Homemade Chicken Scratch from scratch

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I have several friends that have taken the plunge into backyard chickens. Many are learning the hard lesson of…oh no, not another roo! This is part of owning chickens in the suburbs. Another part is that most backyard chicken keepers cannot allow their chickens to free range due to laws and codes but mostly for the safety of their flock…EVERYTHING loves to eat chicken!

So, this brings up the issue of what to feed your backyard flock. Many will head to their local Tractor Supply, Rural King, or local Mom and Pop Feed and Seed. You can purchase feed, scratch, and all the extras for your flock, but as you become more experienced as a chicken mama or papa, you become very aware of each member of your flock.

This may not seem possible on big farms and or homesteads with larger flocks, but to the backyard chicken keeper, you know what you know. We do not have other livestock to manage so we often put our full attention into our girls just like our pet dogs, cats, and yes, bunnies. Just like I work hard not to allow my dogs to become overweight, I work at keeping my girls’ weights in the correct place. Growing a garden is a wonderful way to keep giving your girls a good foundation of nutrition.

So is sourcing your feed and scratch needs. I have been blessed to find a local source from my local Mom and Pop Feed and Seed store, Marietta Feed and Seed, for my girls pelleted layer feed (22% protein). However, I have not found the same in scratch that I give my girls. I live in Kennesaw, Georgia growing zone 7b, and it gets awful hot and humid in the summers. I do not like feeding my girls corn in these months as corn heats their bodies up as they digest it. I do like offering them well sourced corn in fall and winter to help keep them warm on cold nights.

Back to my point. It has been difficult to find quality scratch to give my girls without corn this spring, so I started chatting with my local Azure Haul friends that keep chickens on a much larger scale than I, as I noticed they were buying 50lbs. bags of grains. What is Azure Standard you ask? “Azure is a different kind of company born of a different mindset and held to a different standard. You know us as a natural health food distributor bringing bulk and specialty health foods to communities across the nation.”

I have purchased a few of the organic scratches that Azure offers, but the price has gone up a good bit as of late and the amounts in the bag have decreased. As I noticed these same folks buy these same bags of grains each month, I decided to ask. They told me that they make their own scratch, and some make their own feed. So, I did what everybody does…I went home and googled scratch recipes.

Once I had a plan, I hopped on over to AzureStandard.com and started adding bags of grains to my next order. I ended up spending about the same amount of money, but once I mixed up my scratch, I had doubled the amount of scratch from buying the premixed scratch. I picked up some black oiled sunflower seeds and Party Flock from my local Tractor Supply with my fresh organic grains hot off the Azure truck. Came home, enlisted my husband’s help (those bags are heavy), and we set to mix our first batch of Chicken Scratch. Check out our video showing what we used.

If you are interested in Azure Standard, I have several videos on them and my hauls to give you a better idea why I like them so much.