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I don't know about you guys, but for us the cost of animal feed is astronomical. When we have a litter of piglets approaching butcher time, we're going through 5-6 pounds of pig feed, per pig, per DAY. That looks like this;
15 pigs x 5 pounds is 75 pounds per day.
Over the course of one month that's at least 2250 pounds.
At 55 pounds per bag we're looking at 41 bags of hog feed.
Assuming the price per bag doesn't get any higher, that's at least 574 dollars per MONTH.
That's more than I spend on food for my family, and that's not taking into account the cost for the chicken, duck, goat, cat, dog and rabbit food.
So I've come up with a way to move forward by looking backwards.
When our ancestors raised livestock, they couldn't just drive down to the feed mill and load up on pellets, and even if they could have, they wouldn't have wanted to. The farmers who came before us understood which nutrient dense foods to grow to keep their animals strong and healthy, not just through the winter but all year long. These foods included pumpkin, squash, cabbage, beets, turnips and carrots, all of which were simple to store and easy to produce.
What we know today is that although pellet feed is more convenient and less work, it's manufactured from inexpensive and nutritionally lacking crops, primarily corn and soybeans and their byproducts. While these foods will certainly keep your animals alive, they won't thrive the same as they would on the foods they were meant to eat, in much the same way humans won't thrive the same on Kraft Dinner as they would on fresh meats and vegetables.
This past year we experimented with fodder beets and pumpkins, and the results weren't just encouraging, they were exhilarating! We grew Mammoth Red - Mangel Beets from The Cottage Gardener. These beets were lauded as being draught tolerant and able to grow up to 2' long and 20 pounds, and they couldn't have been more right. Once the seeds were in the ground I literally put no work into them and I was rewarded with the biggest beets I've ever seen. The seed seller also claims that these beets are great for storage but I can't attest to that as they definitely didn't last that long. My pigs couldn't get enough of them, so we ran out long before they made it to storage. So the math for our mangel beets looks like this;
150 seeds for $3.50, at a low estimate of 80% germination, gives us 120 plants.
120 plants at a VERY low estimate of 5lbs/beet gives us 600 pounds of beets.
This weight is roughly equivalent to 11 bags of food.
So the cost of the seeds divided by the number of bags works out to approximately 39 cents per bag.
This is a savings of THIRTEEN DOLLARS AND SIXTY ONE CENTS!!!!!
Which works out to $12.30 per month instead of $574.
I couldn't believe it either so I did the math 17 times. This is an unbelievable savings! The next question was, is this savings scalable? Could I repeat these results on a much larger scale? The short answer is absolutely. And the plus? The more seeds you buy, the less they cost, the cheaper your produce ends up being!
My math on the pumpkins was comparable, so I won't drag you through it, but what this breaks down to is;
We can drastically reduce our feed costs with a little elbow grease.
We can provide a higher quality of food for our livestock.
We can reduce our dependence on others and increase our self reliance.
Do you grow your own animal fodder? If so, what do you grow? Feel free to leave your suggestions, questions and comments below! I look forward to hearing from you.