Hey, there. This is Ashley at Headrick Homestead and today we’re going to be talking about where to get your chicken feed and how to find a good spot.
First, the most important thing that you have to decide before you find the place that you want to get your feed, is to decide what’s important to you.
Do you value non-GMO? Do you want certified organic? Does that not matter to you at all? Do you prefer convenience of a big box store, or do you like to buy local?
So having those key things are really important before you get started with this process.
For me, I am very adamant that I want Non-GMO feed, but I don’t need it to be certified organic, so that helped me determine where to buy from.
Where Can you Buy Chicken Feed (Timestamp, 0:42)
So what are some options for buying feed? Number one, you have the big box stores. Let’s say Tractor Supply Co or here in the Midwest we have Mills Fleet Farm.
These big box stores are going to carry big brand names like Purina or Tractor Supply Co’s DuMor.
Those big brands do have GMO ingredients, although they have branched recently into offering certified organic feeds.
Buying feed at big box stores might be convenient, however, you’re also going to be spending a lot more money. They tend to be twice as expensive as local feed mills.
Maybe that’s okay if you just have a few chickens, but if you’re going to be buying livestock feed in bulk for chickens and turkeys and your broilers and your goats and your cow and your pig, I don’t know lots of different things then Tractor Supply Co. can get pretty expensive pretty quickly.
Other Options to Buy Chicken Feed Besides Big Box Stores (Timestamp, 1:33)
When we first moved here to the country from the suburbs, back when I was a teenager, I started buying my feed at the big box store because it was so convenient and we had no clue where else to go. We’re like, hey, they have chicken feed, let’s buy it.
But pretty soon after that, I was like, okay, I want the non-GMO. And at the time, organic was not in the big box stores and I wasn’t too excited about paying those prices, so that’s when I started to look elsewhere.
So where else did I look?
Well, a really great option that’s a step down from the big box stores in size is your local feed store. We actually have one of these about three miles from us down the road.
They tend to carry a lot more regional brands, small brands and maybe some feed from local mills in the area, and they tend to be a little bit cheaper.
They have some great high quality options.
And this is a route that I took for many years after saying no to the big box stores.
I went down to my local feed store and shopped there.
However, my local feed store didn’t carry a non-GMO option.
They only had certified organic, which means I was paying a lot for that organic certification.
Their prices were still really, really high. And that caused me to look elsewhere again.
So where did I go?
From there I went straight to a local mill in a rural part of the state.
Now I live about 30 minutes from downtown Minneapolis. We live in a semi-rural area just on the border of suburbs, and I decided to drive up near Saint Cloud, Minnesota, which is a much more agricultural area.
There’s a feed mill up in that area that mills non-GMO feed.
They aren’t certified organic. They don’t have any interest in being because that’s so much more expensive for them and for the farmers.
And then they would be passing that cost on to us.
However, they know the farmers that are growing their feed, and I trust them to produce this quality non-GMO feed.
When Buying Non-GMO Chicken Feed, Ask your Source These Questions First (Timestamp, 3:38)
But that is one caveat, if you are buying non-GMO and that is very important to you, make sure to talk to the mill owners and see what systems they have in place to ensure you’re getting a quality and actually non-GMO product.
Specifically, ask about their corn and their soy and how they know that those are non genetically modified.
Save Money (Timestamp, 3:59)
Making this jump and choosing to shop directly from the mill has saved me a lot of money.
To put things in perspective, if I were still buying organic chicken feed from the big box store, I’d be paying roughly $1 a pound.
Where I shop, I get even better quality product for $0.50 a pound.
Yes I have to drive a lot further. It’s about an hour from me, but I just take my dad’s pickup for the day, drive up there, drive back, and it takes a couple hours.
I load up on 4-6 months worth of feed at once so it’s really not that bad.
How to Find a Local Feed Mill (Timestamp, 4:36)
Now, maybe you’re like, Ashley, this sounds great, but I’m like you. I just moved to the country and I’m still shopping at the big box store.
How do I go about finding a mill like this?
Google Search for Feed Mills
Well, number one, you can try googling it. Unfortunately, a lot of small mills in rural areas don’t really have good websites, so I would start there, see if it works.
Check out Farm Direct Facebook Groups in your Area
If not, I would check out some Facebook groups.
Here in Minnesota, we have some pretty great Farm Direct Facebook groups.
See if you can get in one of those for your state and put a question out there ‘Hey, where are you getting your non-GMO feed?’
Contact your Local Farming Associations
If Facebook groups fail you, you can also see about if you have a sustainable farming association or Regenerative farming association, a homesteading group, something locally in your area that may have some information for you about where to get feed like this.
You’re going to have to do a little bit more digging up front than just driving down to Tractor Supply Co., but in the end, you’re going to get a higher quality product locally produced for much cheaper.
If you’re in Minnesota like I am, I highly recommend Luxembourg Feed.
That’s where I get my feed up near Saint Cloud, and I have been buying from them for many years and have been super, super happy.
If you’re not in Minnesota, I hope you can find a great source close to you. let me know in the comments if you do, so that I can pass that information on to anybody else who comes here and is wondering where to buy quality feed.
All right, until next time.
