How to Make Chicken Feed for a Healthier Flock

Learning how to make your own chicken feed is one of the most rewarding steps you can take on a homestead. It gives you complete control over your flock’s nutrition, moving you beyond generic recipes and into the craft of mixing wholesome ingredients for birds that truly thrive.

Why Make Your Own Chicken Feed

I’ll admit, venturing into homemade feed can feel like a big leap, especially when grabbing a pre-mixed bag from the store is so convenient. But the benefits in flock health, egg quality, and peace of mind are absolutely worth it. It’s a skill that deepens your connection to your animals and pays you back every single day.

The biggest win is total transparency. Commercial feeds are balanced, sure, but they can also hide fillers or ingredients sourced in ways you might not agree with. When you choose every single component yourself—from the field corn down to the protein source—you know exactly what your chickens are eating. No more guessing.

Tailor Nutrition for Peak Health

One of the most powerful reasons to mix your own feed is the ability to customize it for what your flock needs right now. A chicken’s dietary requirements shift dramatically with age, purpose, and even the season.

• Laying Hens: They need a serious calcium boost for strong, consistent eggshells. With a homemade mix, you can easily add oyster shell or other calcium sources to meet that demand.

• Broilers (Meat Birds): These birds require a much higher protein percentage, especially early on, to support their rapid growth. A custom mix ensures they get that from day one.

• Growing Pullets: A young hen that isn't laying yet has different protein needs than a mature layer. You can adjust the formula as they grow, ensuring they develop properly without rushing them into lay.

From my own experience, I noticed a huge improvement in eggshell thickness and yolk color after switching my layers to a custom-milled feed. That’s a level of fine-tuning you just can't get from a one-size-fits-all commercial bag. If you want to dive deeper into this, our guide on raising chickens for eggs has more tips.

Taking control of your feed mix is the single biggest step you can take to influence your flock's health and productivity. It shifts you from being a consumer to a proactive caretaker.

Understanding the Bigger Picture

Knowing how to formulate feed is a powerful homesteading skill, especially when you look at the commercial poultry industry. The global poultry feed market was valued at USD 175.9 billion in 2018 and it’s only getting bigger.

Commercial producers are constantly tweaking their formulas based on the fluctuating costs of core ingredients like corn and soy. By making your own, you can make the same smart, cost-effective decisions based on what’s available locally, ensuring your flock gets the best without breaking the bank. You can explore more about these market dynamics in this poultry feed market analysis.

Before you even think about scooping and mixing, we need to talk about what your chickens actually need to thrive. Making your own feed is more than just dumping grains in a bucket—it’s about becoming your flock’s personal nutritionist. Getting this part right is what separates a random backyard mix from a diet that fuels genuine health and productivity.

Think of it like building a house. You wouldn’t just start stacking boards without a solid foundation and a strong frame. For your chickens, that frame is built from a few key nutritional components. When they’re in balance, your birds will be happy and healthy. If one is off, you’ll start seeing problems pretty fast.

The Nutritional Building Blocks

At its heart, chicken nutrition boils down to four main categories. Each one plays a critical role in your flock’s daily life, from growing feathers to laying those beautiful eggs.

• Protein: This is the absolute powerhouse for growth, feather production, and egg development. A laying hen’s protein needs are way different from a young, growing chick's. A typical layer feed should have 16-18% protein, while a fast-growing meat bird or a chick needs 20% or more.

• Carbohydrates: These are your flock's fuel. Grains like corn, wheat, and oats provide the energy your chickens need to scratch, forage, and just go about their day.

• Fats: Fats are a small but mighty part of the diet. They’re essential for absorbing certain vitamins and packing a concentrated energy punch. Adding a source like sunflower seeds can be a fantastic boost.

• Vitamins and Minerals: Think of these as the spark plugs of the whole system. They support everything from strong bones and a healthy immune system to good, hard eggshells.

The real challenge is getting these components lined up with what your specific flock needs. It’s a principle that drives the entire global poultry industry, where compound feed production now tops one billion tonnes a year. This huge scale just goes to show the universal importance of balancing energy, protein, and minerals. If you're curious, you can explore more about these global feed trends and see how your own backyard efforts mirror industrial-scale science.

