# Chicken feed when TSHF



## pmkrv12

as I havce been prepping for 2 years and see the clear progress I feel so much more prepared than I see people around me. But I was just watching an episode of Doomsday preppers, there was a guy on who grew rabbit and their feed. This made me realize something; having chickens is great as they provide eggs but what if I cant get any new feed.
I will buy several bags of feed this week and store it on the attic but it made me wonder, what could I grow to feed them? I am unable to to let my chickens roam free, this due to the foxes, raccoons and coyotes in the area.

I understand that chickens can get about 25% of their food from grass etc so that leaves a large amount of feed they need.

Watching that show always reminds me of another thing I have to do 

Peter


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## TheLazyL

pmkrv12 said:


> ...having chickens is great as they provide eggs but what if I cant get any new feed.
> I will buy several bags of feed this week and store it on the attic but it made me wonder, what could I grow to feed them? ...


Cracked corn, bugs, food scrapes including meat, snakes, strawberries. SHTF free range them with a few armed teenagers to watch over them.

Suggest if your storing feed in your attic put in a steel garbage can and bungee strap the lid on.


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## *Andi

Chickens have been around longer than poultry feed has ... 

They can free range for insects, seeds and even mice. It you look back to the good ol days scraps from the table were also used. 

I know some think they need a nutritional science based complete poultry feed but I think Mother Nature gives them that.

But that is just me.


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## Grimm

I believe there is a thread about this already. The OP on that thread was doing an experiment with different types of feed and possible alternatives during the winter months for when SHTF.

http://www.preparedsociety.com/forum/f114/chicken-feed-post-shtf-experiment-22830/


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## nightwing

What I want to know is what they won't eat?

Chickens are weird had some that would not eat milo 
and the scratch here had a fair percentage in it so stopped buying 
it altogether I managed to get old bread from the bakeries.

scraps from restaurants the love cooked rice and noodles leftovers 
although it sounds gross all or the internals would be cooked and ground 
chopped up of any slaughtered animal blood cake / cooked blood.
anything really.

Chickens only need water and a safe roost a bit of food to keep them 
there you may have problems if there are others close enough to 
hear their rooster hens will take another roost if they decide to 

I do not know why they jump ship maybe the rooster gets drunk 
on sour/ed mash and slaps them around I am not a chicken.

others will try to roost in trees and not want to roost with the others 
this happens when they are transfered at an older age 
best to buy all your chicks together and start them they work it out 
every time I bought older ones and tried to integrate them 
there were some problems


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## LincTex

They can free range fine in the daytime. Feral dogs are the only "daytime" enemies of my chickens, and they "go to bed" by themselves as it gets darker. I just have to go out and lock the door once they are all inside.

Free-range will become necessity when the SHTF, don't think you will be able to not do that. 
But you do need good fences and a good way to kill those *^%#@^ dogs when they come into your yard!!


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## nightwing

LincTex said:


> They can free range fine in the daytime. Feral dogs are the only "daytime" enemies of my chickens, and they "go to bed" by themselves as it gets darker. I just have to go out and lock the door once they are all inside.
> 
> Free-range will become necessity when the SHTF, don't think you will be able to not do that.
> But you do need good fences and a good way to kill those *^%#@^ dogs when they come into your yard!!


A good dog is a blessing and a bad dog is a pain in the arse to bury.


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## Toffee

Hubs and I were discussing this yesterday. Our solution is to expand the garden to double-ish in size and grow extra for them plus we are putting in a section of wheat and maybe some buckwheat. We are growing hairy vetch soon as I can get it ordered as a till-in crop. You do have to watch some of the scraps, no onions and generally you need to cook winter squash and potatoes. Good luck.


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## nightwing

I have an inner and outer yard and a fence beyond that 

numerous reasons one was so the chickens could free range and if 
something tried to get at them they could fly to another area of safety.
Chicken hawks can be a problem flags and poles help to slow their 
interest they like to swoop in if they think the path is unobstructed.

my new chicken coup has an external pen I intend to let them out 
and when weather is bad I can let them in the pen or just keep them 
there if the world gets weird almost finished will end up a 20X20 pen
and a 8 X 10 roost the other end 8X10 will be green house to start 
seedlings and or do heavy pressure canning.
need a couple rolls of wire to finish my project and cooler weather.

