It was another day of constant rain. Since it was so wet outside I had an opportunity to do research on cereal crops and chickens. The question that we were asking today was whether or not it would be possible to support about ten egg-laying hens with both free ranging opportunities and supplemental feed grown on the farm site. As we are in the infrastructure planning phase this is a question that a few of us are asking related to the project. I was able to find a paper that had layer mash formulas developed in the 1980's at the University of Maine and the 1940's at the University of Maryland. Here are the supplemental feed recipes:

These recipes are a complete ration and we hope to let the chickens ingest a variety of nutrients by free ranging. However, the article mentioned that twelve chickens would need about 100lbs of supplemental feed per month in the winter and 50lbs per month in the summer. I want to work out the numbers regarding space and capacity to see what sort of situation we are interested in designing. I am particularly excited to crunch a few numbers tomorrow to get a better picture of how much of each crop is needed for the entire year. A small report related to how much land one might need to generate sufficient food per chicken or per flock of chickens is expected to come from some of today's research. However, before making too many strong conclusions I will need to consult more sources.

Check out the attached PDF to read a great article related to free range chickens. The author, Don Vivian, covers a lot of ground in this article and even includes some do-it-yourself building plans related to chicken infrastructure.

I also have another PDF from West Virginia University. It is a short article that gives an overview of the dietary needs of poultry and seems to support the composistion of layer mash formuals illustrated above.