how long will a 50 lb. bag of feed last for a flock of 6 laying hens?

Marjory Wildcraft
Marjory Wildcraft Posts: 1,615 admin
edited October 2020 in Birds (Land Fowl & Waterfowl)

Can you help me with this math? Laying hens will need about 0.25# per day of approximately 16% protein feed,

6 hens would consume a total of 1.5 lb. per day. So (50 lb. / 1.5 lb.)/ day = 33.3. So 33 days?

About a month?

Does that seem right to you?

Comments

  • tammyrichardsmt9
    tammyrichardsmt9 Posts: 109 ✭✭✭

    Your math seems good to me. Assuming the hens eat the average amount, a 50 lb bag should last about a month.

  • Hassena
    Hassena Posts: 345 ✭✭✭

    Yep that sounds right.

    Our hens have pasture access and get scraps. However I am sure other birds eat the feed so a 50lb last us about a two weeks. That's with around 20 birds or so.

    Good question, as we add animals it's good to know if the farmer is breaking even or needs to raise prices. we are doing some math to determine if raising turkeys would be a good investment for the farm.

    This is a website with details of raising. https://www.namimoonfarms.com/news/the-price-of-a-turkey/

  • LaurieLovesLearning
    LaurieLovesLearning Posts: 7,573 admin

    So now that @Marjory Wildcraft's question has been answered, I want to add some extra thoughts here on keeping chickens & making money.

    Most people are not really making money (even if they think they are) raising chickens whether it is for eggs or feed. Most people don't consider all inputs, just the cash that they see in their hand when they sell something.

    I find most chicken keepers don't charge enough for their eggs citing fewer costs than a large efficient barn operation. They are mistaken...overhead is actually much higher for the backyard keeper. They should be charging at a minimum the equivalent of what is found at the store for the specialty eggs. Most charge less than the cheapest price found in a store.

    If your product is worth more, know why & charge accordingly! People will pay for the best!

    If you consider cost of feed (if you grow feed, consider what you would sell it for...it isn't free), grit/calcium, medical supplies (natural/not), equipment (waterers, etc.), housing, feed waste (and feed losses due to moochers), losses due to predators/disease, heat if needed, bedding, runs/tractors, & the work & time involved. If you pay for them to get butchered, you lose more money. Then, if you buy chicks or hatch them, both require cost &/or time & effort.

    You can reduce your costs if you are smart about how to do things, but making a living on them without going the way of industrial size, etc., is difficult.

    I can sell $1000 worth of purebred birds in spring, but I have kept them through the winter & usually have losses, and had to feed them more due to cold, etc. (costs). I don't consider these sales profit, but a way to help sustain my flocks. I put a lot into those through the winter.

    Birds are worth more in spring than in fall. But even this market can fluctuate due to temperatures in spring, demand and more.

    I can charge more for rarer high end breeds that I have put effort into...trying to improve my flock. I have charged up to $50/bird and $15/day old chick. Rarer breeds can demand even more money but are not actually worth a high sticker price if just helter-skelter bred. This year, I sold a high amount of hatching eggs...$30-40/dozen. With my rare breeds, if I wanted to sell their eggs, I could have charged $60-$70/dozen. I have seen some breeds go for way more, but you have to be willing to take the risk & buy the pricey stock. Think $300 US for one chick that could just die or get eaten by something.

    These "income" amounts help to cover feed, housing & repair, equipment, losses, and more.

    The bottom line is that if you keep chickens, it is more about knowing where your food is coming from & the joy of keeping birds; it isn't income.

    Now if you have a milk cow & drink lots of milk & consume lots of dairy products...you can save a great amount even after all expenses are considered.

  • Paradox
    Paradox Posts: 187 ✭✭✭

    I'm gonna toss this in here, too... if you live in areas where wheat is plentiful, either from canneries run the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or where a lot of their members live, sometimes you find people that are getting rid of their old wheat, and you can take it off their hands and use it for your chickens. :)

  • mcarryon
    mcarryon Posts: 32 ✭✭✭

    Mine free range during the day and a 50# bag feeds all 6 for a little over a month.

  • Marjory Wildcraft
    Marjory Wildcraft Posts: 1,615 admin

    Hi @LaurieLovesLearning one time I want to a barter session and had some of my eggs there. I told them they were equivelent to $20/ dozen. Everyone looked shocked but I told them that is what they were worth to me - the time, the feed, the infrastructure...

