Grow Chicken Feed
Growing your own chicken feed is an economical way to keep a flock of hens for both food and income from egg sales. It's also a way to ensure your chickens are fed a well-balanced diet that doesn't include the fillers and antibiotics often found in commercial feed. Free-range chickens can usually scratch out ample seeds, grains, weeds, grasses, bugs and earthworms during warm-weather months and will benefit from a special garden of nutrients grown just for them. You also can grow an assortment of greens, grains and proteins for confined hens and chickens kept during the winter months. Does this Spark an idea?
Instructions
1. Determine an area of your yard that you can reasonably set aside exclusively for chicken feed. The area should have well-drained soil and receive at least five hours of sunlight a day. Place your chicken feed garden plot in a north-south orientation, as close to your chicken coop as possible without imposing shade from the coop or shelter.
2. Place four marking posts at the plot corners. Measure the halfway point with measuring tape, and place two marking posts there. You'll use half of your plot for corn. The other half will be divided between oats, alfalfa, soybeans or other field crops. Connect the posts with twine.
3. Identify other areas of the yard where you can grow early greens and feed, such as lettuce and peas. As early in the season as you can work the soil, place marking posts in those areas, and give the soil an initial turn and composting.
4. Scatter lettuce seed in tilled beds around the chicken coop or shelter in early spring. Place peas in rows a half-inch deep and 1 inch apart. Tamp the soil down lightly, and water well with a watering can or hose.
5. Till the soil in your chicken feed garden deeply, working in a shovel of compost every 6 inches. When threat of frost is past, create shallow furrows to receive seed. Use a sifter to clean the furrows of dirt clumps.
6. Moisten the soil in the furrows. Broadcast oat, alfalfa or other grain seed in furrows on one side of the chicken feed garden. Barely cover the seed with dirt. Tamp down gently.
7. Drill holes a half-inch deep and 8 inches apart with your finger on the other side of the garden. Place two kernels of corn seed in each hole. Cover lightly with soil and water well.
8. Keep plants well watered in dry periods. Hoe between furrows at least weekly to reduce competition from weeds.
9. Allow the chickens to roam their garden and clean the area of bugs. Harvest each crop when it matures. Grains may be cut, dried and hung upside down in the coop for chickens to peck for seeds. Preserve some seeds to plant next season.
10. Harvest corn and remove kernels from the cob. Mash or dry and run through a blender or food processor. Chickens will also peck at the cobs.
Tags: chicken feed, your chicken, chicken feed garden, feed garden, marking posts