circle" had a Sunday cartoon where the kids were fighting in their bedrooms, running around the bedroom right after bedtime, jumping in and out of their beds. The father came in and sternly said to them to "Settle down! The next one of you that gets out of bed, gets a spanking!"
He turned and was walking down the hallway, when Jeffy, the littlest one, came out of the bedroom, saying "I 'havta go to the bathroom".
To every rule, there IS an exception. Your Father was a very unfortunate exception to my "rule". But from my generation forward, people somehow feel they must "stand out from the crowd", create a persona that makes them exceptional for some reason. That exceptionality make be one that is earned honestly, or fabricated like being a "vegan", "allergic to smoke" "lactose intolerant", "MSG intolerant", "fragrance intolerant", ADHD, "gluten intolerant", "public toilet intolerant", "bashful kidney", "fart anxiety", or some other thing I NEVER heard of until the 1990's! That does not mean these things are not real and don't exist! It just means that .00005% of the population suffers from them, not 50% of upwardly mobile," attention-needy", BMW driving, young professionals and particularly their children!
Somehow, I know you understood that in my post, I am seldom vague! But that does nothing to ease the grief regarding the loss of your Father.
Dear, Mr, Robert Earl, I Really enjoyed this video I like to ask you our country milo not available other ingredients what can use ?
+lahir cassim Milo is sorghum, if sorghum is the better known name. Otherwise, you can easily substitute rice, millet, or more corn with no problems
+eco-ranch.us thank you very much
Bentonite clay you say? Oh sure my cats sh-t in that stuff, but not sure I'd want my dogs or chickens eating it.
What do you think about fermented your chicken food?? And thank you for the video very good info
My personal thoughts and these are just MY thoughts, is that it is another fad someone thought up. Yes, on paper it is more nutritious appearing. But there are variables in the fermentation process, not the least of which is allowing bad bacteria to grow. Dinosaurs turned into birds: chickens, without us dreaming up new ways to market feed to ourselves. They ate bugs, greens and what grains they could find. IF anything, I advocate returning to that, by using meal worms, soldier flies & the like, sprouted, NOT fermented grains and fresh grasses. Supplement THAT with my recommended grain mixture. I have about 35, four year old hens that lay about five huge eggs a week, each...... as well as the younger girls. Whatever you do, keep that protein level up to or over 20% and ignore anyone that says to feed less.
Flax seed is 90 $ a bag here in ontario canada. 2023.
THAT is pricey!!!
Christine asked me if I grind my baby chick feed. For some reason the question does not appear here, but I will answer it and hope she reads the answer:
I do grind the baby feed, "starter" much finer than the adult mix. I also make the mix 28% protein so that all baby poultry can eat it. I also neglected to add that if your chickens do NOT free range, you must also add a vitamin/mineral "premix" to the feed.
Well, before you mentioned Wheat and Honey as a complete food there is a man mentioned them through God Qur'an around 1400 years ago his name Prophet Muhammad. Read (Surah Yusif) the prophet to see how God told him to store the wheat to last forever. And read what God said about Honey 1400 years ago. Please do. Thanks for your video.
I find religion to be both Man's worst invention and Man's greatest weapon of mass destruction, so I won't read any further than I was forced to for the first 18 years of my life into these Bronze Age myths and deities.
That being said, the Talmud, Quran and bible do possess much information that can help us survive in the case of societal calamity. Wheat, honey, dried beans and salted meats are wonderful survival foods. Pork, spoils quickly in heat. This is the reason it was shunned as a meat to eat in the hot desert areas where Islam, Christianity and Judaism flourished. Making its non-consumption a part of the religion, most likely kept many followers from falling ill from eating spoiled pork, so they could "go forth and propagate"..
Same can be said of the "book" of Leviticus, where if a Man lay with a woman who has her disease, he is unclean for 20 days (or so). Nowadays, we can wash with unlimited water, so sex during a woman's menstruation is possible without fouling our clothing.
These texts have a lot of great practical information in them..... but as guidance from some unseen creature who sees ALL the events in this entire 35 billion light year wide universe, not so much!