    Joel Salatin in his books on pastured laying hens says the minimum size flock to be profitable for a small farmer is around 600 hens. You just have to have volume.

    But for backyard producers, for me, its the quality of the food (nutrition and purity), and food security. That is way more valuable than 'money'. Well, actually there are so many more benefits... the relationship with the flock, the entertainment value ☺️

    We are all so used to super cheap food from the industrial systems we have lost touch with the cost of real food.

  • LaurieLovesLearning
    LaurieLovesLearning Posts: 7,573 admin

    @Marjory Wildcraft 600...that farm just became industrial scale.

    You are exactly right!

  • Marjory Wildcraft
    Marjory Wildcraft Posts: 1,615 admin

    Hi @LaurieLovesLearning ahhh, I don't think 600 chickens is industrial scale. Definitely small commercial. Lots of great organic chickens farmers managing flocks of several thousand. The birds are outside, healthy, good food. It's a ton of work. But they produce good clean honest food.

  • LaurieLovesLearning
    LaurieLovesLearning Posts: 7,573 admin

    I guess that is actually more accurate.

    Several thousand would certainly be considered industrial here. In that case, it is numbers, not necessarily method.

  • Merin Porter
    Merin Porter Posts: 1,026 admin

    That's about what I calculate, too. I keep 19 hens who also free range during the day, and I go through about 150 pounds of feed per month during the spring/summer months. That's just under 8 pounds per bird per month. And, of course, they will eat more feed during the winter, when there's snow on the ground here.

  • russ580
    russ580 Posts: 1 ✭✭✭

    Hi. Homesteaders & backyard chicken raisers, what do you feed your hens. I was watching Justin Rhodes on YouTube & it looked like grain or scratch feed. On the bag of scratch feed you buy from Tractor Supply there is a warning not to feed Scratch Feed for more than 10% of their feed. my plan was to buy bulk oats, field corn & maybe barley & make my own. I'd like to feed laying mash sparingly but I got chickens for the eggs as a part of the GROW SYSTEM Marjory teaches...

  • Michelle D
    Michelle D Posts: 1,465 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @russ580 welcome to the forums! There are a lot of really great options out there for feeding your hens. The bag from TSC is correct. Scratch grains are considered a treat for hens and should only make up about 10% of their diet. How old are your hens? What they need to thrive varies as they grow. If you choose to mix your own feed there are "recipes" available for each age range. I'm still on the newer end of raising chickens so I do use a purchased mix of grains for mine. I will likely change that when I have more experience and can better recognize probably immediately etc. I also feed them a lot of produce from my garden, fish and liver. They really enjoy the extra treats but I try to keep it around 10% of their diet.

    I'm sure that @LaurieLovesLearning can give even more info on the subject.

  • LaurieLovesLearning
    LaurieLovesLearning Posts: 7,573 admin
    edited July 2022

    Hi & welcome @russ580! Please leave a short intro in our Introductions section so we can get an idea where you are from. 😀

    We can't free range our birds due to the predator issues we have. So, we are keeping everyone in coops & feeding year round.

    @Michelle D is correct. Type of feed depends on age. Roosters also do best with less calcium.

    It is also correct that scratch feed & kitchen treats should be a very low percentage of their diet. This will affect their health, growth & rate of lay if too much is given. It isn't nutritionally balanced.

    We only feed scratch during the colder times of the winter.

    Corn is generally a pretty big part of scratch. This gives the birds energy to help warm their bodies. Of course, on summer, you don't want this extra action. It has very little nutrition, if any at all, to offer birds and if it is a concern to you, is usually GMO.

    Chickens cannot properly digest barley, so get essentially nothing from it. However, grains like barley fermented 2-3 days before feeding will help create enzymes which can help make nutrients available & help the digestion of the barley.

    Oats is not sufficient in nutrients/protein for chickens either. Wheat is best, and is usually a base component of chicken feed. Oats are in addition to.

    What we are currently doing for our chickens is giving wheat mixed with a powdered supplement which gives a bit higher protein and gives it the nutrients that a layer ration would have. I have no idea if there is soy in it (I wouldn't be surprised if it does for the protein content...yuck), but it was our least expensive option right now.

