Chickens that forage and peck for bugs tend to produce eggs of higher nutritional quality, making their diet even richer and healthier. Supplementing their diets with organic or conventional scratch feed is cost-effective and simple.
Green leafy vegetables such as frost-bitten chard, kale and spinach provide your flock with protein-rich food sources. Annual plants like amaranth, spreen and orach often feature substantial seed heads that provide winter feed for their flocks.
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Nutritional Considerations
Feeding chickens a balanced diet is often a complex endeavor due to the wide array of nutrients required at different stages in their growth and development. Feedstuffs must be collected, ground and mixed into an exact formulation before pelleting it for your poultry.
Avoid this costly and time consuming process by creating homemade chicken feed from scratch with GMO-free grains and proteins – an approach which is both economical and responsible.
If you decide to go down this route, try planting grain crops such as sunflower seeds, dent corn, alfalfa, buckwheat and sorghum for your flock. All these species contain high levels of protein and fiber. Plus they provide essential Vitamin A needed for egg production!
Grain-fed pasture can also help provide your chickens with all the protein they require, while adding fresh grass clippings from non-treated lawn mowers is another proven strategy for increasing protein in their diets.
Feeding Directions
Raising backyard poultry can be both satisfying and profitable. A well-planned feeding program is essential to ensure healthy birds that produce eggs for you to harvest. Natural Harvest’s line of products provides assistance in reaching this goal without the use of antibiotics or GMO grains and proteins.
Fresh forage is essential to the diet of poultry. Lawn clippings from non-treated lawns make an excellent source of fresh, high quality protein that the chickens will find irresistible – and can even be used as part of compost heap management to provide additional forage while helping aerate piles. Beware feeding too much at once though as anaerobic bacteria could develop quickly in an anaerobic pile and repel chickens or be ineffective as compost material.
Natural Harvest Hen Scratch may be provided as a scratch grain source on an as-needed basis or mixed in with complete poultry feed, to help satisfy their scratch needs.
Storage
Properly stored chicken feed should last six months when stored under ideal conditions; however, many types of feed degrade quickly when exposed to damp environments and become contaminated with moulds that produce mycotoxins which cause illness among poultry.
Store chicken feed in a cool and dry shed away from direct sunlight at an ideal temperature between 50-60 degrees Fahrenheit for best results.
If you are cultivating feed for your flock, harvest and store harvested greens and seeds during fall for winter feeding needs. Foliage like frost-bitten kale, spinach and chard provide high protein winter foods, while annuals that produce large seedheads like amaranth, spreen and orach can be harvested to harvest seeds as a low budget winter feed supplement. Pumpkins and winter squash can even be grown specifically to supply carbohydrates to help hens through winter months.
Precautions
Raising a flock can be an engaging hobby that provides your family with healthy, free-range eggs. Natural harvest chicken feed provides the means for this objective without resorting to harmful chemicals or medications.
As part of their diet, poultry may benefit from having some cover crops like butterfly bushes and hawthorne growing in your yard, providing shade as well as edible berries to supplement their nutrition. Other suitable cover crops could include clover, alfalfa hay or woody weeds which also serve to control weeds in their pasture.
Do not supplement with oats, barley or rye that contains ergot; these grains have high levels of fungus which could potentially pose health concerns in poultry. Animal protein meals could contain Salmonella as well as heavy metals, dioxins and PCBs; this concern can be reduced or eliminated through pelleting processes used in manufactured feeds.