And the Almighty said, "Yusuf, friend, we've got seven fat cows eaten by seven lean, seven greens and another land, so I have to go back to people, maybe they know. He said you grow seven years, so you reap a climax in a spike in a little bit of what you eat. Then comes seven people who eat what you gave them a little bit of what they barricaded. Then comes a year later in which people are squeeze and there are a few of them» «Yusuf» «Verses 46-49».
The scholars and commentators have argued that the meaning of love and Sanabel in these verses is wheat, although it enters with barley and some other grains, but the wheat remains its duration. and come
great video!! i was just wondering about grit..umm, do oyster shells count as grit? i feed my chickens crumble and scratch.. and grapes and greens too! i know that they need some sort of grit to go along with their diet. i had a few bags of concrete that got wet and hardened up.. soo, i smashed them up and they seem to really like it as grit. they really like it! is concrete bad for them? weird question, i know.. but my 10 chickens like small bits of concrete!
+scott helstrom That is not weird at all...... but it is a question many have but are afraid to ask! Almost anything can be grit. I have never had separate grit, even when our flock was 100% contained. We just made sure they had oyster shell, or other calcium carbonate. They used it as grit, for bone building and egg shell production. Almost anything will work, you are dealing with things that evolved from dinosaurs, so they have adapted over 65 million years!
I don't like them to get into unmixed cement due to the alkalinity, but cured and crushed should be OK. I think it is better to provide calcium carbonate or other crushed rock. But if they free range or are outdoors where they can scratch, don't worry. However, every flock should have oyster shell available at all times. In fact, our north Florida farm sat on limestone (calcium carbonate) and it was everywhere at the surface and we STILL offered oyster shell!
Thank You!!
Great video thanks for sharing your knowledge with us. I have a farmer friend who grows soy beans and yesterday I was on his farm while they trucked there harvest out to market. I was given approximately 150 pounds of this raw bean. How can I prepare this so it's palatable for my chickens? thanks you.
You got me there! I buy my soy already roasted and ground. I do know it has to be roasted first, due to a problem chemical that roasting destroys. So, I would imagine that you could look on-line for the temperature & time and roast it yourself in the oven in something like a huge turkey roaster. Then, you need to grind it yourself in a grist mill ($300 and up). In your circumstance, I would do that, since a grist mil is very handy to have anyway. You can feed it roasted and whole, but my birds won't eat much of it that way. Grinding in a commercial grade blender will work too. We use one to grind food for our chicks.
Thank you for the speedy reply. As for grinding I've seen people feed there chickens whole corn which is signfigantly larger ...I wonder why the soy has to be ground? also considering time and expenses roasting and grinding. first timer here so I eventually will make the investment though.
My chickens won't eat the whole soy for some reason. They even shy away from ground soy at first. This is why I recommend grinding. If you can get shelled peanuts, raw or roasted, at a reasonable price...... even dried black eyed peas, feed those instead. They have far more protein and poultry love them!
Thank youbfor giving us insight on the store feeds verses homemade feeds.
My son suggested a cement mixer for mixing the grains as you do larger amounts. Clean of course.
I think that is a good idea!
Wow! Nice presentation! Easy to understand, great setting, concise!
I also appreciate you sharing your feed experience and knowledge.
So that was two parts:
Wheat
Cracked corn
Milo
Then it’s 3 1/2 parts soy meal.
Did I get it right?
I also feed back any eggs and shells broken and mixed with scraps.
Thank you from SW NM!
Regards...
What do you use to worm your chickens and how much and how often do you do it?
I loke this channel so much. I am a small town farmer, working here in America and planning to retire in the Philippines to do farming.
Nice Info Robert. We talk about some of this on the phone so in a way I got a sneak peak of what you was posting. I have 21 hens and one Roster. during the winter I go though 2 50 LB bags of Scratch grains and 2 50 lb bags of Layer Feed. a month, I use Hole corn and feed that to them once in the morning and once at night to help keep them warm during the winter. I like to learn how to raise Meal warms, and grow folder to feed my girls with what folder is I have know clue what that is have to research it. Once I sign the paper work on the 5 acres we are adding to out lot. I want to grow foods that will not only feed my family but also feed my animals. I would also like to raise honey bee's also they would provide the honey, witch is a natural sweetener. and help my gardens grow much better.
Thanks for sharing this very informative video.
