Grow These 5 Crops For FREE Chicken Feed | Self Sufficient Livestock Grain

hey guys welcome back today I'm standing here in our chicken food plot and I'm gonna show you what we're growing we are growing one two three four five different kinds of grains for our chicken this year so as you'll notice a lot of our crops really don't look that good so this isn't meant to be a how-to grow each one of these specific crops video but it is going to be kind of an inspiration on what grains are really easy to go for grow for chickens this is our first year growing on this property and to be honest with you guys it didn't go all that well we didn't amend the soil as much as we should have we did mix in a bunch of compost but it didn't go as far as we wanted it to the drainage is so bad there's really basically no organic matter in the soil so just mixing in compost wasn't enough we're probably gonna have to Mound compost next year and I'm hoping for a lot better results then but if you're just here for ideas of grain that you can grow for our chickens that's what I'm here to help you with I'm going to tell you about the grains we're growing for our chickens but then I'm also gonna tell you at the end of the video I'm gonna give you a bunch of stuff that you can feed your chickens that is not necessarily grain you have to grow yourself it's stuff that they can kind of just get on their own so if you want to stick around for that I will get to that too okay where to start so let's start with the sunflowers so one of the most fun and one of the easiest grains that you can grow for your chickens are sunflower seeds and different sunflowers different types of sunflowers are going to create more or less feed depending on the kind of you get the kind that you get so the one that I have here is not necessarily one that we actually grew for the chickens but it is growing better than it did over there because this area of the garden is just doing better in general this one is a really pretty kind of chocolate black sunflower I couldn't tell you what it's called if I tried but I'm going to pick off one of the sunflower heads and show you kind of how we get the sunflower seeds out it is worth knowing that if you are growing sunflowers for your chickens you don't actually have to kind of harvest the grain no matter what the crop is you don't actually have to harvest it like you would for a human a lot of times the chickens will do that themselves if I throw a giant sunflower head in with the chickens they're gonna love it they're gonna eat it if you want to store a bunch of it for the winter and you don't have a lot of storage that's when you might want to think about kind of harvesting it for yourself storing it in bags that kind of thing because obviously that'll take up a lot less space but if storage isn't necessarily your concern you can throw this right to your chickens okay so this is one of the smaller sunflower heads which is probably why it is ready sooner one really easy way to tell when it's ready to harvest is just when the birds start eating it that's I mean that's kind of a dead giveaway and then what I like to do is just kind of pick away this outer layer you can kind of rub it off once it's fully ripe and right there and right there you'll see a bunch of seed heads that actually look like sunflower seeds like you would get in a pack or like you would get from a bag of sunflower seeds that you're going to snack on these are a little bit smaller than most kind of human type snacking sunflower seeds but the chickens will love them all the same oh they actually smell really good too unfortunately the giant sunflower head the ones that kind of have the gray and black stripes on the seeds that most people grow for snacking and they make those giant sunflower heads they didn't turn out that gray just because the soil is so bad this year so I don't think we'll have much to go by but that's why it's best to start on a small scale plant what you can and learn for next year I'm also seeing some little grubs on here which the girls will absolutely love so I'm just gonna throw this into them just how it is [Music] foreign type of grain that can be really easy to grow for your chickens is corn specifically Dent corn I like to look for corns that generally are used for like cornmeal but I've also heard just look for dent corn specifically and should be good to go there these are really short we have some really tall ones over there but I didn't really plant mine correctly this year not only because the soil isn't great but also because it's best planted in blocks for better pollination so that's something to keep in mind that we'll definitely do next year this year I planted two varieties I planted a yellow Dent corn which is for cornmeal I think it's called a nothastine not the scene something like that and then I also planted the rainbow uh glass gem kind of like rainbow kernel corn so we'll see if we get any corn socks I did see a couple little ones forming so I think it might not be a total loss I should add too A lot of people might say why are you feeding your your chicken's grain at all and that's a really good question because I mean grain isn't necessarily required for their diet the thing about grain it is is it is really easy to store so we live in an environment where it gets very cold during the winter we cannot grow basically anything during the winter I love that so many of you are able to put kind of mini greenhouses out and at least grow some lettuce I mean there's certain very cold crops that we can Harvest but in terms of actual energy that is going to help keep the chickens warm and help them laying through help them keep laying through the winter there really is actually nothing that we can grow during the winter that is going to provide a lot of caloric value so that's where grains come in handy we do like our chickens to lay as much as their bodies are willing throughout the winter we don't use an artificial light but we do like to make sure that they have enough calories to keep warm we don't Heat their coop in the winter so we just make sure they have enough calories and feeding grain is part of that it doesn't have to come from a feed store so our goal is definitely to become more self-sufficient ideally someday totally self-sufficient where during the summer the chickens are pretty much free ranging eating scraps from the fruit trees and I'll get more into that in a second but we would primarily be growing these grains to soar for them so that they have something to eat throughout the winter even though I already talked about sunflowers I'm going to stand here and tell you about the next thing because it really didn't go well for me so the next grain that we started growing for our chickens is amaranth and amaranth I've had success growing before unfortunately I have a really hard time getting amaranth to Germany I think it's because I don't tend to keep my seedlings moist as moist as they're supposed to be so I I think that's my problem but I just kind of scattered a bunch of amaranth seeds in a row and it did not go well so unfortunately I don't have any to show you I'm sure I can put up beautiful pictures for you of what it's supposed to look like but amaranth is a grain that once it gets going in my experience it's actually very easy to grow and our chickens do love eating it in fact we do have quite a bit of wild amaranth growing on our property so we can kind of use that but the nice thing about amaranth is it does create a ton of I guess caloric value so it doesn't take much to store the seeds but it does create a lot of crop or