There are many elements involve here, few basic ideas are what type of chicken you are going to keep? Are you going to grow chicken? Or laying? If you are going to keep only a few of them you can start right away, and increase the number by the time you get used to it.
However if we talk about larger scale production whether if it is growing or laying, you might need to carefully calculate your budget, because you will spend most of your money on feeding, so you need to be well prepare.
Here is a basic idea on how much each chicken will feed week by week, however this number only shows us the basic estimation so you can make initial plan, because once you start on the much larger scale production, there will be more variables involve. Click on the table below for larger view.
Normally it will take about two pound of chicken feed to gain the weight of one pound. So roughly speaking it is 2 : 1 scale of feed vs weight respectively. This is an ideal estimation; however weather also must be taking into account. If it is cold weather chicken will eat more, on the other hand if it is hotter than they will simply drink more, as simple as that.
For broiler chicken in particular they will need to have food available anytime, and chicken will eat only if there is a light, so you do need light at night as well.
Broiler chicken feed : The right amount of balance for maximum growth
Broiler chicken need higher protein in their feed, so the first 4 weeks is the critical stage and protein content in the broiler chicken feed should be reaching at least around 20%. Please make sure to feed only broiler chicken feed for broiler chicken, if you use for instance feed for layers, it will not be suitable because of higher calcium content.
They key success factor in growing broiler chicken is that to provide with the right amount of nutrition since you have only limited amount of time to raise them correctly.
How to make chicken feed can we produce our own Homemade chicken feed?
Of course if you decide to make homemade chicken feed you first need to know common ingredients and basic principle on how to make chicken feed.First you need cracked corn, ground roasted soybean, rolled oats, alfalfa meal, fish or bone meal, calcium powder, poultry nutria balancer. The composition will be as follow:
Cracked corn 50% of total weight of the mixture you are going to make, let say you are going to make 50 kg of homemade chicken feed, then you need 25 kg of cracked corn. For the rest will be 30% of ground roasted soya bean, 25% each for rolled oats, alfalfa meal, and fish or bone meal, 10% for calcium powder, and finally 15% for poultry nutria balancer.
Pour all ingredients into one larger container and mix them with a shovel until it evenly mix, and they are ready to be fed to your chicken. Sound like a lot of work doesn’t it? Anyway if you are trying to reduce your cost, this might be one way to do it.
Types of chicken feed
There are different types of chicken feed available nowadays; however there are the most common ones that you still can use. The very basic chicken feed would be greens, which mean weed, lettuce, or vegetables in general, and your chicken will just eating them with no complain. Another thing you might want to try is soybean, best if you first boil and soak them first before feeding.Of course the easiest way is to buy readily available commercial chicken feed in form of pellets which may contain rice bran, corn, soybean, and more, which are formed into pellets.
Whichever way you are going to grow your chicken, all I can say is happy farming, and enjoy.