I am doing more passive crops that need not as much care 
posted before on blackberries figs and grapes.

It is hard for a person that has to work to basically have a second job 
once they get home and with animals your held hostage and it is 
hard to leave them even if someone comes and helps while your gone so many predators and problems that can happen.


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## mosquitomountainman

Sounds gross but it works if you can stand the smell. Throw a dead animal or body parts on the wire over their pen and let the flies lay eggs in it. The eggs hatch into maggots which fall off the meat and the chickens love them. Won't feed a big flock but makes a good supplement as long as the henhouse is downwind. 

You can also use the dead animal/maggot trick over water to attract fish to the spot. Might be worth knowing in a SHTF situation.

We also grew wheat, oats and corn one year to feed the chickens.


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## HardCider

Trap the foxes, ***** and yotes to suppliment your income and reduce your predator losses. Eat the neighbors dogs and let your chickens forage for themselves as much as possible.


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## Hooch

I made acorn meal last year..what i didnt finish i gave to my hens. I also collected almonds n walnuts from roadside trees ..the hens loved them..and i didnt have to leach tannin outta those...but in a pinch is a nice suppliment to whatever they forage...


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## cowboyhermit

Protein is usually the lacking nutrient ime. If you have high quality base like high protein hard red spring wheat then they really don't need much else. If using corn it will be more of a stretch.

Imo it has a lot to do with what you expect of the chickens. If you want high efficiency, maximum egg production then either you either need to have a very large safe area with a lot of varied food sources (including protein) or take an active role in supplementing their needs. On the other hand, if you are willing to take what you get and not worry about eggs/day/hen then a more hands-off approach can work.

High protein wheat works great, if you do any brewing then the mash or "spent grain" is great, kitchen and garden scraps, vermiculture, lots of good sources. 

Probably the most rewarding things I have grown for chickens (specifically) are sunflowers (oil varieties usually). They take no work, are ridiculously easy to harvest store and feed, the chickens love them, and best of all they are great for them nutritionally.


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## pmkrv12

Thanks everybody. Regarding the foxes etc not being out through out the day, I see the foxes and coyotes usually about 30 minutes after sunrise walk by my property. I wish I could have a dog but that is not a possibility.

I got some good ideas from this tread and will look into them.

Pmk


Sent from my iPad using Survival Forum


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## LincTex

mosquitomountainman said:


> Sounds gross but it works if you can stand the smell. Throw a dead animal or body parts on the wire over their pen and let the flies lay eggs in it.


It's better to toss them in a bucket with small holes to contain the smell. It's a good idea, but note some of the discussion in these threads.

The fella with the "green-black slime" covered chickens made me laugh, so there is obvious improvements that need to be made to the concept! Maybe some chicken wire around the bucket so they cannot get right underneath it!

http://www.themodernhomestead.us/article/feeding-chickens-maggots.html

http://www.homesteadingtoday.com/livestock-forums/poultry/395560-maggot-buckets-free-protien.html

http://www.permies.com/t/990/chickens/Maggot-Feeding-Station-Poultry

http://thedeliberateagrarian.blogspot.com/2006/11/free-chicken-feed.html

http://www.justmeans.com/blogs/permaculture-maggots-for-chickens

http://www.ultimatefowl.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2141


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## nightwing

Not about feed but my coup has sheet metal buried at least 6 inches 
all around the perimeter and back filled with any stone bricks and
rock this keeps predators from digging in quickly any animal
can defeat most measures, all we can do is delay hopefully long
enough to see the problem and fix it.

I went to a counter top installer and got a load of granite and marble 
scrap I have laid them around the outside as well since I did this 
I have not had one intrusion into my coup from digging predators.

I have used this method on my chicken coups and rabbit pen
it works well depending on your area you may need to dig it deeper and have more backfill further out and or more severe deterrents.

