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Feeding Grain to Animals

     At the risk of repeating a few things mentioned elsewhere in this book, I should discuss grain feeding in more detail. In a way, I hate to broach the subject, because in doing so there is no way to avoid the subject of animal nutrition. If you think there is a decided difference of opinion among experts over human nutrition, just multiply that difference to the fourth or fifth power in the field of animal nutrition. The best way to understand the problem is to recall the last 32 dog and cat food ads you have watched in anguish on TV and tell me the best way to feed my cat and dog.

     The same selling game colors the whole animal feeding business. Not only are there many commercial feed sellers, all with certified nutritionists on their staffs proclaiming their own feed is the best, but there are hundreds of other farmers and feeders all self-proclaimed experts with theories of their own on the best feed formulas for animals. Since all farm animal feeds use the same basic ingredients, all manufacturers speak with a measure of truth. Just remember that dogs and cats and cows and pigs lived a great many centuries without benefit of any of them.

     Another way to look at feeding livestock on your homestead is to compare it with feeding babies, crude as that might sound. Some folks believe it is more convenient to buy a variety of canned baby foods at the supermarket, and believe, at the same time, that they are reasonably assured that baby is getting nutritious fruits and vegetables. But that does not mean, as commercial baby food manufacturers would like for us to believe, that mother cannot prepare her own baby food as nutritionally good or better than she can buy.

The Commercial Situation

     If grain grinders for animal feeds were as inexpensive and easy to operate as baby food grinders, there would be little reason at all for the homesteader to buy commercial feeds, except to save him the time and labor of doing the work himself. Despite innuendos from feed salesmen to the contrary, farmers used to (and some still do) grind their own grains, add their own supplements and minerals, even vitamins if necessary, with quite satisfactory results.

     Yet the first time you go to a feed store to try to buy feed or to get some advice on feeding your animal, most often the man in charge will seem to believe (I'm convinced some really do believe it) that an almost mystical health value attaches itself to the sack of feed simply because it comes from a commercial feed company, or because it has been run through a commercial grinder; a mystical value that homegrown whole grains and homegrown processed feeds lack. It is as if the animal nutritionists who work for the commercial feed mills hold secrets of healthful food that the rest of us are not privy to.

     Within the framework of modern confinement feeding of farm animals, that mystic faith has some justification. If hogs live their entire lives on cement and are fed through augers one diet of ground hog feed, then that feed better contain every known mineral, vitamin, protein, and carbohydrate that the hog needs, because the poor thing isn't going to get anything else to eat! And the fact that confinement-fed animals still do suffer disorders and disease directly related to nutritional imbalances proves that the scientists haven't yet solved all the mysteries involved.

The Homestead Difference

     But more important for the homesteader, his hog lives an entirely different kind of life. The homestead hog may have the freedom to roam a field or large lot where by rooting in fertile soil and eating a variety of weeds, legumes, and grasses, the animal balances its own nutritional needs quite well. If the homestead hog is confined to a smaller lot, as mine is, it still receives a wide variety of feed including our table scraps, food which contains nearly all the nutrition my family seems to need, so why not Mr. Hog? He also gets a fistful of fresh alfalfa or alfalfa hay, the most complete natural food the farm produces, according to Ohio State agronomists. Some days I feed him a little soybean meal or meat scrap meal, which I have on hand mainly for organic fertilizer. In addition to corn and wheat and all kinds of garden residues, the hog gets an occasional acorn or hickory nut, an apple or a melon rind, and he can always root in his lot for worms, grubs, and roots. Does this lucky animal need the magic potions from Purina, Wayne, Agway, etc.? Hardly.

Why Grind Feed?

     Grains are ground for animals primarily to put the feed in a form the animals can chew and digest faster; the same reason you grind up baby foods. If the animal eats faster in a given period of time, he will eat more and gain weight faster, and that's the name of the commercial game. But it need not apply to the homestead situation except where the animal can't eat the whole grain. Small chicks have to have their corn at least cracked before they can swallow it; the whole kernel is too large. Young pigs may get sore mouths biting hard corn off the cob and chewing it up. Lambs and colts—and even adults of some of any species—may refuse to eat oats because of the tastelessness of the oat hull, until the grain is rolled or ground.

