As I mentioned recently, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about chicken feed (it just occurred to me that most people would never consider this worthy of thought … interesting what our occupations lead us to ponder). Anyway, I’ve concluded that since humans have been raising chickens forever and the commercial feeds have only recently been pushed as “necessary”… leading me to believe that they’re not actually necessary for the small-scale homesteader.

Naturally, then, this article “Fermenting Chicken Feed” at Backwoods Home caught my interest. I’m well aware of the health benefits of fermented food for humans, and it turns out that it’s the same for chickens. The process utilizes just grains and a four-bucket method that Barefoot Girl explains in this video:

The author states that the benefits of fermenting their feed is that it we can use grain scraps from the feed mill instead of commercial feed, and the fermenting process makes the nutrients more available to the hens so they (theoretically) eat less. We usually go through at least one fifty-pound bag of feed a week, so we’ll keep track and see how it works!