I posted previously that poles with cable rope or string with flags or ribbon will help slow hawks and other predatory birds obstacles
make the bird afraid of self injury they like a clear line in and out.

nothing is perfect but laws do not stop you from using preventive measures they do say you cannot shoot or otherwise molest them
birds are not stupid I have a couple of plastic owls and rubber snakes 
and after a while they ignore them so they are not short on brains.
This includes chickens just because I do not understand what they 
do does not prevent them from guessing my actions fairly well.


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## Radstev

You could try this with your composter for black soldier fly larvae 
http://gardenpool.org/beneficial-insects/black-soldier-fly-composter-automatic-chicken-feeder


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## HardCider

Thankfully where my farm is I'll at least never have to worry about grit with all the shell in the soil. You could grow alot of extra beans to help with protein, but you would probably need to grind them a little


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## crabapple

When I was a wee lad, we had Bantam breeds of chickens.
Bantam are a small version of larger fowl & lay as many eggs as the larger breeds.
The bantams on the farm ran wild & roosted in the trees, ate anything that got in their way.
If you are worried about wild dogs or people & have an acre or more of land, then try a chicken tractor.
They can clean up the weeds in your garden & bugs too.
You can grow corn,melons,squash & okra,they are high producers for you & your chickens.
No land, then BSF feeder may be the way to go, as in the other post.


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## ClemKadiddlehopper

In my case, if things were that bad, I would be trying very hard to maintain my 6 jersey cows. Every other cow could go. Everything on the place including chickens would be fed milk mixed with whatever else was handy such as floor sweepings from alfalfa hay. Jerseys feed people, baby cows, pigs chickens, dogs and cats. Feed the milk cow and everyone else eats well. 

Chickens can do reasonably well with access to the cow feeders. Big heaping piles of frozen apples, squash, pumpkins ect…will give them some veggie matter through the winter as well.

I have a flock of chickens in mobile coops roaming the cow pastures. The chickens stay close to the cows and clean the fly larva out of the poo and any bugs off the cows when they are lying down. Cows chase off ground based varmits with a vengance and make dandy shelters from hawks. Win win.


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## LincTex

Some critter (Possum likely) keeps breaking into my bucket and taking the dead animal out!


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## tsrwivey

ClemKadiddlehopper said:


> In my case, if things were that bad, I would be trying very hard to maintain my 6 jersey cows. Every other cow could go. Everything on the place including chickens would be fed milk mixed with whatever else was handy such as floor sweepings from alfalfa hay. Jerseys feed people, baby cows, pigs chickens, dogs and cats. Feed the milk cow and everyone else eats well.


Cows are inefficient when compared to other animals. Goats would probably be the cheapest to keep & easiest to care for in post SHTF. There's a reason you don't see many cows in areas of poverty but you do see goats. A goat will eat almost anything. A dwarf dairy goat can produce 2 quarts of milk a day with 6-7% fat content where regular cows milk only has less than 4%. You could bring your dwarf goats (the size of a large dog) into the house if you had to to secure your food source. Much harder to do that with cows. Meat rabbits & chickens would also be a way more efficient use of resources than cows & easier to protect.


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## cowboyhermit

tsrwivey said:


> Cows are inefficient when compared to other animals.
> Depending on the feed and conditions, goats may or may not be a percentage or two more efficient, sometimes cattle do better but this is insignificant on any scale when taken into account with other factors.
> 
> Goats would probably be the cheapest to keep & easiest to care for in post SHTF.
> Goats are definitely not the easiest to care for, or fence, they require a surprising amount of attention while cattle are regularly left alone for months at a time and require essentially no care.
> 
> There's a reason you don't see many cows in areas of poverty but you do see goats.
> 
> Because the people wouldn't be poor if they owned a COW!
> Seriously though, in India and Africa you will see cows in areas of poverty as a matter of course, typically not destitute poverty but that is the point.
> 
> A goat will eat almost anything.
> 
> Including things that kill it.
> 
> A dwarf dairy goat can produce 2 quarts of milk a day with 6-7% fat content where regular cows milk only has less than 4%. You could bring your dwarf goats (the size of a large dog) into the house if you had to to secure your food source. Much harder to do that with cows. Meat rabbits & chickens would also be a way more efficient use of resources than cows & easier to protect.