     On the other hand, a hen will just as readily consume whole grains as ground ones, and the grit in her crop will do the grinding and digesting. The only difference is she will not eat as much (her crop will hold more ground feed than it will hold whole grains and therefore more total food nutrients). Since in a homestead situation hens are more often overfed than underfed anyway, the homesteader can feed mostly whole grains with satisfactory results. My own 12 laying hens receive only a pint of ground feed every other day when they are penned up; when they are allowed to roam outside in summer, they will hardly eat commercial feed in favor of our own whole grains, greens, and what they glean from the woods and field.

     I'm more inclined to use commercial feeds for baby animals, especially right after they are weaned. At that age, intake of vitamin A and iron is critical, and not necessarily available in sufficient quantity because of the small amount of rough homestead foods they eat at that time. Commercial "creep" feeds contain proper amounts of vitamin A and iron, and usually extra molasses or another tasty ingredient to lure the young, newly weaned animal to solid foods. But if I had my own grinder, I would certainly make my own creep feed, and if I thought my home-raised feeds lacked enough vitamins and minerals, I could buy them separately and mix them in. When I was a boy, we put a trough full of loam from the woods (soil that had not been farmed and therefore not depleted of natural fertility) in the pen with baby pigs. They rooted in that dirt and got their iron from it. Or so we thought, anyway. At least we seldom had anemic pigs. Commercial growers today give the pigs iron shots as a matter of course, although some veterinarians tell me that on farms operated according in the organic, balanced-fertility program espoused by "natural" farmers, iron shots can eventually be discontinued because the pigs get enough through sows' milk and foraging on their own from healthy soils.

     Animals need carbohydrates, proteins, fiber, vitamins, minerals: everything you need. They will eat all the grains mentioned in this book, all legumes and grasses and most weeds, especially young, succulent weeds. Some wild plants contain medicinal ingredients the animals instinctively know more about than we do, and such animals will generally be healthier in a slightly weedy pasture than in one where only one type of grass or two are allowed to grow. Variety is the key to feeding animals in the natural environment of the homestead. If your livestock has access to many kinds of food, you can rest assured they get a pretty balanced diet.

     The only exception is if you live where soils are deficient in certain essential trace elements, like zinc or selenium. Where organic matter is high in the soil, trace element deficiency is extremely rare, but under intensive farming, zinc, boron, selenium, and other trace elements may be lacking. It has become necessary in some parts of the Cornbelt to add selenium to feeds where once there was no such necessity. Some soils of the northern plains naturally contain too much selenium, too. But the likelihood of such deficiencies or surpluses being critical in your homestead situation is extremely unlikely. Check with your local nutritionists and agricultural advisers if you are in doubt.

Feedstuffs

     Though grains will be the basic animal feed on your homestead, alfalfa, and to a lesser degree, other clover legumes, are the "best" all-around feed you can provide, not only grazing animals like cows, sheep, goats, and horses, but also hogs and chickens. Alfalfa experts point out that this legume comes close to being a complete animal feed. It contains high amounts of vitamins and protein and carbohydrates and even minerals.

     Cows and sheep, don't forget, will sometimes bloat if they have free access to unlimited quantities of fresh, lush alfalfa or clover, or green corn or even kernels of mature corn. A cow, sheep, or horse, unlike a hog or chicken, has no sense about eating, and will keep on stuffing itself on food it really likes. So cows bloat on fresh clover and horses founder on too much grain. Clover or alfalfa for pasturing ought to contain grass to help control bloat. Turn the animals on it gradually, after filling them with hay first. And never turn them on a pure lush stand of clover. Birdsfoot trefoil is an exception; it is the one clover that animals won't bloat on, say the exeperts.

     Corn is the principal grain in animal feeds, though barley, grain sorghum, even wheat can be substituted for it in larger quantities. Corn provides more energy per pound than the other grains, but is low in protein. In ground feeds, a little oats may be added to the corn, along with alfalfa meal, soybean meal, meat scrap meal, linseed meal, or cottonseed meal for protein, and bone meal (or other phosphate compound) for calcium and phosphorus. Trace mineral salt is added to commercial feeds, which is the main reason I continue to feed just a bit of them whether I really need to or not. You can also provide minerals and salts for your animals with blocks that the animals lick, available from feed stores.

