FREE-RANGE CHICKENS
(Page 8 of 9)
July/August 1984
By the Mother Earth News editors
You must supply some way for the birds to make vitamin D. Exposure to sunlight is cheapest, but cod-liver oil will do ... if you can get the chickens to take it. (The old University of Maryland formula includes the stuff.)
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This is for a complete ration, now, not a supplement for foragers that will get a fairly wellbalanced ration afield during the growing season. So don't be afraid to substitute. Lawn grass clippings, for instance, supply most of what's offered in alfalfa-leaf meal. The corn listed is ground yellow field corn, and wheat middlings (that mysterious component that you only see printed on feed sack labels) are nothing but the little hard parts of wheat grain left after milling. Corn and wheat constitute three-fourths of the ration, providing some vitamins and minerals but mainly calories in a perfect amino acid/carbohydrate mix. Any grain will do for field-run birds fed on kitchen scraps, I'd think. Soy and fish meal supply protein in these formulas, but you can substitute any number of animal by-products for this in the winter feed; in the summer, free-ranging chickens will get most of the protein they need by grabbing up bugs. Milk and recycled eggshells complement limestone as calcium sources. We eat a lot of seafood; clamshells and what's left of fish racks (bones and heads) after they're boiled down into stock are added into the kitchen scraps every day or two. That's our "fish meal." (Inlanders may want to provide a separate container of bought crushed oystershell in the coop.)
As suggested by the item I added to the end of the chart, growing and harvesting the dry ration, to say nothing of grinding and mixing and storing it, is a lot of work.
Selling Eggs
A dozen chickens eat about 100 pounds of dry feed a month in winter, half of that during the foraging season. Bought at a dime a pound, that would cost, at most, $10 a month cash, or the equivalent of ten dozen fresh eggs sold at a buck a dozen. Each of our one- to six-year-old hens produces an average of two eggs a week in the depth of winter, or a total for the flock of maybe eight dozen a month ... not enough to support the birds, even if we were to sell all the eggs. Fortunately, some of my egg-buying customers go south in February, the rest of us seem to reduce calorie intake, and the trade drops off for a while. The hens' laying rate picks up promptly in early March as days lengthen, increasing to about five eggs per hen each week by May 1st. By then, both output and cash sales far outstrip dry-feed costs. Foraging is at its best, so the flock is eating only a half ration, but eggs are coming on at 15 to 20 dozen a month. It more than evens out over a year.
Did someone ask how to go about getting started selling fresh eggs? Friend, they sell themselves. All you have to do is pass out a few eggs to any half dozen good-food-appreciating folks who've been buying the store variety, and you'll have five eager buyers. We got into it purely by accident, giving away extras to neighbors rather than having the eggs get a whole week old. By golly, folks then asked us if we wouldn't sell them some; it wasn't the other way around! As one customer wrote on a Christmas card last year, "Fresh eggs are one of the delights of country living ... thanks." I won't pretend to be any expert in the art and science of retail marketing, but I'm convinced that you have to deliver eggs when people need them'and find an easy way for folks to order. An impersonal, fully automatic system seems to work best. I ask my customers to leave an empty egg carton (with a buck inside) in the garage, in the RFD mailbox, or newspaper delivery tube on my delivery day. I leave a full carton ... unless the weather is too hot or cold, when I take it inside for them.
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