The perfect Poultry feed formulation has been something I’ve recently taken a deep-dive into finding. I’ve been learning all the do’s and don’ts, when formulas matter, and when not to worry about formulas at all.
The reason I’ve been searching for the perfect poultry feed formulation is that I’ve been having lots of trouble getting my one-year-old hens to lay eggs. My goal is to find the healthiest diet for my birds on the cheap. If you’ve been having issues too, or are wondering how to make feeding poultry more affordable, read on!
Why I went down the poultry feed formulation rabbit hole
Over this summer and fall we were feeding our chickens the basic Tractor Supply Company feed, along with our kitchen scraps. We were getting consistently 7-12 eggs per day from our 12 hens.
Come October, we experienced what apparently most of America has been experiencing: a complete egg drop-off. The chickens laid zero eggs.
Troubleshooting:
I suspected the feed. This was easy for me to do because I’m already biased against it. I don’t know what’s in that feed, and it’s not conducive to self-sufficiency, let alone a zero-inputs farm. I’ve wanted it gone for a while!
Three weeks into this drop-off of production, I gave our chickens a pig roast from one of our home-butchered American Guinea Hogs that I had forgotten about in the fridge. It was covered in fat on the outside, and I had hoped to render the fat into lard before cooking the roast. It was pretty big, and it took them a week to eat it all, and within that week their production went right back up to 7 eggs per day!
I knew that was worth noting, so then I started giving them a portion of the food scraps we were getting from the local school for our pigs, and completely stopped feeding them TSC feed. From mid-October until the New Year, a span of about 11 weeks and including December 15th, (the shortest day of the year) we got 7 eggs per day consistently.
This timeline told me one thing: It was neither the daylight nor the cold that was lowering egg production. We were getting less light as every day went by, and yet the chickens were laying just fine.
Then we left home for two weeks for Christmas and had our friend feed our animals TSC feed, since the school was closed for the Holidays anyway. As soon as we returned, the chickens gave us nothing. This confirmed in my mind that the feed was basically rendering my chickens infertile.
Not interested.
So now here I am, looking for alternatives.
Helpful resources
My favorite resource for anything like this is Shawn and Beth Dougherty. I know they are on Facebook, but they also have a blog that is an incredible wealth of free knowledge: The One-cow Revolution – a grass-fed homestead (wordpress.com)
Before I dive into this topic, I must recommend that you either visit their site, go to one of their workshops, or buy their essential book. I don’t know how to do associate sales, but definitely tell them I sent you! I love them so much and they are the greatest source of inspiration and information for me.
They have all kinds of info on the nutritional requirements of different animals, but they especially tell you how to make your farmstead stand on its own two feet, so to speak.
The best resource I have found short of the Dougherty’s for this one is Justin Rhodes. He has this really interesting youtube video on what he feeds his chickens.
The perfect poultry feed formulation
The perfect feed formula incorporates age and type of chicken. It also includes all the nutritional requirements in the perfect percentage, and that can change based on the different types of chickens.
It can get really complicated. And the basic message you get across the board is this: you are not qualified to do this yourself unless you do lots and lots of research. For instance, this article tells you how complicated it is, while not helping you actually try it yourself.
I have looked and looked for a simple, understandable formula to follow.
Justin Rhodes tells you what proportions of different grains he uses to make his feed, but he doesn’t tell you what the goal behind those proportions is. How much protein? How much fat? What sorts of carbs?
Why can’t people just tell you the percentages?
Because it has become controversial and over-complicated.
But at last, I found what I was looking for. It was in one of the Dougherty’s booklets. The Dougherty family receives hundreds of questions from people who have read their book and blog, and so they answered them by writing a handful of little pamphlets. The books are invaluable to me, full of simple, practical farm wisdom.
“A chicken on green pasture – whether free-range, or in a sliding pen or ‘tractor’ [rotationally grazed] – and having more or less unlimited access to plant foods, will hustle quite a bit of her own grub. But to lay eggs, she requires roughly two ounces by volume – a quarter cup – of high-protein food scraps, plus eight ounces (one cup) of other sorts of food wastes, including starchy things like bread or cooked potatoes. Obviously the size of the individual bird will be a factor here.