Thanks for the video, I learned so much and am excited to make my own feed. I was wondering what could be used instead of soy meal? I cannot have anything with soy so I try to keep that away even from my babies. Thanks again
D
+wholistictouch We use soy to increase the protein content. So anything high in protein could be substituted. That is the problem though, as almost everything else is more expensive that soy. But, here is what can be substituted: fish meal; commercial fish food, floating or non-floating, but check this for soy; blood meal.
There has to be more, but I just have not studied further. ALSO, if you live near fisheries, fish guts can be fed, but in a separate container that is cleaned daily. If you feel really enterprising, create a worm farm like we have. Meal worms are in the 22-26% protein range. Fly larvae, maggots are even higher and building and maintaining,a maggot trap is simple. Flies are seasonal though, mealworms can be grown year-around. I would very seriously look for fish meal or blood meal.
Good Luck!
Would you have any suggestions? Reason I have to keep away from soy is that I had cancer and must stay away from certain items one of them being soy, just my luck
+wholistictouch I would look for fish meal first. That would be all dried fish in pellets. Check the ingredients of the 50# bags of fish food that your local feed store has also. We may be able to make a blend using one of these and some other grains!
Thank so much for your help.
Great video,,, there are a couple questions i have as we want to start making our own chicken feed,, first, do you think the Milo should be ground for better absorption in the birds or doesn't it matter, second, what kind of wheat do you use..Thanks in advance!
+Anthony Rafferty Honestly, it does not matter if the milo is ground or not, because the gizzard does that for the chickens. The finer the food the birds eat, the faster they digest it. With commercial egg layers and broilers, the feed is very finely ground so they absorb it faster. With egg layers, this speeds eggs through the system because they can draw off that energy sooner. With broilers like the Cornish Crosses, that want to grow freakishly fast, finely ground feeds will allow the to grow and keep some extra fat on them as well.
Always grind seed for chicks up to about six weeks though, as there is a choking hazard, or at least the risk that the big seeds will pass through the bird undigested. This is not such a loss though as in typical chicken style, others will quickly eat the undigested grain and digest it the second time!
I am not sure what kind of wheat we buy! I should know. I just ask the feed store for "wheat". I am glad you asked though, because if you or anyone has a wheat growing farm near them, go ask the owner about purchasing a supply of his harvested wheat for your birds. Even with a moderate sized flock like ours, if we were to buy a year's worth of wheat in this way, it would only be around 1000 pounds. Giving the farmer 50% or even 100% more than he gets from the coop or agribusiness puts a few extra dollars in his pocket, saves you at least 50% and is never missed by the main buyer. Try it folks! Same with corn, though this you may have to remove from the cob, or at least shuck!
Awesome video! Thank you so much for sharing this - question - can this ratio be fed to baby chicks also? We are getting laying hens as chicks soon and I would rather make my own feed than buy - I do for my dogs and cats and would prefer to do so for my hens, but I don't know if this would supply growing chicks or not.
+Beth S Yes, I feed it to my young chicks! However, there are three very important things you must do: 1) increase the protein to 28% for 4-6 weeks. 2) grind ALL the ingredients to a fine powder. 3) ADD A VITAMIN/MINERAL PREMIX.
You must do all three things or you will have major problems with the chicks! Best of luck!
+eco-ranch.us Thank you so much, Robert! Awesomesauce!
😁👍
You got a very big heart sir
God bless you
Great video 😎👍
Thanks! Watch my Holiday message. Should be up tomorrow!
Have you ever fermented your feed? I've heard it can lower your feed cost significantly as it make the nutrients more readily available and results in the animals consuming less water (as the food is so hydrating from soaking in the water/ACV). I haven't done anything of this so this is all regurgitated information, but it seems to be a viable way of reducing your feed cost and keeping healthier birds :)
Thank you for the tips it was so helpful .......and you are right
Dude!! You are right about being loooong wind'd! I too am loooooong wind'd sooooo I'm subscribing!
What is a good mix for Cornish broiler, that I can make myself, I have my own grinders, i am from Michigan. thanks steve
My mix is fine for Cornish crosses and the like. If you are growing them for profit, or just as your personal source of meat, I would use a corn/soy/premix mix of 3 parts corn, two parts soy and then the premix. With the phenomenal growth of the Cornish "Frankenbirds", too much protein will cause very young birds to "outgrow" their bones, so I just use this for the entire life.