The single most common issue I see with new homemade feed mixes is a calcium imbalance. If you start finding soft, thin, or brittle eggshells, your hens are likely telling you they need more calcium in their diet, stat.

Why Different Birds Need Different Diets

A classic rookie mistake is feeding the entire flock the exact same mix. You wouldn't feed a marathon runner the same diet as a toddler, right? It just doesn’t meet their unique needs. The same goes for your birds.

• Laying Hens have a massive demand for calcium to form strong eggshells day in and day out. This is why you'll see ground oyster shell or limestone added to most commercial layer feeds—it's a dedicated calcium source.

• Broilers (Meat Birds) are bred for incredibly rapid muscle growth. To support that accelerated development, their feed has to be packed with high levels of protein.

• Chicks need a high-protein "starter" feed for their first few weeks to build strong bodies, but they require a much lower calcium level than a laying hen.

Here's a quick reference to keep the basic numbers straight.

Nutrient Needs for Your Flock at a Glance

This table breaks down the core needs for protein, calcium, and energy (measured in kilocalories) for the most common stages of a chicken's life.

Use this as your starting point. You can see right away how a one-size-fits-all approach just won’t cut it.

Don't Forget Grit and Digestion

Here’s a crucial piece of the puzzle that often gets overlooked: grit. Chickens don’t have teeth. Instead, they use a tough, muscular organ called the gizzard to grind up their food. To make that grinding process work, they need to swallow small, hard particles like sand or tiny stones.

If your flock is out free-ranging, they’ll probably pick up enough grit on their own. But for any flock that's confined, you absolutely must provide a separate, free-choice source of grit. Without it, they simply can't digest all the wholesome feed you’ve so carefully mixed for them.

Choosing Your Feed Ingredients

Now that you have a good handle on what your chickens need nutritionally, it's time for the fun part: stocking the pantry. Making your own chicken feed is all about picking the right ingredients to hit those nutritional targets. Think of it less like a rigid recipe and more like a flexible grocery list.

The real power here is in your ability to adapt. If oats are priced sky-high this season but wheat is cheap and plentiful, you can adjust your mix. This flexibility is what makes DIY feed both healthy for your flock and sustainable for your wallet.

Grains: The Energy Foundation

Grains are the bedrock of any good chicken feed. They provide the carbohydrates that fuel your flock’s daily scratching, foraging, and laying. This is the stuff that gives them the get-up-and-go, and it will make up the biggest portion of your mix.

Here are some of the most reliable grains to build your feed around:

• Corn: A classic for a reason. It’s dense with energy and chickens absolutely love it. I always recommend using cracked corn instead of whole corn, as it’s far easier for them to digest.

• Wheat: An excellent source of both energy and protein. If you can find it locally, hard red wheat is a fantastic choice.

• Oats: A great addition for overall health, oats bring good fiber, protein, and extra B vitamins to the mix. They are a little lower in energy than corn, but they make up for it in balanced nutrition.

• Barley: While a solid source of fiber, barley can be a bit tougher for chickens to digest. It’s best used in moderation—I never let it make up more than 20% of the grain portion of my feed.

The exact blend you use isn’t set in stone. In fact, it's influenced by massive global trends. With global compound feed production reaching about 1.396 billion metric tons in 2024, staples like corn and soybean meal dominate the market. For instance, corn often provides up to 65% of the energy in commercial poultry rations, while soybean meal handles the protein. You can get a better sense of these large-scale trends by checking out the latest agricultural outlooks.

Before we dive into protein, let's break down how these common ingredients function in a typical feed mix. The table below gives you a quick look at what each component does and a general idea of how much to include.

Common Feed Ingredient Breakdown

This table provides a closer look at common ingredients, their nutritional purpose, and recommended inclusion levels in a standard mix.

Remember, these percentages are just a starting point. The best mix for your flock will depend on their age, the season, and what ingredients are readily available to you.

Protein: Packing the Punch

Protein is absolutely essential. It’s what fuels feather growth, muscle development, and, of course, egg production. A dip in protein is one of the fastest ways to see laying frequency plummet and the overall health of your flock decline.

A simple rule of thumb: If your egg production suddenly drops for no obvious reason, check your feed's protein percentage first. It's often the culprit.