-Shawn and Beth Dougherty
There you have it. I love that quote, as it’s so simple. When deciding what poultry feed formulation looked like, I also considered the protein requirements of the different types of birds:
| Type of bird: | Protein: |
| chick | 20-22% |
| pullet | 17% |
| laying hen | 16-18% |
| broiler chicken | 18-19% |
| rooster | 18% |
My Leghorns lay eggs on less protein than my Rhode Island Reds, so there is a little bit of tweaking you have to do to get the best amount of feed for your flock. As a rule, I generally calculate the percent of protein, and then judge how much rice to cook up for my chickens if we are low on food scraps, assuming that I’m feeding them beans as their daily protein. Otherwise, I don’t do much to formulate feed, unless I find a problem.
There are other charts that people come up with for carbs, different amino acids, fats, etc. Those are great sources of information, and if you do a quick calculation every now and then of what your chickens are eating in what proportions, that will give you a clue as to what is missing.
However, it has been a real struggle for me to narrow down exactly what is needed, short of the quote above by the Doughertys.
Read on for why I don’t worry too much about it.
Why I think you don’t always need to worry about the perfect poultry feed formulation
1. People are over-cautious, and we live in a world of liability
While I was doing research for my chickens, I would go down these deep dark tangents, such as:
“Can you feed chickens beans? Can you feed chickens rice? How many mealworms can chickens eat per day?”
These questions led me to forums, and ohhh man! People are crazy. There were heated arguments about all things chicken-safety, especially when it comes to beans and especially rice as chicken feed. I’m laughing as I type this. The arguments were so bad they were laughable.
Someone would ask if they could feed chickens rice.
Someone else would reply, “don’t you dare feed chickens rice! Don’t you know Churches don’t have any birds around them because they ate the rice people throw at weddings and died?!”
Now, of course you want healthy birds. But I think giving chickens real food that doesn’t render them infertile is better for them.
For the record, I wouldn’t feed chickens raw rice or beans, or even improperly cooked beans. More on this later.
The idea behind formulas is a good one, I think, because it helps keep birds healthy that are forever in a coop and completely dependent on someone to give them the proper nutrition.
Here’s the thing: If you are giving your chickens food scraps, scratch, or chicken treats, they are already not eating the perfect formula.
You are feeding them an addition of something, changing the proportions. I don’t think that’s bad, but I think it’s unproductive to be so concerned about the perfect formula and then be giving your chickens “treats” and not thinking twice.
If you are only feeding them one thing while they are in a pen, it makes much more sense to give them formulas because an unbalanced diet their entire lives will likely affect something.
2. Animals are intuitive eaters
Have you heard of intuitive eating? It’s the concept that our bodies naturally crave what we need, and if we listen to our bodies and feed it what it tells us we need, we will be healthier. The problem with this idea is that there is so much processed food these days that you can easily misunderstand what your body wants.
For instance, if your body craves something sweet, hoping for berries full of antioxidants, you might go for twinkies instead. It’s also complicated because there is research to suggest that people with really imbalanced gut microbiota tend to crave carbohydrates and sugar over any other food, as Dr Natasha explains in her books on the GAPS diet.
Animals tend to be simpler. Probably because they don’t concoct deliciously altered “foods” with lower calories or lower sugar, or in some other way messed with, based on current “health” food trends. They just eat.
However, we give them feed interestingly packaged into a mash that is indiscernible. What’s in it? Who knows. But the package claims to be the perfect chicken feed formulation.
If you don’t give your chickens the perfectly formulated mash, and instead give them real food, guess what happens? They eat intuitively!
When troubleshooting how to make my own feed for my birds, I found this fascinating to watch. If you give chickens enough variety of food to be picky, they will be! They will eat what they know they need, and avoid what they don’t.
