Chickens require various nutrients for proper health and wellbeing, including proteins, fats and vitamins. Their primary sources of nutrition come from greens, foraging or kitchen scraps.
Producing homemade feed mixture requires time and careful thought. An improper mix may impair young chick growth, reduce egg production in layers or have long-term adverse health implications.
Contents
Corn
Chickens require a balanced combination of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats to remain healthy. This nutrition is combined with water into an appetizing combination that gives the birds enough energy and nutrition for egg production.
Corn is an invaluable ingredient in commercial poultry feed and an easy one to cultivate in your own backyard, providing essential dietary fiber and antioxidants as well as being an excellent source of carbohydrates.
Wheat is an easy and nutritious source of energy and an easily grown crop. Try choosing hard red or kamut wheat varieties, which contain more protein. In addition, they also contain essential minerals like magnesium, zinc and Vitamin E.
Soybean Meal
When we think of soy, our minds might instantly jump to health food staples such as tofu and soy milk – yet 70-75% of soybeans used worldwide go towards animal feed or non-food uses such as bioheat and biodiesel production.
Your chickens depend on carbohydrates for nutrition. Incorporating this ingredient into their diet also aids with fat metabolism and absorption of vitamins A, D, E and K – making it an integral component.
Oats are an excellent source of protein (16%), B vitamins and calcium for chicken feed production. You can use oat groats, steel-cut oats or rolled oats in various forms such as groats or steel cut oats to formulate chicken feed formula. Incorporating hard red or kamut wheat (hard red wheat is especially rich in calcium) along with insoluble grit or crushed eggshells as additional calcium sources is also beneficial to their chickens’s nutrition!
Wheat
Making their own feed mix allows an owner to ensure that their flock’s nutritional needs are being met, which may result in poor growth for chicks and decreased egg production for layers.
Wheat provides both energy and protein (around 15%), so for best results hard red or kamut wheat should be used. Oats add fiber, calcium and flavor while black hull sunflower seeds supply fats that the flock can use as energy sources.
This mixture can be ground into either mash or crumble for chicks to consume; they typically start on mash before shifting over to crumble around 12 weeks old.
Peas
Chickens are omnivores, meaning their diet should include both plant and animal sources. As such, chickens can consume many vegetables like peas – legumes are rich sources of protein which makes for an excellent way to provide vital vitamins and minerals while simultaneously providing additional nutritional value.
Your flock can benefit from feeding them raw, cooked or frozen frozen peas; however, sweet peas should be avoided as they contain toxic compounds which could harm poultry and other animals.
Peas are great toys for chickens to play with, since they can be tossed or rolled around like balls. Plus, peas provide a refreshing change from their regular diet and help improve mood while increasing grit intake thanks to being packed full of calcium!
Fish Meal
Fish meal is a highly processed fish powder used for animal feed. It’s made by cooking and pressing fish waste with high levels of protein to extract most of its oil and moisture content, creating an invaluable source of proteins, vitamins, and minerals for chickens – though storing too long could create histamine which causes gizzard erosion in poultry.
Feed grinders should be used to transform grains into mash consistency for use in making pellets for chicks up until 12 weeks old. You can add crumble mix for an additional omega-3 boost.