In Michigan, you have access to inexpensive whole corn, so I would definitely grind my own into a fine cornmeal. Same with the (roasted) soy. If you have issues with soy, then it gets complicated, but substituting dried black eyed peas, cowpeas, or (my choice) peanuts will do fine! Always grind it all into a fine meal, this is absorbed faster an compensates for the slightly lower protein for the 1-20 day olds.
If you are so inclined, build and use maggot traps IN the growing pens and even start a meal worm or soldier fly farm. Our 600,000 meal worm farm takes up just one 5'x5' corner of a room and provides nearly free, 90% protein.
Since you have a grinder too and IF you do not have "cannibalism" issues in your thinking. When you process your birds, unused organs, usually lungs & testicles, but anything not an intestine can be used..... as well as bones, head, comb and feet, can be tossed into a big stock pot and thoroughly cooked. Drain and use the broth on a separate feeder bowl, over their feed (cleaned DAILY). Take the rest, bones and all and run them through your grinder. Package this into daily serving sizes and put, frozen or thawed, into a separate feeder. Put the uneaten portion in the maggot trap. If this is unpalatable to you, just put it all in the maggot traps. Your feed bill will drop dramatically!
@@ecoranchusa Where do you buy your premix? And what type?
Thank u, I have learned much, that I can feed chickens an ducks the same feed u made. Thank u again from a beginner
Thank you for the video! I have a quick question what do you think about onate feed!?
+Justin Maestas Justin, I am not familiar with them. They are not selling their feed in this area. I did look at their website. I cannot see whether they use inorganic binders like bentonite. My thought is no, but phone them and ask how they extrude the pellets, with binders or heat.
I was impressed that they had a 22% laying feed, as well as gamebird feed. Gamebird feed is a great substitute for standard feeds, but can really be costly in some areas.
Onate is a regional feed mill. I did not see an affiliation with agribusinesses like the checkerboard. This alone is a great reason to support them by buying their feeds! When you find out about the extrusion process, do let us know. I will link to them and ANY small or regional feed mill on our web site, that does not use inorganic binders.
I have another formula of making feeds for chicken and itik and as well as 🐖 pig!!!Thank you very much for sharing your nice video!!!
Have you thought about sprouting your wheat and raising Black Soldier Fly Larvae to provide protein (46%) and calcium for your chickens instead of soy meal? Comfrey is great too. These components would produce more nutrition for them as well as you and your wife. The two of you could also eat these things if It came down to it.
imasurvivornthriver Exactly! If there were a complete societal collapse, we would have no qualms about eating insect protein. Comfry as a human food, I am sure you know more than I on this, has something that is troublesome to us, but it is excellent as a chicken feed. Right now, we really cannot grow anything until we have the greenhouse completed. It is too hot in the open or under a shade cloth for fruit to set. You get growth, but no fruits. Once I complete the chicken yard, I am setting several "maggot traps" around for the extra protein for the poultry, as well as installing a complete fodder system......... but I am several months away from that at the moment. THANKS for your input!!!!
My pleasure. I wish you and your wife all the best! Looks like you guys have your heads on right in providing for yourselves. :-)
Thank you for that information, look forward having chicken in the future, just gather information before I start 😀. Keep up the great work your doing to help us new be to have a successful start 🙏❤ God bless
P.s New subscriber
Great video I just started again having chicken I want to get there feed right
Thanks for the recipe. What breed of chickens do you recommend for eggs and meat? We are both a homesteader and a prepper.
Ask 20 people and you will get 20 different breeds! I prefer Dark Cornish and Rhode Island Reds. However, I hate the Dark Cornish roosters, so I usually end up with Cornish hens that hybridize with the RIR roosters. For meat and eggs, it all provides great dual purpose production!
eco-ranch.us
Thanks for the tips. I have been writing everything down in a notebook. Hopefully it all becomes second nature so I won't have to look things up as often. RIR Roosters & Dark Cornish hens it is then. Thanks for the advise. There's another video idea for you...choosing a chicken that is right for your needs. Cheers.
Hey thank you for your video, really helpful for us just starting on yard birds
Glad to help
wow!!! i loved your educational video!! Thankyou!
Hi robert ,what are the types of broilers for tropical countries?