Goats need constant protection from predators, the weather in many places, and themselves. With good practices cattle only need protection from people and that is easy enough to arrange.

Eta; my post this morning was rushed, it kinda sounds like I'm down on goats, nothing could be further from the truth. They are frickin' adorable little critters (when you don't want to wring their necks for some new and wacky goat-like behavior). For many situations, especially with a small acreage they may very well be a great fit, I just see them getting recommended a lot while cattle are often discouraged for the homestead without good reasons. Goats certainly come with their own set of issues.


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## Jewel

chicken feed = open gate. I went almost a year without buying any goat, rabbit or chicken feed because I couldn't. Long story but I lost the home I was buying and because of that, my business for a time. I let the goats and chickens out daily to feed themselves and hand gathered feed for the rabbits. In turn those animals fed us and our dogs and cats. That year was also a drought and heatwave summer and we had almost no garden. but I wildharvested like crazy, with that and our preps we lived well and healthy with barely enough money to make the house payments and such. 

I've also grown millet, milo and corn for our poultry and it worked out very well. All also make good house grains for breads etc.. I'm working on preparing an area to try oats although most people say it can't be done in this part of the Ozarks.

Now that we can afford feed and such again, I buy it but use it very sparingly so the poultry always knows how to find their own food and because I believe it's healthier. Plus it's hard and expensive to find non=gmo corn feed or chicken feed without corn.

I buy all natural oats with molasses for worming all the herbavores and poultry. My wormer stick to it and it's sweet so they eat it up easily. Plenty of other things work as well though.


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## kappydell

Some years ago I asked my grandma (who made nice money during the depression raising chickens for the local restaurant in town) and she said 'dont worry about it- chickens are easy - they will eat anything'. She used table scraps, some grains (if she put in the sweepings from the granary they would pick out the grains and have a lovely time scratching it around as well), weeds pulled from the garden for greens and seeds, surplus milk mixed with dry bread to give it a little body, cull or blemished fruits & veggies from the orchard and garden, leftover cooked oatmeal/cornmeal/etc, the tomato hornworms and other bugs hand picked off the garden plants, and even some lean meat scraps now and again. They would fight over Junebugs, and yes, would even gang up on and kill mice. They are ominiverous, and in a SHTF situation you are not so much interested in their speedy growth or super-egg laying abilities for marketing purposes, but their health and ability to continue making you a sustainable 'surplus' of eggs and meat for harvest.


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## crabapple

kappydell said:


> Some years ago I asked my grandma (who made nice money during the depression raising chickens for the local restaurant in town) and she said 'dont worry about it- chickens are easy - they will eat anything'. She used table scraps, some grains (if she put in the sweepings from the granary they would pick out the grains and have a lovely time scratching it around as well), weeds pulled from the garden for greens and seeds, surplus milk mixed with dry bread to give it a little body, cull or blemished fruits & veggies from the orchard and garden, leftover cooked oatmeal/cornmeal/etc, the tomato hornworms and other bugs hand picked off the garden plants, and even some lean meat scraps now and again. They would fight over Junebugs, and yes, would even gang up on and kill mice. They are ominiverous, and in a SHTF situation you are not so much interested in their speedy growth or super-egg laying abilities for marketing purposes, but their health and ability to continue making you a sustainable 'surplus' of eggs and meat for harvest.


We had cows,horses,pigs, a goat,dogs & the wild chicken, I mean the free range chickens ate any food they spilled, even went though their waste.
All bugs, worms & seeds, just put them up at night.


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## goshengirl

We loved free ranging the chickens over the summer - until they were eaten.  Probably coyotes, but could have been fox. Now all that's left are three older girls, and I think they've laid their last eggs... But they stay in the run/coop.


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## LincTex

I call chickens "my little two-legged garbage disposals"

We have very rocky soil. The chicken run is on the hill top, in the worst area of it. I have to give them something extra, since there just isn't enough food in that area by themselves.


