So along the lines of independent, sustainable farming, have you tried rotating your chickens with wheat or grain crops? Surely the rich soil would provide excellent feed for the chickens, as well as straw for litter.

Even at today’s prices, it’s a lot cheaper for me to sell my eggs at niche-market prices and buy my grain and straw at commodity prices than it is to grow my own. In the meantime, the pasture absorbs all the nutrients and is presumably making the topsoil deeper as well as richer. The fertility will be there when I want it.

A farmer we know used to grow grain on about ten acres, and fed it to cattle and chickens. But he was an old, experienced farmer who was wise in the ways of cranky old combines. I’m not sure grain on small acreage makes sense unless you already have that kind of experience.

I’m planning on trying kale, sunflowers, and corn next year, though, as much for their shade as their nutritional value for the chickens. We’ll see what happens.

It’s not hard to eliminate soy from poultry diets, just expensive. Chickens need some kind of balanced protein supplement in their feed, and soy (plus some other stuff, since its protein isn’t balanced) is by far the cheapest. Has been for over fifty years. Replacing the soy with meat is very easy from a nutritional point of view, since meat has complete protein and vitamin B12 and a lot of minerals that soy lacks.

Trying to raise chickens on grain alone is a recipe for failure — you’ll be lucky if all you suffer is low production, and not deficiency diseases.

Hi Robert, have you tried feeding okara to layers? Thanks.

Not me. Okara has never been on my radar. I think it’s a byproduct of soy milk production, and I’m over a thousand miles away from soybean country. Agriculture in my neck of the woods is dominated by the grass-seed industry, and its byproducts aren’t very palatable to chickens.

I support the concept of choice-feeding for small poultry flocks, especially organic flocks, for the following reasons:
1. Poultry have some ability to balance their diets when allowed an appropriate choice of feeds.
2. The nutritional requirements of organic poultry have not been well defined.
3. The program is likely to be more profitable, as pointed out in this report.
4. Whole grain helps to promote optimal gut development, especially of the gizzard, which may assist in disease resistance.
4. Choice-feeding is closer to the natural way of eating for poultry.
If layers do well consistently when given the choice of grain or a 16% protein layer feed and consume about 30% grain and 70% layer feed, it follows that the 16% layer feed contains more nutrients than are needed by the birds in that particular flock. The possible drawback of this program is that the birds when in high production and possibly continuing to consume substantial quantities of grain may develop a nutritional deficiency.
In my book Nutrition and Feeding of Organic Poultry I have suggested a choice-feeding program based on grain and a Supplement (concentrate instead of a layer diet) as the 2 feeds. A Supplement provides all of the nutrients not provided by the grain and is therefore a safer choice than the layer diet. However producers may find it more difficult to purchase organic Supplement than an organic layer diet.
In either case producers should provide 3 feeders for the birds, the first containing grain, the second containing layer diet (or Supplement) and the third oystershell grit (for eggshell production).
The grain could be oats, wheat or barley etc. (or a mixture) and fed whole. Corn needs to be kibbled for feeding to poultry since the whole kernels are too large for the birds to ingest easily.
Bob

Robert Blair, DSc, FAIC
Professor Emeritus
UBC