harvest if you will plus it's also beautiful to look at that's why I especially love sunflowers and I especially love amaranth because they are so pretty you can get really pretty varieties you know not everything has to be doomsday minded most of the time we're just gonna be living normal lives and kind of trying our hand at these things and there is a lot to be said for beautiful things around you and things that you really enjoy so I really like growing amaranth for that reason comes in all kinds of colors and uh yeah it's the chickens love to eat it on that note kind of on the amaranth note another one you can grow is quinoa you can grow all different kinds of quinoa and I mean these are all really similar they're all grains that tend to be pretty easy to grow but let's use it as a segue into my next crop all right guys check this out this is pretty cool this is called sorghum you can get sorghum in all different varieties um this one actually is doing pretty well even though it looks pretty short it's doing well it is a shorter variety of sorghum this one I believe is called texacoa one reason that I really like sorghum is it's kind of considered like a survival crop it can do a lot of different things not this variety specifically but a lot of varieties of sorghum you can actually make sorghum syrup so you actually take the canes and you boil them down and it creates kind of a sugary substance that you can make syrup out of so people have sorghum syrup pancakes but I mean even for like caloric value it's not just the seed head you're looking at then it's also the canes can provide calories as far as the seed head goes these ones are not quite ready yet I believe they kind of turn whiter when they're ready but they're well on their way another reason it's kind of a survival crop is because it is very drought tolerant so more similar to I guess corn which is more drought tolerant than some of these other crops I've talked about don't quote me on this but I want to say it's actually native to Africa so yeah very drought tolerant something that I'm going to plant a lot more of where we don't have really drip irrigation or it's difficult to get irrigation too so another one that is really good for growing your own chicken feed especially for kind of a preparedness or emergency type situation I guess supply chain breakdown situation but also because it can provide calorie value for you and your family as well not just the chickens I'm not sure if chickens would eat the stocks or not they're pretty fibrous so I'm not sure that chickens would be able to extract that the same way we could by boiling it but might be worth a try so those are the five grains that we are choosing to grow for chickens over the winter so to recap that's kind of various types of sunflowers various types of amaranth even though it didn't go so well this year I know it will in the future it's going to take a little practice various types of sorghum we've had great success with sorghum this year we will definitely be growing more of that corn of course is a huge one I know I'm not saying you should feed your chickens a corn only diet but it absolutely will help them over the winter we're talking more of a dried corn there not so much a sweet corn and then kind of the quinoa Millet like all sorts of little mini grains that probably aren't super hard to grow either actually another little bonus one that I'll throw in there is buckwheat buckwheat can be a really great grain that is easy to grow in a lot of areas like ours and provides a lot of caloric value and it's another one where you can grind down if you want and eat it yourself with your family so buckwheat is another one that I didn't get in the ground this year if I'm being honest yes I did buy seeds and I didn't get them in the ground ah hopefully next year I know a lot of people can be really anti-grain diet for a while it was a very anti-grain diet for dogs was The Fad and you know I right now it's kind of seeming like people are going through that same fad with chickens and I'm not saying it's horrible I think it's good that people are trying to improve their animals diets um as a personal trainer I always recommend improving your own too we can all improve on our own diet but the key here is that you can be a lot more self-sustainable when you can grow your own chicken feed I believe it's also going to be better for the chickens I am going to know for a fact that there are no pesticides going on these plants I'm gonna know for a fact there are no pesticides going into my chickens that way so there are a lot of reasons why you might want to grow grain for your chickens probably the largest one being if you live in an area like ours that gets cold during the winter like so cold that nothing grows pretty much I mean things can kind of Stay Alive carrots kale we can they can kind of stay alive but let's not fool ourselves we cannot make chicken survive on that there is a lot of value to growing and drying and saving grain either for yourself or your chicken so if you're somebody who that sounds appealing to I hope this got the ideal wheel spinning if you guys are growing grain-free chickens or you have other ideas for things to grow for chickens I would love to hear your comments down below anything especially that is easy to save for winter it can kind of just throw in a bag in a cool dry place and it'll be good to go that is a huge plus like I mentioned the beginning of the video we really like to have the bulk of our chickens diets come from scraps during the spring summer and winter scraps from the garden so a lot of that is going to be coming from the fruit trees I have a whole Orchard behind me one of my favorite things about having fruit trees and chickens is that you get all those kind of yuckiest fruits that fall to the ground and people don't want to eat those go to the chickens and they love them and that is a very good source of calories for the chickens now if you guys know me you know that we are not really careful about what our chickens get they get all kinds of scraps from it's probably the only thing that we're really careful about not giving them is like chocolate and then like desserts we don't eat a ton of that ourselves but we don't throw that to them but kitchen scraps are really huge for us and garden scraps you know especially during the growing season they eat all kinds of melons and cucumbers all kinds of good stuff so that's the only other thing I'll add if you are here because you are just looking to cut feed costs and you're not necessarily looking to keep grain throughout the winter that's probably going to be the easiest way to do it so I hope this video was somewhat helpful I will link a lot of really helpful links for you below things that you can feed your chickens to offset feed costs and specific grains that you can grow yourself if you want to keep sustaining them throughout the winter without buying food from the feed store thanks for watching and we'll see you next time

Channel: Oak Abode

Views: 92,409

Keywords: how to grow your own chicken feed, what kinds of grains can chickens eat, raising backyard hens for eggs, egg laying hen care and keeping, planting corn kernels, growing sorghum 101, can you eat decorative amaranth, drought tolerant grain crops, keeping livestock for beginners, converting land into a homestead, keeping a self sufficient property, how to become more self reliant, stay out of the grocery stores by growing these vegetables, reducing the effects of inflation

Id: FQIWYBGl5JY

Length: 13min 3sec (783 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 25 2023