     Soybean meal is the principle protein supplement, though it doesn't contain the range of proteins some of the other meals enjoy. All can be purchased separately at feed stores if you wish to make your own feed mixture. Incidentally, commercial feeders stress protein—particularly soybean meal for hogs—because it speeds up the fattening process considerably. But you don't have to feed out a hog in four-and-a-half months on a homestead. If your hogs don't reach 200 pounds until they are six months old, what's the difference to you? That won't mean losing money as it would mean to the big commercial grower. It could mean saving money for you, but not using as much expensive protein supplement. Connoisseurs of pork, especially of smoked hams, maintain that hogs fattened more slowly produce better tasting meat anyway.

     The next most important thing to remember (if not the first thing) when feeding grains, is that nutritional value varies considerably in any grain, depending on the soil in which it was raised, the weather, the variety, and the way it was handled and processed. This fact is what makes advising people on animal nutrition so difficult. Corn, for example, is not a standard, packaged item off an assembly line. Some corn contains more protein than other corn, even within the same variety. In recent tests, normal hybrid corns sometimes contained more protein than special high protein varieties, the difference being the soil, culture, and weather conditions. In processing, almost everyone today will admit that heat-dried corn is often less nutritious than naturally dried corn. And some feeders believe that old, open-pollinated corns are pound for pound more nutritious than the highly specialized hybrids of today. All of which means that the identical feed formula on two different farms might have a different nutritional value.

     With that in mind, here are a few standard feed formulas for different animals.

Chickens

     A ton of mash for laying hens can be made from 1,250 pounds of ground corn, 200 pounds of wheat, 100 pounds of alfalfa meal; 240 pounds of soybean meal; 100 pounds of meat scraps; 50 pounds of bone meal, 40 pounds of ground oyster shell, 10 pounds of salt, plus vitamins, if you think necessary. In my opinion, this is a better feed than if all the protein supplements were provided by one source, say soybean meal. With the variety you get a broader range of proteins, which to my way of thinking not only means a healthier animal, but more protein-rich eggs and meat, and a manure nitrogen capable of producing plants with a broader range of proteins in them. But you can make an adequate feed with just one of the protein sources mentioned, or two. If two, choose when possible one plant source (for example, soybean meal) and one animal source (for example, meat scraps).

     For broilers a similar mix is fine. Usually in fattening poultry of any kind an all-mash diet will do a quicker job, as already noted. Not necessarily better, but faster. I feed my layers and broilers the same feed: whole corn, whole wheat, whole sweet sorghum grain, whole grain sorghum grains, some whole soybeans (the hens won't eat many), some broomcorn seeds (hens don't relish them either), millet, and buckwheat, if occasionally available; alfalfa hay, some grass hay: seeds, stalks and all; weeds gone to seed, sourgrass (high in vitamin C) when the hens are penned up and I think to pull some; eggshells, oyster shells, a little bone meal sometimes, table scraps, garden wastes of all kinds, and a little commercial mash as already mentioned. They can forage outside about half the days of the year from spring to fall. I have had only one sick chicken in 12 years.

     I feed new chicks bread and milk, fresh clover when they are about a week old onward, and keep commercial pelleted feed beside them at all times, for reasons mentioned earlier. I don't get chicks until June, and can let them run on the lawn and chase bugs and worms as soon as they are a week old.

Rabbits

     Rabbits can be raised on very little grain, although rabbits being fattened for meat will produce a better quality carcass if at least half the ration is grain. Commercial rations in pelleted form contain alfalfa and other roughages, oats, wheat middlings, corn, or barley. I feed very little commercial feed and only to weaned, young animals to be butchered. Even they (eight of them at this writing) live mainly on top quality alfalfa hay, which they love, and a little whole wheat and corn. The corn is a little too hard for them to manage well and they drop some of it through the cage. Hard flint corns should not be fed to rabbits at all unless ground. They're too hard. I have fed oats, soybeans, millet and sorghum seeds to rabbits with good luck too, giving it to them stem and all. The rabbits nibble the grains out of the hulls themselves and like to chew on the straw. With tough fibrous material like that to chew on, rabbits do much less gnawing on their nest boxes, I have observed.

