DIY poultry feed
You can make your own poultry feed by purchasing all the ingredients at a wholesale price. It should be a balanced food supply, consisting of at least eight components. It is advisable to include animal protein in the home feed, which is necessary for a good weight gain of the bird.
Principles of compound feed preparation for chickens
Chicks need energy for good growth, so it is better to feed them with starter feed for the first week. It contains over 20 vitamin additives that you cannot buy in retail.
Fattening compound feed can be replaced with homemade one. To prepare it, you need to mix red and yellow millet in equal proportions, add two parts of wheat to the mixture. This is the basis of compound feed. Then add to the grain mixture:
- 20% oats;
- 10% wheat bran;
- 2% sunflower meal;
- 18% corn;
- premix for chickens.
You cannot use sunflower meal instead of oil cake. It contains only 1% vegetable oil, while in the cake its content is about 20%.
Feed for laying hens
Use shell rock instead of sunflower meal to compose a forage base for laying hens. This supplement will provide the chicken with the calcium it needs to form the eggshell.
Wheat bran in feed for laying hens no need to add. In feed, the proportion of corn is increased to 25%. It helps to color the yolk. The proportion of oats is reduced to 15%, and the rest is filled with whole millet. Its share is 8%.
The percentage of ingredients in chicken and layer feed can be altered by adding green feed such as plantain, dandelion or nettle leaves.
For good weight gain, the percentage of millet is reduced to 5%, and 3% of meat and bone or fish meal is added to the feed.
Broiler feed
Shell rock does not need to be added to broiler feed; it is replaced with meat and bone or fish meal. Its share in such feed should be 5%. 20% corn and 10% oats are added to the feed, and the rest is filled with whole wheat and bran in equal proportions.
Also, a premix for meat breeds of chickens is added to broiler feed. If meat and bone meal or fish meal is not commercially available, you can add poultry meat to the feed, which needs to be boiled. Grain is soaked in the resulting broth.
If you keep chickens in an open cage, they can make up for the lack of animal protein by eating earthworms.