Here are some excellent protein sources to work into your feed:

• Field Peas: Split peas or field peas are a protein powerhouse and a fantastic non-soy option. They are easy for chickens to digest and a favorite on our homestead.

• Fish Meal: This adds high-quality protein and crucial amino acids that are hard to find elsewhere. A little goes a long way, though—use it sparingly to avoid giving your eggs a "fishy" taste.

• Flaxseed: While not a primary protein source, adding flax is my favorite trick for boosting the omega-3 fatty acid content in our eggs. Healthier eggs for us, happy chickens for the coop.

• Black Oil Sunflower Seeds (BOSS): My flock goes wild for these. They add healthy fats and a good bit of protein, which contributes to shiny feathers and robust health. I usually add BOSS as a supplement rather than mixing it into the main ration.

By combining a few of these, you can easily create a custom protein blend that keeps your birds healthy, happy, and laying strong.

Getting the Mix Right for a Balanced Chicken Feed

You've got your ingredients, and now for the fun part: turning that pile of grains and goodness into a perfectly balanced feed. Your main goal here is consistency. Every single scoop should have the same nutritional profile, and that all comes down to a good, thorough mixing technique.

It doesn’t matter if you’re working on a small scale with a shovel on a clean tarp or you’ve scaled up to a small cement mixer for big batches—the method is the same. I always start by dumping in my largest ingredients first, which for most recipes will be your cracked corn and whole wheat. These create the foundation of the mix.

Next, you'll want to layer in your smaller components. Things like oats or barley go in next, followed by your main protein sources, like field peas. You're basically building the feed from the biggest ingredient (by volume) to the smallest. This layering approach makes the final mix so much more even and a heck of a lot easier to blend.

The basic idea is to build your feed on a solid grain foundation and then layer everything else in methodically.

The Critical Pre-Mixing Step

If you take only one piece of advice from this guide, let it be this: always pre-mix your smallest ingredients separately. I’m talking about things like kelp meal, garlic powder, brewer's yeast, or any other fine powders.

Just grab a cup or two of one of your main grains (wheat works great) and stir it together with all your powders in a small bucket. This simple action breaks up any clumps and guarantees those potent, fine-textured supplements are distributed evenly before they ever hit the main pile. Once it's all blended, you can toss this supercharged "booster mix" into the main batch.

This one small step is a game-changer. It prevents those fine powders from either clumping up or just sinking straight to the bottom of the mixer. It’s your insurance policy that every scoop of feed is nutritionally complete, so every single hen gets the vitamins and minerals she needs to thrive.

Two Tried-and-True Feed Recipes

To get you started, I’m sharing two recipes we use all the time on our homestead. The first is a classic layer feed formulated for top-notch egg production, and the second is a popular soy-free alternative. Remember, these are based on parts, so you can easily scale them for a 5-gallon bucket or a 50-gallon drum.

Standard Layer Feed (Approx. 16-17% Protein) This is a reliable workhorse mix for just about any laying flock. The "parts" can be whatever you want—a scoop, a coffee can, a bucket. Just keep the ratio consistent.

• 5 parts Cracked Corn

• 3 parts Hard Red Wheat

• 2 parts Field Peas

• 1 part Oats

• 0.5 part Black Oil Sunflower Seeds

• 0.25 part Kelp Meal

Soy-Free Layer Feed (Approx. 16% Protein) This recipe leans on field peas for its protein punch, making it a fantastic choice if you're looking to avoid soy in your feed.

• 4 parts Cracked Corn

• 3 parts Hard Red Wheat

• 3 parts Field Peas

• 1 part Oats

• 0.25 part Flaxseed

• 0.25 part Kelp Meal

With either recipe, you must always provide grit and calcium (like crushed oyster shells) in separate, free-choice containers. Never, ever mix calcium directly into their feed. Hens are brilliant at regulating their own intake based on their laying cycle, and their needs can literally change from one day to the next. Offering it separately lets them take exactly what they need, when they need it.

Storing Homemade Feed to Keep It Fresh

You’ve put in the work to source and mix the perfect feed for your flock. Don't let it go to waste. Learning how to properly store your homemade chicken feed is just as critical as the recipe itself. If it gets damp, moldy, or raided by pests, all that effort goes straight into the compost pile.

