Question OK... So what different protein based foods can ...

[David Trees]

So after watching some of the vids on the string on Heliculture, my 10 year old son has asked... (with his strong Manchester accent)

Dad, "What other protein based, home grown foods can we grow for raising our poultry when we get back to Australia" to save some money on feed... (I like the way BJ thinks)

This is the fun bit...

All suggestions need to be supported by (appropriate for family viewing) video evidence for educational purposes. The crazier the better as the lads love watching YT vids on chickens and gardening before going to bed. It's our father son thing.

 

[Mark]

Not that I want to put a damper on this thread but I'm not sure specifically growing animal protein (like snails, worms, maggots, etc) just to feed to chickens is the way to go for cost savings...

For instance, the maggot pole idea is clever but not very practical IMHO and as for growing other insects or worms I doubt any real cost savings can be made by going through the trouble.

What does save money and makes commercial chicken feed last longer are:

• free-range in a paddock or even the backyard - chickens will find bugs and worms easy enough and they also eat a lot of grass and grass seed;
• kitchen scraps - including proteins like cooked eggs or beans (as long as there's not too much salt added to the food); and
• garden surplus - most large vegetable gardens end up with a surplus of lettuce and other greens I deliberately grow extra greens for my poultry, spinach and beetroot leaves are great.

There have been times when I've come across lots of grubs whilst preparing a garden bed. Naturally, I fed these to my chickens but interestingly they tend to eat a few and then move on as if they knew eating too many grubs was not good for them. Too much protein is not good for chickens but I guess used as a supplementary feed especially for hens unable to free-range it would be beneficial. However, growing bugs or worms on purpose... I don't know about that - time & effort could be better spent on growing food in the garden I reckon.

If I do come across a YT video though I'll be sure to add it here

 

[David Trees]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts Mark. Your on the ground experience is valuable.

I hear you about the things in the three bullet points. The intent of the string was to be collaborative and see what other protein based food sources we could come up with and if there were any videos out there showing the "how to".

For me Self Sufficiency (Culture) is about developing a lifestyle and therefore, investing time into what ever needs to be done to be Self Sufficient.
Extra time invested into knowing what my animals are/will be eating means I am ensuring that I know what I am eating... It also means I am not having to provide extra inputs that cost cash in the long run.

So with that in mind I would not personally want to buy mass produced commerical, non identifiable pelleted food for any length of time. I love how Geoff Lawton and others have developed a way of creating compost and feeding their chooks without spending on out sourced grains at all...

Pelleted food from a cashflow perspective seems to be a high cost input. If things keep going as they are with Peak Oil the costs of grain/oil/crops can only but go up.
Also, I want nothing to do with anything that is created with potentially GMO seed or within a mono culture system which most pelleted foods are created with. An industrial farming system also uses pesticides to control bugs and chemical fertiliser to stimulate dead soils. So for me, this is not the way to go long term.

This is only my view and perception. Not in any way asking anyone else to agree or dis agree. Just sharing my thinking.

With that in mind does anyone grow these fellows in Australia?



What do you think as a supplemental food source for chooks?

 

[Mark]

It's certainly interesting and a great way to produce an excellent supplement feed for poultry no doubt about it. All bugs, grubs, worms, and maggots are a great source of natural protein for poultry.

For me, it seems like a lot of work and another thing to look after but if you're keen on growing worms as protein for your birds then go for it!

I understand your concerns about GMO and pesticides in grains and poultry feed generally. The only hard part about producing all of your own poultry feed is the challenge of firstly producing enough (at least 400 grams per chicken per day) and secondly ensuring the feed has all the nutritional requirements needed to properly sustain laying hens or meat birds.
I'm sure if you do lots of research and as threads like this one mature you'll learn how to be totally self-sufficient in poultry feed.

How about using excess worms from a worm farm as food also - would that be feasible?

 

[David Trees]

Sure Worms would be for sure. In one of those Quail videos by the lady in France, her quails fight over a worm or two in the green house.

Mark... Have you had a chance to see Geoff Lawtons video on raising laying chickens without grains at all?

What about videos or info on using Chia Sprouts. Food Hemp is available in Australia too as a supplement. Pity it's not allow to be grown for harvest the seeds for production. They're one of the most low input crops as they are drought tolerant, no pests bother them, every part of the plant can be used...

