The chicken project introduced me full-faced to a world I had known only with peripheral vision. Never had I ventured into a feed mill. In fact, I didn't know that the weathered buildings standing next to large metal storage tanks, usually on country roads or outside of city limits, or within city limits after suburbia encroached, were feed mills. But I have learned that feeding chickens is big business and not so simple as my grandmother on Yellow Bayou made it seem. There I would throw out a scoop of corn (I suppose harvested from the rows my Uncle Babe planted next to her house) and stand back as the chickens pecked and scratched the bare dirt under the black walnut tree. No, now I have a book that tells me everything I need to know about feed and what I must do to raise chickens because, of course, I must do it perfectly.
I have read the chick-feeding section of Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens at least five times. I have worked out all sorts of formulas based on protein and energy requirements and whether or not feeding should be restricted or free-choice, so I felt pretty confident that I could go into a feed mill, tell them what I wanted, and walk out with a bag of blended food that would meet all nutritional and environmental restrictions I had placed on my feeding practices.
Not so fast.
A feed mill has a few requirements of its own. First, the things they sell are for real farmers. The packaged feeds for walk-in customers are in stacks on the floor or on shelves in the sales area, but there is a cavernous warehouse "in the back" where bulk orders placed at the cash register are relayed--sometimes by microphone, sometimes by shouting--to a group of workmen who load the orders in waiting pick-up trucks (in our case, the back of our hybrid Toyota Highlander--somehow I get the feeling that my new, shiny, eco-friendly vehicle is a mark against me).
The second thing a feed mill has is a language of its own. No matter how well prepared you think you are to talk "man-to-man" about the needs of your twenty-six chickens that will be coming in the mail, you're not. You begin to ask about the grain mix, whether or not it contains kelp or if beans other than soy are used in the feed, and you begin to notice the feed man's arms crossing in front of him, his shoulders moving away, his eyes beginning to squint. His mix has no field peas, is based on soy for protein, and kelp will have to be supplemented if you want high omega-3 eggs. He answers your questions, assures you he has no medications other than vitamins and probiotics, then tells you what the farmers "around here" use. That is the cue that tells you what you will buy, no matter how many books you have read, if you plan to do business here.
Yesterday Harvey and I went to a feed mill to buy some of the best feed we could find in our area. It's not organic, and it is based on soy--two requirements that I have had to compromise on. The starter feed I have used in the past is shipped from an organic feed mill in Virginia that uses field peas as its protein base, but a dollar a pound, the cost is just prohibitive.
I'm going to continue trying to reach my goal of finding affordable, organic, soy-free chicken feed, even if I have to make it myself. I did notice that the feed store sells feed grinders.