+darkangelforever 007 Sorry for the delay, I stopped getting message notifications for some reason! I am not sure what birds to use as production broilers in the tropics. The humidity makes our experience here irrelevant. Since a coop is required and ventilation, I imagine you could choose from several breeds. I would also think that the most efficient, the Cornish crosses would NOT be able to tolerate the heat and humidity well.
This is only a guess, but I would look into the Mediterranean breeds, Red Ranger (a hybrid) Dark Cornish and Rhode Island or New Hampshire Reds. What you are looking for, of course is a breed with a substantial enough breast to make it viable. The "village chickens" and "jungle fowl" don't have the breast, but do have the flavor. Using these is less expensive to raise, but not desirable locally. If it were us, I would see if I could develop an export market for the Village & jungle fowl type birds.
Sorry I am not more help, but good luck!
+eco-ranch.us thanks robert.. more power
nice chicken feeds how about quail feeds the protein your talkin sir is it crude protien?
+Sharon Bayona The protein I use IS total (crude) protein. Usable protein depends on the quality for the feed. For us here, usable protein is about the same as the crude. In prepared feeds though, things like hair and feathers which are built from protein CAN be included and these are NOT usable. Here, this is usually found in prepared feeds, not the base ingredients.
If you were to use my feed for quail, I would substitute millet for milo ( good idea anyway) and increase the soy to bring the protein up to the 28% quails require........ or more if yours need higher, like 32%
Can I feed the same ingredients and proportions for baby chicks (grinded, except)? Or do I need to raise protein percentage by adding more soy meal? Or there is something else that I should add for my chick starter feed?
All help will be greatly appreciated!
Thank you!
+Grace C. We grind the mix in a restaurant quality blender and that works fine. Takes some time though, a home sized mill ($400) would be faster. For chicks, just add soy, or fish meal if you have soy issues, to raise the protein level to 25% or 28-30% for waterfowl and remember to add your premix or you are inviting developmental problems! Here again is the link to the premix we buy: www.abcplus.biz/abc2.aspx?Id=Poultry_All_In_One_Premix Any is fine, so check with your local feed store to see if they carry one though. That way you are not paying for shipping! Just be prepared for a blank look from the hired help when you ask about a premix, these young, Purina-trained people in most feed stores now, will think you are speaking Swahili!
+eco-ranch.us Thank you so much, your reply was very helpful! I will definitely go visit the website!
Sorry, I don't know what 'Swahili' is, nor have any opinions about 'Purina', so I don't understand your last sentence about what to prepare for. That's alright!
+Grace C. Agribusinesses are controlling our food supply and it goes right down to the local feed stores. If a feed store has a big banner on it with the "Purina" name and checkerboard, it means that the feed store has signed a contract with Purina to sell Purina products. Part of that agreement is to NOT carry products that we can substitute for Purina branded or owned products. So the employees are trained to sell only Purina products and NOT help you to build a feed that is equal to or better than Purina that can cost 50% less. Asking for a "premix" in one of these stores, to one of the young Purina trained employees with get you a blank look, an eye roll and they will look at you as if you are speaking a foreign language, like Swahili (from southern Africa). After that they will go into a prepared, memorized pitch about the "virtues" of Purina Layena chicken feed, which at my local feed store, sells for $19 a 50 pound bag........ or $7.00 MORE per 50 pound bag than what I have, with LESS nutrition and the inert binder additive, bentonite clay.A small feed store or feed mill feed store is the best way to buy your feeds and to get the best, most experienced information regarding animal nutrition and care. That checkerboard banner on a feed store is your guarantee of higher prices and less useful information! Avoid it!
I really enjoyed this video.
Thanks for sharing your experience and knowledge with all of us. I have raised Texas
A & M quail for the past two years in my back yard. I plan to stop raising them this winter to raise about 6 laying hens. I may also get a couple ducks to keep the slug and bug problem under control. Can you recommend a breed of chicken based on egg production? I'm not concerned about the meat since they will ( knowing us ) be more like pets than livestock and we won't be able to kill them.
Another thing...just saying...I don't understand why the 22 people would give your video a thumbs DOWN. Of course with the more than a thousand thumbs UP I guess the negatives show just how much they know. I gave you a thumbs up and have subscribed to your channel. Have a great day !