Cows

     A dairy cow's grain ration can be very simple if her hay is high quality alfalfa. (In fact in some tests, cows fed a very high quality alfalfa hay did fine without any grain at all!) To every 1,000 pounds of ground corn and cob, add 10 pounds of bone meal and 10 pounds of salt. Instead of all corn, you can mix 700 pounds of it with 280 pounds of ground or rolled oats and add 200 pounds of soybean meal to get the necessary protein in the mix. A more nutritional concentrate for calves, if not cows, would be a formula of 21 percent corn and cob, 20 percent oats, 15 percent wheat bran, 11 percent soybean meal, 10 percent linseed meal, 5 percent alfalfa meal, 10 percent dried whey, 5 percent molasses (calves like candy just like kids do), 2 percent bone meal, and 1 percent salt. To that mix a commercial dairyman might add 2,500 I.U. of vitamin A and 300 I.U. of vitamin D. If you want calves as healthy as your children, and you think your children need vitamins, then you will probably want to give vitamins to your animals too.

     After a calf is six months old, it should be able to thrive on a ration of good pasture or hay with very little grain. If the pasture or hay is not so good, give three pounds of grain daily. Two months before the heifer calves, start increasing grain ration up to eight pounds per day at calving.

     Milking cows should be fed grain (along with roughage) according to how much milk they give. A cow producing 30 pounds of milk a day needs about 10 pounds of grain; if 40 pounds of milk, 15 pounds of grain; 60 pounds of milk, 25 pounds of grain; 80 pounds of milk, 35 pounds of grain. This is NOT a hard and fast rule.

     Beef animals can be fed grain much like dairy animals, only more so. However, a beef steer or heifer for fattening can run on good pasture for eight to 10 months, with only a little grain fed on the side, increasing the grain in the last month (at 900 to 1,100 pounds weight or so) to give the meat a solid, higher quality. Beef animals have been finished almost entirely on grass and still dress out good meat, even when our weird grading system won't give it a Choice rating because grass feeding makes the fat yellow. If anything, yellow fat means the meat is higher in carotene and therefore more nutritional.

     Years ago, a good neighbor farmer told me he finished out a carload of beef on hay and corn in shocks—feeding the shocks, ears, stalks, husks, and all—and he received an excellent market price for the animals. Again, the lesson is that there are no hard and fast rules.

Hogs

     A standard formula for a ton of hog feed is 1,500 pounds of ground shelled corn (you don't grind the cob in for hog feed, but do for cow feed) and 500 pounds of protein supplement, in the form of mostly soybean meal plus a few meat scraps and some alfalfa meal. Another mixture, especially for younger pigs, would be 1,200 pounds of corn and 50 pounds of oats and 400 pounds of soybean meal; or 1,700 pounds of corn and 300 pounds of barley, either mix with trace minerals added if necessary. A little bone meal or other source of calcium and phosphorus is good for pigs too.

     To feed a hog to 200-220 pounds butchering weight takes about 10 bushels of corn or its equivalent in other grains plus the supplement. I feed my fattening hog about one-third ground feed like that described above, and the other two-thirds whole corn, wheat, and other homegrown feeds as previously described.

Sheep

     On good pasture, sheep require very little if any grain at all. Feed ewes a little oats daily for a week before breeding them. During the last third of her pregnancy a ewe can be given about ½ pound of corn or oats per day, starting at about ¼ pound and working up to a pound by lambing time. February and March lambs can be fed a mixture of 60 percent cracked shelled corn, 20 percent bran, and 20 percent soybean or linseed meal. At about 50 pounds of weight the lamb should receive a ration of about 90 percent corn and 10 percent supplement.

     Lambs born in April and May (as I would advise all homesteaders to arrange) do not need early grain feeding. The lamb will get all the feed it needs from good pasture and milk.

