As a matter of interest how many producers on here make your own feed?

I'm guessing not a lot as there is no tag for it?

 

Thanks

How do you define 'Make your own'? My grandfather had a roller crusher, a mill, and a mixer, and buy in straights to blend and bag up every week. More recently I've used Mill Feed Anglia to do something similar on site, blown into a bulker trailer, but some of these TMR feeder wagons are doing just that job every day!

In some ways you could say that by growing grass we are making our own feed!!

Do grain shed floor sweepings count as making your own? Our hens thrive on them, plus a few layers pellets. Of course we absolutely follow DEFRAs instructions, and would never even consider feeding vegetable peelings from the kitchen to chickens, or any elderly cooked vegetables from the fridge either.

I mean approach the job of producing your own feed for your chickens thus controlling the feed quality and cost "in house" with either hammer/roller mill and mixers? I have just joined this forum and it struck me that there are a lot of posts about husbandry issue's but not a lot about the food your livestock eat, surely that's the number one input?

Seems to be very few home mixing.

www.calamill.com

Richard Caley

Mill Man, Are we to assume from your posts that you are selling these Italian(?) mill/mixers and are not posting "as a matter of interest" as you first posted?  

Old macdonald, I looked on this forum to see if I could get a feeling of how many farmers home mix, that is why I asked the question without declaring who I was, although I did think my handle might of given a clue! Yes I sell caravaggi mill mixers but yes I am a farmer also! The reason I asked was because my traditional client base is pigs but I have seen an explosion in sales to egg producers (mainly free range) and I wanted to get a feeling of how many forum members homemix. As not many responded I guess that either it's not a very active forum or nobody is bothered or no body mixes feed at home. If my original question offended you in some way then hey, I can't ask you a question, no problem. If anyone else reading this would like to contribute and post if you buy compound or homemix I would be interested to here some percentages? Thanks Richard

Mill Man, I was not offended, just wanted to know. I prefer people to come straight out with things rather than leave clues as to what might or might not be their motive for posting.

As it is, I feel I can now "speak" frankly with you. As you can see from the thread, I presently live in Portugal. I have previously farmed in the UK (as well as elsewhere) but latterly in the UK had free range hens. My take on home mixing has always been that it is easy for ruminants, quite easy for mono-gastrics like pigs, but difficult to get everything right for poultry. Am I right or wrong? I am interested in your response even if I am not likely to be a customer. I will learn from your reply, and so may some others - who might be potential customers.

So far as activity on the forum is concerned, I think you will find that there are few respondents on the Poultry Platform section, it is after all the English Farmers' Weekly, and that has always been recognised as the magazine for the big boys, especially those in the southern half of England.

There is a remote possibility too that I might have some useful information for you. Where I live is a peasant based economy (and I am proud to be one too) so not much money, but there is a need for small scale machinery and equipment at a very low price. If you can channel equipment through to Portugal you might be able to find it advantageous. No promises, but it is a possibility. There is virtually no used equipment market in Portugal. Small scale equipment is not manufactured here either. Holdings are very small, with many arable areas being in between olive trees, so minimum sized equipment is essential. No idea at all how you could put this to use, just as I said, a remote possibility.

Old Macdonald

I have two customers who have mixed for free range since the early nineties but in the last year or two I now have some 15 clients making food for free range egg production. As with all food production; I think if you start with good quality base ingredients it is not difficult, this is what my customers tell me also, in fact because the wheat and barley (which most of my customers use as a base) is ground quite course it would seem that it is easy for poultry producers.

I'm not searching for customers, more like customer research.

 

MM 

Try the british farm forum for info,but I think one of your family members is already there.

MM, Thanks for the explanation. I just realised shortly before coming on here that I looked at your website over Christmas when I was looking for corn shellers that were produced in Europe, and was having another look at the sites I visited. That probably means you are easy to find for anyone doing a search which should be heartening. Best of luck with your endeavours.

my brother uses a contractor to home mill for his 9,000 laying hens. he used to buy it in, but an unscrupulous  mixer sold him a load of rubbish which cost a fortune in lost eggs.

now he knows what is in it.

Glasshouse, there are many reputable compound mills who do a good job, there are also compounders who don't! But they usually have a least cost formulation program which juggles ingredients to meet the spec/price (as home mixers may do) the problem comes when the quality of the ingredients get compromised for either financial or specification reasons, there is a saying that Leather boots and saw dust is a balanced ration.......but would your livestock thrive on it?

 My personal view is that you are better off being in control of your number 1 input, control the mixing yourself wether you use a travelling mill, mobile mill or static! There really is no mystery to it!

 

MM

We buy in all of our feed. We would have considered milling our own but its not possible at the moment for us. The poultry are organic & the arable side of the farm isn't.

We mix all our own feed for 500 cattle from calves to finishers with an artsway mixer which has been really good. Had an alvan blanch before that. Any advantages of your machine over a artsway millman?

We mix all our own feed for 500 cattle from calves to finishers with an artsway mixer which has been really good. Had an alvan blanch before that. Any advantages of your machine over a artsway millman?

Dougalhtid, I always say that you need to home mix however you do it but a Caravaggi is a large step forward from the arts way. Depends how far you want to go with your mill but suffice to say that we have clients putting 60/70 tonnes per day in to the feed bin, one client grinds fine pig meal with a big tractor, filing his eight tonne machine in 20/25 minutes, filling a 33' bin, one batch per hour. We sell machines of all sizes to suit all budgets, the big one is a cracking machine but it's more money than a arts. The one thing about the Caravaggi is that it is simple to maintain, unt recently we had a client milling 200 tonnes per week with a 14 year old 4 tonne machine. Have a look on the web www.calamill.com MM

They look good machines. Can you have molasses tank fitted?

I theory yes, we do have a couple of clients that use blended molasses but it's not easy, especially in winter, it tends to gum them up. MM

The las tfew years we have been using one called dust buster which is alot thinner. I think it has more oil in it. Expensive though compared to syrup!

 

Personally I think more people prefer 'mixing' technique which is quite easy and simple comparing to others.