All that to say, I’m not sure that worrying about ratios is the right approach. Maybe the better way is to give our birds variety and observe what they seem to favor, and troubleshoot based on signs of health. If we trust in the chicken’s instincts, maybe we will learn what they really need.
3. I rotational graze my pigs and chickens
This is my favorite farmy thing to talk about. Rotational grazing! I think it’s the true secret to success in modern small farming. A couple people to check out are Joel Salatin and Alan Savery. I will need to do a whole separate post about this.
I don’t free-range my chickens for many reasons. I’ll get to those reasons below. But my biggest reason is that rotational grazing is better for my homestead.
How does rotational grazing affect my chicken feed formulation?
There are plants and bugs that chickens have access to when they are rotationally grazed that affect the overall feed formulation. Like with giving chickens scraps or treats, the formula is off-balance if they are foraging for themselves, which they do quite well.
4. In a world where chickens are bred to be as fertile as possible, a good marker for chicken health is egg production.
That being said, a chicken that is not laying eggs is not necessarily sick. It could be molting, it could be not getting enough sunlight each day, or there could be stressors such as weather.
In my experimentation of what works and what doesn’t for our chickens, I’ve seen a direct impact on egg production based on the proportions of different foods I try. I find this makes everything easier for me: there is a measurable, clear, and understandable sign of chicken nutrition, namely, egg production.
What I’ve tried to incorporate in my poultry feed formulation
- Food scraps
- Barley fodder
- Beans
- Rice
- Bulk grains
- Goat feed
Food scraps
Food scraps are my favorite feed, because they are basically free! They could be totally free if you go ask a restaurant or a store to give you their food scraps. I think it’s hard to find places that will do it, but you could look into chain restaurants that have sustainability pledges or say that they only use organic food. I don’t know much about this. That is the goal of the school we get food scraps from, and I know Chipotle has that kind of pledge. It might be worth a shot.
If you want to skip to where I just talk about food scraps, scroll down past “all the options for poultry feed formulation” and down to “how to source food scraps.”
Barley fodder
Barley fodder has been a pain in the neck. It’s pretty instagram famous right now, so I thought I’d try it out and see if it’s as good as everyone says. In my experience, it’s not. Our barley fodder gets moldy before it sprouts, and it takes about three weeks for it to grow to sufficient height to harvest for my chickens. Some factors could be:
- Maybe it’s getting moldy because my barley is a year old.
- Maybe it’s the dry air in our house keeping it from sprouting, or the hot sun.
- Maybe people on instagram are LIARS. (Just kidding. But also not.)
Another problem with barley that I didn’t realize until later is that while it’s popular, it’s actually not the best thing to give your chickens in large quantities. It has so much fiber that it demands a lot on their bodies, and while it does give them a source of nutrition, there are other grains like oats which have similar nutritional composition that are less taxing on their systems.
Beans
Beans are my favorite success so far. They are cheap and the chickens love them, and they definitely produce more if I’ve thought to prepare their bean ration the night before!
Rice
Rice is my second favorite. It doesn’t seem to affect egg production but it’s even cheaper than beans and not as hard to prepare properly.
Bulk grains
Bulk grains were an utter failure. I should say that I didn’t technically try this because I never ordered the ingredients. This is the route that Justin Rhodes took. The problem was that I wanted to buy the chickens all non-GMO organic ingredients, so I looked into trying on Azure Standard. My plan was to do part bulk grains, part cooked rice. But even with me cooking rice every day for the chickens, when Ben did the math, (because I count in amazement vs. pounds and enthusiasm vs. dollars) the price came up to $4 more than what we last paid for TSC chicken feed.
In the end, I just couldn’t find a way to justify the switch right now, even though I believe it would ultimately be healthier.
Goat feed
I saw that some people give their chickens goat or all-animal sweet feed, so we tried it. It was another epic failure. It was cheap, but the chickens didn’t lay at all while I fed it to them. One reason this could have been is that it wasn’t the proper percentage of protein. But I was also giving them beans to help with the protein gap and it didn’t help.