Goats

     Goats can be fed similarly to sheep, except for lactating does, whose needs more closely resemble those of a cow. The amount of homegrown grains you can use vs. commercial feeds follows the same guidelines as I have given for other animals with a decided bias in favor of the homegrown whole grains. In this regard, the Gopher Goat Gossip, a newsletter of the Minnesota Dairy Goat Association supports my experience. The newsletter reported last year a feed formula used successfully on a Minnesota goat farm as follows: 16 pounds of whole shelled corn, 16 pounds of whole oats, eight pounds of whole wheat, four pounds of soybean meal, and three pounds of molasses. Feed ½ pound daily to adult goats plus ½ pound for every pound of milk the goat is producing. Feed kids ¼ to ½ pound daily. In summer, with decent pasture, cut the ration by half. If you have good hay in winter, you can cut the ration accordingly.

     Speaking of good hay, it is conceivably possible (though not very probable) that you could feed nonlactating goats (or other farm animals) too much high quality alfalfa. Alfalfa—good alfalfa—has a high calcium content. Male animals and dry females may not be able to handle all that calcium if fed a diet of too much alfalfa for a long period of time. Use common sense, and don't overfeed.

Horses

     The usual danger especially in the case of teenagers and their pet horses, is feeding too much grain rather than too little. This can also happen and usually does, with pet cows, sheep, rabbits, and chickens. A saddle horse will do fine on good pasture with a little oats on the side. In winter, feed daily six pounds of oats, one pound of corn, ½ pound of linseed meal, and hay. Rolled oats, rolled barley, and wheat bran are other good horse feeds.

     A mare with a colt needs six to eight pounds of grain daily—eight parts oats, one part corn, one part wheat bran—and mixed grass-clover hay. I quote from the sixth edition of the Midwest Farm Handbook (published by Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, 1964): "When horses are fed a variety of feeds, including a legume hay, the mineral content of the ration is usually adequate."

     That is usually true for most animal feeds in organic homestead situations, and it should relieve you of the fear that you aren't feeding your animals correctly if you aren't spending a lot of money on commercial feeds.

Turkeys

     I think I'll continue to advise homesteaders against turkeys even though some reviewers of an earlier book considered me negative in attitude for doing so. Turkeys are touchy to raise indoors and risky to raise outdoors. But if you want to try it, you'll get a lot of laughs out of this clown of the poultry family, if it stays healthy. Feed turkeys the way you would chickens, more grain if destined for Thanksgiving dinner than if kept for breeding. Turkeys are tremendous foragers if allowed to run loose, and that is part of the problem. They voraciously eat insects that harm your garden, but they like vegetables equally as well.

Geese and Ducks

     As long as they have access to green plants and some water, geese and ducks will get through a summer without any grain at all, but a little extra shelled corn won't hurt them either. When fattening the birds for market or building them up for a season of egg laying, feed more grain, as you would chickens. Goslings and ducklings can be fed chick feed to start them off in spring. Then after a summer of foraging, they'll need shelled corn in late fall and into winter. In January or February, in anticipation of the coming egg-laying season (or to fatten for eating if you did not do so in the fall) start them on a mixture of ground corn, ground oats, and ground alfalfa hay with soybean meal added to make a 16 to 20 percent ration. Follow formulas for hens or broilers.

Cats and Dogs

     Both these animals are by nature carnivorous, and don't ordinarily eat plain grains. I have noticed our cats occasionally eat a bit of chicken mash, I think because they see the chickens eating it and believe they are missing out on something. Certainly, cats and dogs could derive nearly all their nutritional needs from a vegetarian-type diet, if balanced carefully. They like cooked grains—corn pone, mush, oatmeal, bread—but whether you want to spend the time cooking for them is another question.

     The traditional farm feeding of cats and dogs was efficient and nutritionally complete. At milking time, the pets got a pan of milk fresh from the cow, daily. When hogs, beef, chickens, and rabbits or whatever were butchered, they got parts of the carcass the farmer didn't want. They caught rats, mice, and other rodents to the farmer's great benefit. And there were always table scraps to paw through. When I was a kid, buying commercial feeds was unheard of on our farm, and we always seemed to have about a dozen cats and at least one dog around all the time.

     If you live the traditional farm way, you won't have to worry about feeding your cats and dogs. But if you don't raise your own milk and meat, you will either have to cook your pets high-protein foods and grains or buy pet food to supplement table scraps and the occasional rodent the pets may catch.

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