The two biggest enemies of fresh feed are moisture and rodents. My go-to storage solution has always been galvanized metal cans with tight-fitting lids. They’re practically fortresses against mice and rats, and that tight seal keeps humid air from spoiling the grain. Don’t even think about using standard plastic bins—a determined mouse can chew through a regular tote in a single night.

Ideal Conditions for Feed Longevity

Where you store your feed matters just as much as what you store it in. You need a spot that is consistently cool, dark, and dry. A garage, a well-ventilated shed, or a dedicated feed room inside your barn are all great choices.

Sunlight will degrade the fat-soluble vitamins, and heat makes the natural oils in the grain go rancid much faster. A good storage setup is a core part of a functional homestead, something we cover in our guide to setting up a chicken coop for beginners.

The goal of storage is to preserve nutrients. Without the preservatives found in commercial feeds, your homemade mix has a much shorter shelf life. I recommend mixing only enough feed to last your flock for 2–4 weeks. This ensures they’re always getting the freshest, most nutritious meal possible.

Making smaller, more frequent batches might feel like extra work, but it’s the best way to prevent waste and guarantee peak freshness.

How to Spot Spoiled Feed

Trust your senses. They're your best defense against feeding your flock something harmful. Before every feeding, do a quick check. Fresh feed should have a pleasant, earthy, grain-like smell.

You'll know your mix has gone bad if you notice any of these signs:

• A musty, moldy, or sour smell: This is the most obvious red flag. If it smells off, it is off.

• Visible mold: Look for any white, green, or black fuzzy spots.

• Clumps: If the feed is sticking together, it means moisture has found a way in.

• Insect activity: Weevils, beetles, or other pantry pests are a clear sign of contamination.

Finally, always clean your storage containers thoroughly between batches. Dump out any remaining dust or fines, wipe the container down, and let it dry completely before refilling. It’s a simple habit that stops old, potentially contaminated feed from spoiling a brand new batch.

Common Questions About Homemade Feed

Diving into the world of homemade chicken feed is exciting, but it naturally brings up a lot of questions. Over the years, I've heard just about all of them from fellow homesteaders. Let's tackle some of the most common ones to help you start mixing with confidence.

One of the biggest questions is always about cost: Is it actually cheaper to make your own chicken feed?

The honest answer is a classic "it depends." If you're buying small, pricey bags of organic grains from a specialty health food store, you’ll almost certainly spend more than you would on a standard bag of commercial feed. No question.

But, if you can source your main ingredients—like corn and wheat—in bulk from a local farmer or a friendly feed mill, your cost per pound can drop dramatically. The real trade-off here isn't just money; it's your time. While mixing a batch of feed is quick, sourcing all the separate ingredients can take some legwork. You're swapping convenience for complete control over quality.

Handling Kitchen Scraps and Flock Transitions

Another question I get all the time is about leftovers. Can I just add kitchen scraps to the mix? It's best to think of kitchen scraps as treats or supplements, not a core part of the feed itself. Tossing them in willy-nilly can easily unbalance the carefully crafted nutrition of your main ration.

Some scraps are fantastic for your flock in moderation:

• Leafy greens and vegetable peels

• Cooked rice or pasta

• Fruits like berries and melon

However, some foods are outright toxic and should never be given to chickens. This includes raw potato peels, onions, avocado, and anything moldy or rotten. A good rule of thumb is to keep treats to no more than 10% of their total daily diet. This ensures they're still eating enough of their balanced feed to stay healthy and productive.

A smooth transition is key to flock happiness. Abruptly switching from commercial pellets to a whole-grain homemade feed can upset their digestive systems and even cause a temporary drop in egg production.

Finally, let's talk about how to switch your flock to a new feed. The only way to do it right is gradually, over a period of 7-10 days.

Start by mixing your new homemade feed with their old feed at a 25/75 ratio. After a couple of days, move to a 50/50 mix, then 75/25, until they are fully on the new ration. This gives their sensitive digestive systems time to adapt. This same gradual approach is a great practice for any big change, like when you move your flock to a new area or introduce them to a mobile coop for the first time. You can learn more about this concept in our guide on how to build a chicken tractor