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## redhorse

Ours get everything from the kitchen as well as cleaning up after the rest of the livestock. They really keep the pasture clean by spreading out the manure. I never see piles of manure in the fields closest to the house. 

There is always a feeder full of chicken feed for them in their coop. They don't go through to much of it in the spring summer and fall, but this time of year they really start chowing on it. They also get all kitchen and garden scraps, except when we have pigs in the barn. 

If SHTF tomorrow they will be ok. I have 300# of feed stored for them in buckets/mylar. That won't last forever, but would get them through the hard times for a while. I also have lots of corn, hard wheat and rice stored for myself that they seem to do fine on. I tried a small group on just cooked rice and scraps last winter, and didn't really notice a difference between them and the rest of the flock. I thought for sure I would, but nothing other than the egg yolks looking more like store bought yolks in color.


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## crabapple

Poultry is not just for food after SHTF.
Ticks & grasshoppers could kill or run you off you BOL, poultry will be all the pest control you will have & need.
Grasshoppers could eat you vegetables.
Ticks could eat you.
Poultry will keep them manageable, without you even knowing they are saving your life.


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## Jewel

If they just vanish during the day it's probably hawks. They can carry a lot.


We have an old Ameraucana hen who's almost 15 years old. She was the only survivor of two small neighbor dogs getting into the hen pen and ripping everything apart. They never ate a bit either, just shredded the whole flock for fun. Anyway, Old Hen is almost 15 and still lays an egg occasionally. We do eat out poultry but never Old Hen.


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## redhorse

Jewel said:


> If they just vanish during the day it's probably hawks. They can carry a lot.
> 
> We have an old Ameraucana hen who's almost 15 years old. She was the only survivor of two small neighbor dogs getting into the hen pen and ripping everything apart. They never ate a bit either, just shredded the whole flock for fun. Anyway, Old Hen is almost 15 and still lays an egg occasionally. We do eat out poultry but never Old Hen.


The coyotes around here come out in broad daylight.


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## Treedweller

http://news.google.com/newspapers?n...xMJAAAAIBAJ&sjid=rzwDAAAAIBAJ&pg=7213,2199031

I wonder if any of you have ever thought of feeding cull beans to your chickens of hogs? When I was a youngster on the farm we fed our animals cull beans.Lots of farmers did this.They were very cheap to buy and many just grew their own.Dad had an old cast iron wood stove, no legs and sit on big rocks. He would dump the dried beans in the stove, fill it with water, throw some fire wood under the stove and cook the beans. They have to be cooked. Then throw a bit of scraps and corn in it. We raised some beautiful hogs. Sold a bunch every year. Anyway if you have a garden and wanted to put some food by for your chickens. Planting some beans and letting them dry on the vine, bag them up and put them back for winter or tough times.It doesn't really matter what kind of beans. Not sure if you can still buy cull beans at the elevators.I dry my late beans in old knee high panty hose hanging on hooks back of the wood stove same as I do the pop corn. Just give the legs a shaking once a day.We cook our beans and scraps in a big pot on the stove. I don't have an old cast iron cooking stove to do the cooking outside. Well I do have a cast iron stove to cook and bake with, but not to cook animal food. That sweet little stove is tucked away in case I need it farther down the road.Oh and squash is a good keeper that goes good with the bean mash too.


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## crabapple

http://www.feedipedia.org/node/266

n names
Common bean, bean, French bean, kidney bean, runner bean, snap bean, string bean, garden bean, green bean, haricot bean, bush bean, navy bean, pole bean [English], haricot à couper, haricot, haricot commun, haricot pain, haricot vert [French], judía, frijol comun, nuña, habichuela, poroto, vainita [Spanish], feijão, feijoeiro [Portuguese], buncis [Indonesian], maharage [Swahili], فاصولياء شائعة [Arabic], 菜豆 [Chinese], सामान्य फलियाँ [Hindi], インゲンマメ [Japanese], đậu cô ve [Vietnamese], Фасо́ль обыкнове́нная [Russian]

Species
Phaseolus vulgaris L. [Faba

The good thing is you can pick the early crop to eat/ can & still have beans to dry.


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