What I haven’t tried to add to my poultry feed and why
- Mealworms
- Fall crop for chickens
- Perennials for chickens
Mealworms
I haven’t tried mealworms because we have no storage space in our house, and we have nowhere to put mealworms that our kids couldn’t get into.
The best place for mealworms is a dark part of your house, such as a closet. If I were to put mealworms in the closet and my kids were to get into them, ohh boy I don’t even want to think about that kind of disaster!
Fall crop
What I mean by a fall crop is something like barley or buckwheat that you let go to seed and let the chickens have at it. I got this idea from Beth and Shawn Dougherty.
We haven’t done a fall crop because I’d rather eat what I plant than give it to my chickens! Haha! Someday I won’t be so stingy toward my gardens but whenever I see an escape-artist chicken eating my beloved salad greens I get very angry. That’s my salad! But I need to get over this and try it!
Perennials
As to perennials for chickens, it is exactly that: you grow feed for your chickens. There are lots of posts about growing chicken feed. The basic idea is that there is a list of foods that chickens love that you can grow as a chicken garden. I think that would be really fun to do if I had just a small yard and chickens were more of a hobby. It would be so nice to have a beautiful dual-purpose garden!
The reason I haven’t tried perennials for our chickens is because I am still working on my own 1,000 gardens (10 in actuality. I’ll have Ben count to be sure.) and chicken gardens aren’t as important to me as food for our family. What makes me laugh is that I actually should care just as much about feeding my chickens, since they are in fact feeding my family as well!
Questions on poultry feed formulation
Even if you get the poultry feed formulation right, doesn’t making your own chicken feed lower egg production?
It might. The idea here is that we have genetically bred the modern chicken to lay as many eggs as possible, and they do best on the proper feed the stores make for us.
What I always see people say is: “modern chickens have been developed to eat a complete feed” – by complete they mean the perfect factory-made poultry feed formulation that claims to include all the vitamins and minerals at the perfect levels.
I have some issue with this premise.
- Store feed isn’t working. So clearly, if feeding chickens other food lowers production, then I guess it’s better of two evils. (I don’t believe that by the way. I believe that real natural food makes any animal healthier.)
- Maybe they aren’t made to pump out as many eggs in a year. If heritage breed chickens lay so few eggs comparatively, maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe they need more time to proper lay a nutrient-dense egg. Maybe we ought to set different expectations.
- In my experience, giving chickens high-quality natural foods makes them more fertile, laying more eggs. The eggs are richer, deeper yellows, and the shells are harder and thicker. All good signs of some pretty amazing nutrition in those eggs!
Doesn’t giving birds rice kill them?
If you read to here, you know this question makes me laugh. But I honestly don’t know, at least with chickens. The idea is that when birds eat rice, the rice will expand in their stomachs, and they will spontaneously combust. (Not really, but same idea.)
The thing is, chickens mash up their food in their gizzard. They use small rocks (sold as grit) that they eat to help with the breaking down process before they begin to digest it. I assume they are hardier creatures than we give them credit for.
Also, when I soak rice, it doesn’t seem to actually expand like beans do when you soak them. This leads me to think that what we see on the stovetop would definitely not happen in a bird’s stomach. But tell me if I’m wrong!
But that’s not the point. The point is that I always soak and cook my rice before I feed it to my chickens. Problem solved. If it has already expanded, it wouldn’t harm them the same way.
Doesn’t giving chickens beans poison them?
Yes! If you don’t properly prepare them. There are lots of health-oriented diets, such as the Weston A. Price Foundation, the GAPS protocol, and the Paleo diet that explain why beans are toxic if not properly prepared for humans, and chickens are much smaller than us. So it makes sense that giving them improperly prepared beans would negatively affect them.
My solution: properly prepare them.
Why don’t you free range your chickens?
Short answer: they are pests for our property, and rotational grazing is the way to go!
