Chicken feed in South Africa has become ridiculously expensive and a lot of chicken farmers faces this battle on a daily basis as chickens that are reaching slaughter point, eat around 83 cents of feed per day. If you sit with chickens that you cant sell, you are burning money at an extremely fast rate. On this page we will discuss How you can save on Chicken Feed.
If you have land Use it!
If you have enough land the first and most obvious method is to switch your chicken (broiler) farming business to a free range chicken farming business. Chickens get immense protein from insects and by scrubbing for worms. Your growth process will be longer, up to 75 days to be exact before the chickens are slaughter ready. Measuring the growth rate time vs feeding cost you save roughly 33% on Feeding cost. By doing so, you will have a bigger, healthier and stronger chicken that can also endure a longer travelling distance and that can handle the traveling stress much better than a caged chicken. Don’t be mistaken with the idea that the meat would be tougher, it just as tender as a intensive farmed chicken, but taste even better.
Make your own Feed
Making your own feed is a costly startup buy if you are serious about saving money on feed cost you will start getting a return on your investment in less than a year. You need to get a proper hammer-mil and buy grains in bulk. If you are doing this on a big scale you will have to get 50 kg bags and get them sowed up once you are finished milling your grain mix. You also need storage space that are free from rats and other insects.
Making your own feed can bring cos’t down with almost 45% and will secure your feed supply in cases of drought, traveling issues and yes, Lockdown.
Read how to make your Own Chicken Feed
Get cheaper chicken feed
Another alternate method is to visit your local Agri and ask or negotiate a price for their sifted grains. Agricultural Stores are always there to help and most of the time happy to get rid of the sifted grains as they do not have many purpose for that. The down side is that the grains has a lot of caps in the produce that you buy and need to be sifted again on your farm. This is really a cheap method of giving feed to your chickens and a good way to give them high protein.
Farm with worms to help feed your chickens
Earthworms has 60% plus protein and is a great way to feed chickens if you only have grain to feed them. If you don’t have worms around your area you can buy them online or visit your local pet shop to find out where you can get hold of some worms. Earthworms are easy to farm with and don’t ask a lot when it comes to feeding time. You can use kitchen scraps like potato peels, carrots and other vegetables to feed them. Earthworms cycle reproduces every 10 days and if you go big with worm farming you will always have extra feed for your chickens. I will do an article on how to farm with earthworms soon.
Is there a Free way to feed chickens?
The ideal will be not to feed chickens and make a 100% profit with your farming business. Unfortunately it does not work that way even if you are a true free range chicken farmer
How many bags of Chicken Starter per 100 day old Chicks?
One 50 kg chicken starter should be the the right amount for 100 chicks and should last exactly two weeks. The last two days start mixing Chicken – Grower in your mix to get them acquainted with the bigger chunks of chicken feed.
Can I make my own Chicken Feed?
There is no reason not to make your own Chicken Feed. If you have an Agri that sells grains such as Barley, Wheat, Soya and Lupine seed you can crush it an make your own chicken feed. However you need to get the balance right. I will share the recipe in another post.
How you can save on Chicken Feed – 4 Methods that work
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Very educativehen
Informative indeed. Could you please send me more info on chicken production, common diseases, treatment and the like
Hi David, we will definitely do an article about that. Will keep you posted.
I just support the comment
Thank you so much this is a useful information.
Hi,
I’m Bongani Msibi from Meals On Wheels Community Service, we are providing free meals daily to disadvantaged people nationally. We depend on donations and we want to start a chicken farm so we can provide chicken to our beneficiaries.
May you please help with the recipe for making own chicken feed
Hi Bongani, that is a very good cause and I wish you all of the best for the future. Regarding the chicken feed recipe, I will publish a post on that soon.
Thanks, got some information how to go about poultry farming
I want to invest in this. But I need more info about the quantities that should be mixed. And what do I mix with what.
Good day, the cost of buying chicken feeds increasing by the day and affected the cost of rearing birds, the percentage % of ingredients in mixing starter, grower and finisher feeds will help in busting local rearing of chicken.
Am very much interested in doing this, have been thinking about it so many times. I need more info on how to go about everything.
Want to start my own layer farm. Can you send receipe for chicken feed. What’s the best way to start organic chicken farming
Very nice article indeed. How do I measure how many chicken per square feet. Example :For 3000 broiler I will need how many? Or 30m x 6m broiler house will take how many birds?
Require pellets making machine
Hi could you kindly send me information on how to start chicken farming, I already have a good piece of farmland, I just need to know how and what’s needed for one to get funding.
hi, excellent info ..have been trying to start for a long time but cannot be competiti e if u do not make your own chicken feed…need info desperately on this …thnx
Hi Sam, I just did a article about making your own chicken feed. You can have a look here
https://farmingsouthafrica.co.za/how-to-make-your-own-chicken-feed/
Hi, I have a ready house for egg layers and about to buy cages but the price of feeds is a challenge for me since everything is from my pocket. Please share to me a recipe for egg layers mix 384 to 480 layers.
Hi Cyril, as this question was in high demand, I did an article about How to make your own chicken feed.
https://farmingsouthafrica.co.za/how-to-make-your-own-chicken-feed/
Good day, the cost of buying chicken feeds is increasing by the day and have affected the cost of rearing birds, the percentage % of ingredients in mixing starter, grower and finisher feeds will help in busting local rearing of chicken.
Hi Uyi,
I just posted a related article about How to make your own chicken feed. Have a look
https://farmingsouthafrica.co.za/how-to-make-your-own-chicken-feed/
Hi, I am planning to start with a chicken farm on small scale. I am very interested in more knowledge and learning more about mixing the feed. Any ideas and feedback would be great. Thanks
Kobus
Hi Kobus, I just posted a recipe on this page. Sterkte!
https://farmingsouthafrica.co.za/how-to-make-your-own-chicken-feed/
Hello
How many bags of grower and finisher feeds do i need for 100 chicken
Thank y kindly guys for the informative article on broilers.I will be glad if y could do an article if y have done so regarding common ailments in broilers.Thank you.
Thanks for the news update on Chicken feed .I am a producer of Live larva from Black soldier fly which is,another good supplement both for chicken and Fish feed .It is high in Crude protein with all essential amino acids embedded in the worm .I also produce Larva meal as a good replacement for 72% Fish meal having the same quality .You can contact me on yusufadekunle10@yahoo.com .
woow! this is mouthful. Thank u for sharing this with us. I want to start making chicken feed as we rely outside our province for feed
Like!! I blog quite often and I genuinely thank you for your information. The article has truly peaked my interest.