Sadly in Australia it isn't allowed to be grown without extremely rigorous licensing yet. We have several large farms near by here growing it without issue. I love to eat the hemp seed crumbles myself. Huge in Omegas 3 + 6 + 9 and very high in protein.
It is available as "pet food supplement" in Australia... ;0)

Here is the Geoff Lawton Video about making compost and feeding laying chickens at the same time... In case you haven't seen it its called

Chicken Tractor On Steroids...

http://www.geofflawton.com/fe/64322-chicken-tractor-on-steroids

 

[Mark]

I haven't seen his video but I found a snippet on YouTube below

​

From what I can see from his youtube "advertisement" it's pretty much the same as what most people already do in their own chicken coops at home (which I alluded to in my first post) and that's feed the chickens scraps etc and then use the composted straw from the pens to add to the garden. The fact that he runs his chicken tractor "on steroids" along his plot may make it easier to transfer his compost from the pen to the garden but the system/concept is basically similar to most others.

I will be making some garden allotment videos soon (which I haven't really done on YT before) to show how I incorporate my natural fertiliser made from poultry into my allotment. In particular, my quail pen produces the most amazing garden compost and I have several examples of how this works into my garden.

As for grains, I know people who do grow their own grains to supplement their chickens diet and I grow sunflowers for this very reason. Chickens love sunflower seeds and in sensible quantities they are very good for them! Sunflowers are pretty easy to grow too and the harvest is usually fairly good. The heads (when ripe) can be cut off and just thrown in the pen or the seeds can be removed and added into their feed.

I have grown wheat, barley, ect before but it's not really worth it (unless you have a large area to grow a crop) but on a smaller property sunflowers are a good food producer plus they look great in the garden - just have to watch out for the cockatoos because they love sunflower seeds too!

Cockatoo eating one of my sunflowers ​

 

[David Trees]

Its really worth watching the whole video from Geoff Lawton.

One of the main keys for me was that they didn't use any grains at all to feed the chickens. It was a really interesting concept of how to get multiple outputs from low/no cost inputs. I also know that some folk who get green food scraps from restaurants for free, also then sell the eggs back to the restaurants at a smaller profit... How cool is that!! Go to collect the food scraps then sell the eggs to the restaurant to pay for the trip and make some extra cash to pay the rates etc! That's self sufficiency for entrepreneurs to me. LoL

Plus as you rightly say, within 30 days the Chicken Tractor creates usable compost from minimal work and it also produces significant quality eggs. Chickens get to do their innate chicken thing so they are being allowed to "be".
The Berkley composting method is mentioned too.

Personally Mark, I don't get why he used the term "C.T on steroids". For me the term is about artificial growth which is dangerous even deadly.
Anyone involved in any sort of clean, natural fitness or healthy body building will shy away due to the term. Not smart from a marketing perspective sadly.

100% Sunflowers are great for sure. Bee attracting too! They are on my plant planning list for sure. Both as cut flowers and food production. They're my all time favourite flower. They are the happiest flower in earth to me. As are Rudbekia Toto - Black Eyed Susan ' Toto '

Thanks for all your thoughts and suggestions Mark. I've heard and accepted all you've said mate. Please believe that.

 

[Lee-Mika]

I saw this video a fews week ago. I found it very interest could be helpful.

 

[Lee-Mika]

Another one I just thought of Black soldier flies. easy free feed for chickens.

 

[Mark]

I saw this video a fews week ago. I found it very interest could be helpful.

Yeah I think that's another one in the series @David Trees was talking about?

 

[Mark]

Another one I just thought of Black soldier flies. easy free feed for chickens.

I like that! Black soldier flies certainly breed like crazy that's pretty amazing footage I wonder if it really is that easy to breed them though?

 

[Lee-Mika]

I never heard down sides to breeding BSFL, yet. other than fish in aquaponics systems don't seem to like them as much as the chickens do. We all have flies to deal with how hard can it be to do?

 

[bearded1]

We let our chooks free-range and don't supplement their food at all except for kitchen scraps. They eat almost every bug on our place and it's great to watch them chasing a big locust or some other thing that otherwise would destroy our vegies. The eggs they produce are awesome, the brightest yolks I have ever seen and taste amazing. The chooks are healthy and shiny and don't really fight or pick on each other. I know that not every one has the room to do this, but if you can, do it. We don't spend anything on our chooks and they return to us incredible eggs. We haven't eaten any chooks yet, but will in the near future.
bearded1

 

[Mark]

It's great how your chickens can get all the food they need organically from the environment (and scraps) you provide them @bearded1 without requiring to buy any extra feed that's terrific. You must have a really well balanced property.