Good fences make good neighbors. Good fences also make a harmonious relationship between chickens and our family. If our chickens get out, they go straight to all my beloved gardens, wreaking havoc on seedlings and established plants alike. The Roosters go after the kids, and the chickens lay eggs in secret places we find months later. The greatest offense is that they go straight for the exposed insulation on the outside of our unfinished house.
Rotational grazing, however, has so many pros! The only con is more time and work for me. But this time and work that I spend moving our chickens is time and work establishing a trusting relationship between me and them. I get to see personalities and problems better than if I am just at the coop to feed them.
Reasons we rotational graze:
- The chickens feed themselves! They are moved frequently enough to scavenge the land for bugs and plants.
- We know where the eggs are.
- Most importantly: they improve the soil. We live in the desert on top of a mountain. The two keys to better soil in the desert are: supplementation of nutrients, and ground cover. This is also covered in the Dougherty book. Just go buy it!
The most remarkable example of this is our experiences rotational grazing our American Guinea Hogs. But that is a story for another post!
All the options for poultry feed formulation
Mealworms
Mealworms require two things: A place to live and food. They get their water needs from sucking on slices of vegetables or fruit you give them and they eat whatever you give them as a substrate.
People use drawer systems to organize their mealworms. Basically, you want some mealworms to pupate and lay eggs. And you want the rest to grow to feed your chickens.
There are lots of videos on this on youtube.
When researching how to make your own chicken feed, I found no information on how many mealworms to give a chicken per day as a main source of protein. They all recommend mealworms as a “chicken treat” and just a supplement.
As far as I can figure out, you just calculate the amount of protein a chicken needs per day and how much protein each mealworm has.
For instance, people say to give 1/4 pound of chicken feed per chicken per day. Protein requirements of a laying hen is 16-18%. So if the feed you buy at the store is at 16% feed then you are giving your chicken 18.1 grams protein. (I’ll have Ben check this haha!)
Mealworms can contain up to 55% protein, and they generally weigh 100 milligrams. So a chicken would need to eat around 180 per day! That’s a lot. You’d need a pretty big worm farm to make that work.
I love the idea of mealworms because they are really cheap to maintain, but they also take about six months to get established. I’d rather make beans than find an infestation of mealworms on the floor of the closet because the kids got into them or something.
Oatmeal
Oatmeal is one of the many grains you can feed chickens, like wheat bran and barley. It is best left to soak and ferment so as to break down the antinutrients and add more digestibility.
Food scraps
How to source scraps
This is a complicated issue to tackle because it depends on where you live, the laws in your area, and who you ask.
One of the best ways to source scraps is to ask a local restaurant or farm for their food waste. It’s amazing what kind of deals you can make if you form a relationship with someone and make clear your intentions. Often, people will say no, but sometimes they say yes, and this will give you the ability to feed a large flock of chickens for free!
- Try to form a relationship with someone and make your request known.
- Make clear that you will make this as painless as possible for them, i.e., you will bring trash cans for them to dump the food scraps into, you will take away the trash cans before they get too full, and you will work around their schedule. Anything you can do to make their lives easier makes it a little bit more likely that this will become a long-lasting deal.
- If they give you food, give them something back! Make clear that you appreciate what they are doing for you. It might not matter to them because they are going to throw the food away anyway, but this might really matter to you because it saves you hundreds of dollars. Some ideas are handmade homesteading items, fresh veggies from your garden, fresh eggs or meat. This is not a business transaction, by the way. This is a gift that shows appreciation for their gift to you!
What to put in compost vs. give to chickens
As a general rule of thumb, unhealthy foods are bad for humans and chickens alike. So don’t give your chickens junk food.
That being said, here is an extensive list of what not to give chickens.
I personally really trust the chicken’s ability to intuitively eat. I’ve rotational grazed chickens where there were mushrooms, holly, and other no-no plants, and they haven’t touched them.
Other grains
There are so many different grains to choose from!