    What we did before was a 17% layer ration. We had originally chosen it because you could see whole grains in it. Whole grains is by far a better option than cracked or rolled if it is to be stored at all. Once the grains are broken open, they lose nutritional value quickly. But, this doesn't mean you can't roll it or crack it fresh yourself. On that note, fermenting (whole grains) is actually one of the best ways to feed grains. It has been proven to increase weight gain & egg laying. If you do this, no rolling nor cracking is necessary.

    If you want your birds to be healthy & lay well, they will need calcium, of course, which will be found in the layer feed. However, we feed our birds a combination of calcium & grit to cover this need & grinding needs. We found that the layer feed gave the bare minimum for calcium & the eggshells were weak.

    On that note, wheat bran (or germ? Ah, my memory isn't working well today) will give thicker shells as well.

    My advice is, don't "cheap out". If you do, your birds will suffer & you will not get eggs. Ferment the grains...it will help feed better for less.

    We do have some links to various recipes and poultry feed calculators on the forum. You will either find them under this category of "Birds" or under "Feed".

  • LaurieLovesLearning
    LaurieLovesLearning Posts: 7,573 admin

    @russ580 As well, depending on where you are, you might want to try attracting or raising your own soldier fly larvae as part of their feed.

  • Michelle D
    Michelle D Posts: 1,465 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @LaurieLovesLearning would you be willing to share some details about the powdered supplement you add to the wheat? I'm interested in looking into this option. I found something on the Azure website that is called poultry nutri-balancer. Would this be the kind of thing you use?

  • LaurieLovesLearning
    LaurieLovesLearning Posts: 7,573 admin

    @Michelle D My husband bought the supplement. I'm not sure of the brand/manufacturer, nor the contents.

    The supplement you mention looks good and is meant to be mixed with grains, so it is the same type of thing. I like that the use kelp for their organic option.

    Ours is 8 parts grain:1 part supplement.

  • vickeym
    vickeym Posts: 2,134 ✭✭✭✭✭

    This is the exact one that my husband and I have used when we mix our own grains for chickens. We have approximately 200 birds. We are currently feeding a whole grain layer mix from a grower up around the Fairbanks area and we ferment this food in the summer. Not always in winter as we are off grid and don't have enough warm room for that much feed

  • marjstratton
    marjstratton Posts: 1,132 ✭✭✭✭

    My neighbor has about 60 laying hens. She sells her eggs for $3- $5 a dozen. It is really nice to look out our front window and see what the ladies are doing (entertainment), and then walk up to our neighbor's to get a dozen eggs out of the cooler and drop the money in the mailbox. And in the slow season, we just call her and see if the ladies have given her any eggs that day.

  • Michelle D
    Michelle D Posts: 1,465 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @LaurieLovesLearning and @vickeym thanks for the info. A couple more questions, it says that you need to supplement calcium with it. Would that just be the oyster shells that I'm currently giving them to supplement or would they need more? Also, if I'm mixing wheat with this supplement or one like it could I still ferment the grains as normal after mixing in the powder?

  • LaurieLovesLearning
    LaurieLovesLearning Posts: 7,573 admin

    @Michelle D That should work. Just observe how your hens & eggs are and adjust as necessary.

    We found that we had stronger eggshells overall by using calcium grit, a combined product of grit with calcium. Somehow the oyster shell and a separate grit were not being enough in our birds' case. It's strange, but you go with what works. We changed this long before doing the supplement.

    @vickeym is most likely to have the answer to your question as we haven't done fermenting for the chickens for a while. I would think it should be okay.

  • vickeym
    vickeym Posts: 2,134 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited August 2022

    @Michelle D When we used the fertrell supplement we fermented the grains in a large plastic trash can (found out real quick it eats metal.) As I recall we would scoop out and drain the feed for each pen and add the supplement to each bucket. We ended up switching that to a single bucket system per pen but I would need to check with my husband on when he added the supplement to it.

    We use enough buckets for a three day rotation. So the buckets we empty today, will get refilled but not used again until Friday. Still do it that way but the supplements are added before we purchase the whole grains layer mix we use now.

    So from our experience you could add before you ferment or after. Especially with fewer birds. Just make sure when you take the feed out you are getting the minerals and such out of the bucket as well. We reuse the liquid that is drained as the start of the next buckets liquid and add more water as needed.