Feeding, fattening and economics

 Fattening stock for meat always requires special care to the feeding. You cannot simply throw a few handfuls of pellets to your piglets and expect to get good, or cheap, pork. Frankly the cost of shop bought fattening mixes would give you anything but cheap pork! We like our livestock to free range wherever possible but when fattening for meat we must also supply a lot of extra food.

In the case of our meat chickens we have been experimenting for several years with various mixes at various costs. For a while I was able to get some high-protein mix to mix in with millrun and cracked corn. It fattened the birds admirably when it was available, and there is the problem- because we could not always get it.
So this year we have been making this mix of:

2 parts millrun,
2 parts cracked corn,
1 part whole soy meal,
1 large handful of shell grit
1 big glug of vegetable oil.

Mix it all together and the chooks love it! Unfortunately it is still an added cost to the feed bill that we would rather do without. So I have determined that timing is the issue here.

For about one third of the year we have more milk than we can easily use. At the end of winter to mid summer the potato growers are processing their crop and I can get free discard potatoes by the tonne.
Milk and boiled potatoes is an old fattening recipe for both pigs and fowl! Boil a huge pot of potatoes overnight, enough for both feeding times the next day. In the morning add your leftover milk, buttermilk or whey to the cooled potatoes. Give it a bit of a stir-come-mush-up, dont be too fiddly about it and serve. Stand back as in my experience the livestock will take a flying tackle into the feed trough for this meal!
If I could I would also add boiled whole barley but alas this is not a barley growing district and it costs much more than I would care to pay. A little cracked corn serves well as a substitute. So with the next batch of pigs to fatten, we shall also fatten a batch of meat chooks at the same time and on the same diet. Make sure the pigs get to roam and dig in their paddocks and make sure the chooks get a great armload of greens each day also. The result is excellent meat at the cost of some labour and little else.