My chickens have a big area to safely free range but I do give them commercial feed also - sometimes they hardly touch the feed and spend all day foraging... spiders and bugs don't stand a chance! I'm sure the eggs are better also.

 

[Letsgokate]

Just a reminder Jenni started growing her own mealworms and posted a thread on it http://www.selfsufficientculture.com/threads/meal-worm-breeding.605/

I have a worm farm and I give the chooks some of them when I can. The worm farm also gets the black soldier fly, flying around them and get their larvae/grubs in there, didn't know what they were until I read this post. I pick them out and give them to the chooks.

I give the chooks kitchen scraps when I can, I don't get a lot, between the worm farm and chooks hard to keep up. I get family and friends to give me some. I also give them dried meal worms and any grubs I find.

We have a large, snake proof pen for our chooks. They have been let out a few times but we do have snakes here that have killed one of my chooks before and took a possum. And the back fence which we haven't been able to fully explore yet due to garden overgrowth may not be fully secure. One day one chook got through the back fence and the neighbours dogs were chasing it around, the guy threw it back over my fence. They are BIG dogs. So for their safety I keep them in the pen, until we can secure all fence lines and my veggie seedlings I really do love chickens free ranging, it's peaceful to watch.

I have started growing some clucker tucker in pots for them. Mixture of asian greens, spinach etc You can buy a clucker tucker mix but I thought it was a bit expensive so I just bought a variety of seeds and put them in a pot. We are also putting in leaf litter and natural compost from rotting branches etc in there with them, they love foraging through it and get any bugs. They turn it over and becomes great dirt to use in the garden. They are like my compost bins

 

[Ben Jamin]

I built a BSFL breeder by following instructions on the web that allows the larvae to wiggle out and be collected and eaten by the chickens. It worked but I started it towards the end of summer and then it got cold again and I was left with a mucky mess in a barrel that just sat there. What I found the hardest was actually putting scraps in to feed the BSFL bin which I would have normally have fed directly to the chickens. It seemed counter intuitive and so I didn't start it again (I could probably just as easily fill it with weeds to decompose (BSFL love composts and worm bins). Maybe I'll pull it out again this year and have another go.

While I'm sure Geoff's concept works it seems labour intensive for your average operator and needed inputs from somewhere (I think he had a supply of kitchen waste from memory).

What I noticed that had a dramatic positive impact on grain consumption and egg production was regularly pitching grass, weeds and excess green vegetables to them. As Mark says, it's easy to grow more and regularly gleam the excess for the chickens. You really notice the darker yolks when they have plenty of greens. For the efficiency gain I would focus on the foods that you can eat as well as what your chickens can eat. What they don't eat decays and brings worms and bugs in for them to find as well. Things like qld arrowroot can grow easily next to the coop for easily grabbed greens and edible tubers if you got real hungry. There's a bloke in the States called Paul Gauche (back to Eden movie guy) who claims to feed his flock on his excess garden produce (no bough grain) through most of the year. He has a huge vegetable garden, although I don't doubt it's doable.

 

[ClissAT]

Just want to bring this thread back to the top & add some info.

Meal worms should not form more than 10% of the diet. The exoskeletons are not digestible & can cause blockages in a particular part of the tract particularly in young birds. Feeding them a few at a time throughout the day is ok. But not all at once particularly in the evening feed. This causes all the exoskeletons to end up in the wrong place in the digestive tract at the same time & cause a blockage over time.

Finely chopped bones from human meals (not chicken) are a good protein & calcium supplement. Smoked pork bones from pea & ham soup are easiest to chop followed by lamb bones. Use a hatchet on a chopping block. Chopped up cuttlefish shells are an excellent calcium & salt source.

Allow tomatoes to become blown & feed the whole fruit to cluckles, they love them.
Hanging fish carcasses or similar in plastic bags in trees for the maggots also brings the same number of flies into the chook pen which is not wanted. Flies are not choosy where they lay eggs so chook poo is as good as rotten fish in a bag.

Cluckles that free range will need to be wormed with moxidectin at least once per year with a follow-up worming 3wks later to get the tape worms that soil insects carry.

there's more but I just can't think right now.

 

[Mark]

Go easy on the mealworms hey - well there ya go too much of a good thing!

I do tend to feed my flock plenty of tomatoes and fresh produce out of the patch in general it's just another good reason to grow more produce than ya need.