Thank you for the kind words! Actually I am surprised there are not MORE of the "thumbs down". Purina and Southern States alone could ask their employees to hit me and there would be a couple thousand! I do not care about multi-nationals, or corporations in general. They are the problem, not the solution. My videos try to show the solutions to issues that we will have to deal with whether or not "they" acknowledge them!
As far a s the kind of bird you are seeking, there are many. Most of these are American made breeds like the Rhode Island Red and Wyandotte. Our American breeds tend to have better tempered roosters that older breeds. McMurray has a hybrid that we love both sexes of, but they will not breed true if you want to propagate them. That breed is the "Pioneer". I recommend that and the RIR for backyard poultry people!
I'm getting my first ever batch of chickens in 2 days. think video was very helpful, but what would you suggest as a feed mixture for chicks?
I have had difficulties with my mix and young chicks....HERE.... not in Florida though. So, I would recommend using a commercial starter for up to four weeks, then moving to adult feed. If you have waterfowl, do NOT use commercial starter though, as the medicine for coccidian can kill waterfowl. Instead use a game bird starter, or just use it anyway. I am using game bid starter for our chicks this season and they are doing really well!
thank you! I'm located in Maine, out in the country. Just typical chicks, I'm hoping for laying hens
It should be fun. But like cats, not everyone is a "chicken person" and you won't knw that until you have some! We love the calm, quiet of the hens and have tamed them into pets in the past. Roosters.... not so much! But I like them OK!
Keep me posted on your progress!
Absolutely! Maybe we can swap email addresses?
Anyone can e-mail me at: Robert@eco-ranch.com
Sir, you are amazing!
I love what you are doing here! Just wondering tho why don't you grow fodder and get more out of your wheat? I just know I am going to be doing this for my rabbits, goats and chickens. Just wondering what your thoughts are on it?
Donnie Ross I know that you got me thinking about mixing my own. I use a layer pellet from X-Cel feed and give other stuff. Its a 16% plust I give them fodder and other veggie scraps from my organic garden.
Donnie Ross Donnie, Thanks for subscribing by the way!!! I love the idea and cost savings of a fodder system. With all we a re doing now, we cannot set one up YET, but greenhouse will have a very large fodder system. It is great nutrition, water management and seed usage.
eco-ranch.us If the ingredients in the feed are acceptable to you, stay with it and supplement it! I am VERY fussy and finally found a feed mill that is up to my standards that makes me a soy/corn/premix feed at 17%. To this, I add some cotton seed and extra soy for growers and young chicks. Everyone should give their birds EVERYTHING organic to eat that they can. Grass clippings, weeds vegetable stalks, even mice and lizards! Just don't give egg producers garlic, onion or hot peppers as this can flavor the eggs. Otherwise, let them eat it all!!!! Good luck and PLEASE stay it touch!
eco-ranch.us That will be awesome to see! I have started a small urban farm myself. I have a facebook page for it at the moment but maybe I will start uploading my videos to youtube. If you do want to see what I have going you can check it out on here facebook.com/c1urbanfarm?ref=hl . Its nothing super special yet I am just gathering some funds to build everything. A lot will be happening over the next couple of months. I will be doing the fodder system and I will show a video on that so you can check it out. Thanks for the info on the mix you did and I will be looking into what that will cost me to do as well. I buy everything by the ton so It will an expensive start to do my own blend but save so much money in the long run. Talk to you soon I am going to be taking my wife on a trip today for her birthday.
Donnie Ross Love what you are doing! If everyone did what they were able to in their homes, live would be better for us all!
Useful video properly delivered. Does this feed apply to all stages of the chicken? Like from chicks, maintenance, then fattening before being sent to the abattoir.
Yes! Adjust your protein levels to the growth stage though.... 28% 0-4 weeks, 24% to slaughter or 8 weeks, 20% for layers for life. Staying with this mix will reduce your losses and more than make up for the extra cost for the protein rick ingredient, by reducing your losses dramatically!
Can you tell me where is the best place to get these ingredients?
Thank You for this insight. I am aware that clay is rich in minerals, I wonder how the baking effects the minerals in the clay? Once again Thank You for sharing your knowledge and experience with the rest of us. Tom.
Not sure myself. If you are referring to the clay added to Purina and other feeds though, it is NOT cooked, that is the reason it is there, to form pellets without heat (and take about 15% of your money away).