There are things to keep in mind, however:
Every grain has a certain percentage of fiber, protein, and carbohydrates. You need to pay attention to how much each has, and keep these things in mind, as certain grains are more taxing for a bird to digest than others.
When searching for information, look on the nutrition facts part of the package. I like to just google it.
For instance, Barley is very high in fiber, and can be more taxing for a chicken to digest than other grains, while it is highly nutritious. A combination of different grains helps balance things out.
Why is corn so favored in chicken feed formulation?
It’s got a great name for itself, and I think it’s because farmers have learned how to make it very cheap, and it fattens animals quickly.
The problem with corn is that it is very good at putting weight on animals without adding much nutrition. For chickens, I think the biggest problem is that it doesn’t have very much protein. While it’s a very cheap filler, it doesn’t seem like the best option unless it’s in a percentage like what Justin Rhodes recommends.
But my biggest beef with corn is that it is so highly treated with pesticides. I’d rather go for a less-known grain that is less processed.
As a rule, every grain that is soaked and fermented is better for your chickens, since it breaks down the protective toxins and adds healthy microbiome.
Cow’s milk
This would be my favorite if I had a cow. Did you know one gallon of fresh raw milk can be the source of all the protein 50 laying hens need per day? It’s amazing how nutritious fresh raw milk is!
“What is a gallon of milk?
It’s a calf: One gallon of milk is the starting ration for a bottle calf.
It’s fifty laying hens: A gallon of milk is the daily protein requirement of fifty to one hundred laying birds.
It’s a pig: One gallon of milk is all the protein supplement a pig – any size! – requires. The rest of his diet can come from whatever the farm has available.
It’s extra: when a cow gives two to five gallons per day, there’s always a gallon to spare.
-Beth and Shawn Dougherty, authors of “The Independent Farmstead”
How to make beans for chickens
What you need:
- Bowl for soaking the beans
- Strainer
- Pressure cooker (optional) or pot
- water
How to make beans to add to your poultry feed formula:
Step one: soak the beans
Put the beans in a large bowl and cover with water. Let sit for at least twelve hours and less than twenty-four hours.
Make sure to add more water if the beans absorb so much that they are exposed to air.
You can rinse them a couple times if you want, but this part is optional. The point of soaking the beans is to leach out all the antinutrients and rinse them away.
Step two: drain and rinse the beans
Drain the beans in your strainer into the sink. Wash them in the water, turning the beans with your hands to make sure all the beans are properly rinsed.
Sometimes, for extra measure, I will put my rinsed beans into the pot full of water and bring it to a boil. Then I will strain and rinse the beans once more.
Step three: cook the beans
There are two ways you can do this. You can use a pressure cooker, or just a pot on the stove.
Look below for how much to make.
Pressure cooker method:
If you are using an instant pot, follow the instructions for cooking beans on your particular appliance.
If you have a stovetop pressure cooker:
- put your beans in the pot, making sure they don’t fill the pot more than half full
- fill the pot 3/4 of the way with water
- add 1 tablespoon of oil (prevents clogging of the valve)
- set on the stovetop with the burner on high until the pressure valve starts to rock. It might make noises before, but wait until it’s actually rocking
- Turn down to medium-high, and set your timer for 25 minutes (Note: I live at 8000 feet, so I set my timer for 30 minutes)
Stovetop method:
- pour beans into pot
- cover with water
- bring to boil, then adjust the burner so the beans simmer.
- Cook until very soft. It may take a few hours.
How to incorporate in poultry feed formula
Beans have about 20-25% protein per weight. I like to give each bird 1/2 cup, since there are other great nutrients in beans besides protein. I have 12 hens, so I make about 6 cups per day. I usually make a big batch and split it up into four days. So I would soak and prepare 4-6 cups dry beans for plenty of cooked beans for the week, since the beans triple in volume when soaked and cooked.
Make rice for chickens
Optional: Soak for 12-24 hours before you cook it.
Follow any rice recipe!
In calculating how much to give your chickens, reread the quote from the Dougherty’s, and remember that rice, like beans, triples in volume when cooked.
