How Chicken feed is made...it might surprise you!

hey there folks this is Josh Stoney Ridge farmer welcome back to the farm today we're off farm and we are at Reedy fork farm with George this is George Teague George you've got a family farm here and you've got an organic feed operations that right we reduce busy gotcha now tell me what we're gonna do today guys we're gonna talk a little bit about nutrition for your chickens but you offer hog feed what types of animals do you are we out for feed for just about everything pigs chickens ducks even quail well okay go anything and everything just about anything yeah I want to feed besides your dogs and cats we don't feed the dog unless you train your cats to eat corn birth right so we're here in Elan North Carolina guys we're gonna have a little bit of fun we're gonna go inside the mill we're gonna talk about nutrition we're gonna show you some of the ingredients and we're here to actually pick up I think that big bag of feed behind us yep yep so 50 meat birds eats a thousand pounds of food that's 2,000 pounds of food right there we've got 100 meat birds that we're gonna be harvesting here in about six weeks so over six to eight weeks those hundred meat birds will eat that entire big sack of food that's crazy so come along today we're gonna have a little bit of fun tour in 3d Fork organic mill all right [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right so George how long do we have this farm hello I'm the fifth generation here on the farm Wow we've been around for a long time now do you harvest all your own grain here or does it come from various sources or I always say we harvest about enough to take care of our cows we milk about a hundred gals here we're a dairy farm too so we milk about under cows so we have always say we grow about enough for them but we have to get feed from other farms around we get local farms as much as we can but everything resources from North America we don't so now it's tough to find organic bead or organic grains I guess around a non-gmo organic types como organic and everything it does get challenging sometimes but we we try to stay ahead of the curve so we keep turn after hand no doubt so the right now there is a huge movement back to the land I'm hearing and chickens are hard to come by and organic feed is even hard to come by do you guys been rocking and rolling with this whole quota thing right we have been very busy for the last couple of months and that's awesome good for business look look forward to happy in the new normal but everybody's worried about the land that nice people ate the girls though absolutely so behind us we have bins these are grain bins and that is a grain truck over there getting tires on it and another grain truck right here tell me so what are you having these bins is it wheat is it a little bit everything laughs we have porn we have roasted soybeans we have sesame meal we have the Philby's coke we offer for soy free and so eats so we have to have a little bit about how it makes us have to have more grain bin cool and grain bins so we're going to go inside and look at the computer system and you guys have a nutritionist that designs your food for you right right so that has all the nutrition that whatever animal might need so today we're getting the broiler paperwork right and we'll talk a little bit for the percentage of protein a lot of people been asking me what do I need to put in the water and do I need electrolytes for my birds the answer is no everything that's why we use the nutritionist so in and use the portrayal products so that everything is in there for your birds we've got a second girl so the feed has electrolytes in it yeah so you don't need to give your birds Gatorade tonight so let's go inside have some fun this is our computer system here and it controls all of the the grain bins and brings our feet in and everything it's called feedback throw it and it holds all of our rations for animals and then the computer brings in part of our dough we have to put it in by hand but it mixes all your feed up for the way that you need it for your animals this is the feed that josh is getting today is our 18% broiler feed that's good through your cheeks from week four on through to toe you're ready to process them it's 18 percent protein we've got a lot of you can see in there it's got a lot of other ingredients besides just your corn and soy it's got crab meal it's got fish meal and it also has portrayal of nature balancer which is all the vitamins and minerals that you need for to keep your animals healthy and they do a great job of helping us with our rations we have brought up soy and soy free it just depends on what your preference is all right guys look up there that crazy-looking that outfit that is your feed mill the actual mill itself actually mill and mixer where we mix your feet now different types of feed are gonna have a different like size in other words so if you're doing chick starter it's going to be much finer and much more powdery yeah it's gonna have them smaller grind do you gotcha so you have to set this mill up and it's all done by computer also it's simple yet we have to set it up or sale I don't change the screens and different screens and that kind of thing also that's part of even there's so many pipes coming in because some of the things we grind hole that goes in a meal hole some to some things go in ground so things Corral cool now I'm looking over here in these bins and I see what looks like dirt almost what is that this one's got flax meal in it okay so that's flax meal and that you put flax in for the Omega threes for the mega threes and for the protein it's got a good amount of protein in it awesome so we put and over the hump from here I see some it looks like hold on I'm coming around here so this is looks like yeah so you bring in your own gravel sure do you play well for so the birds need grit and that's how they digest their food guys and if you're not familiar where the chicken well it's got a few chambers in its stomach the first one we call the craw I don't know what you call that what do you know what the real technical term for that is I've always heard Kodachrome yep we call it the cross so if you have a baby chick and it's got a big old swollen spot it's not cancer okay it's the it's not a goiter either it's the crawl and what that is is the food that's the first chamber of the stomach it's moistening the food it brings it down into the gizzard area which requires grit okay so you got to have grit in your gizzard in order to break down the food so the chickens don't have teeth they have a gizzard pretty cool this is where we bagged up to feed 50 pounds 25 pound bags I'll come through the bag over here gotcha now the bag we got was a one-ton back one-ton bag it's 2,000 pounds of 2,000 pounds now we can save money buying in bulk like that right yes it's much cheaper to get it in bulk like that and you and you don't have to get 2,000 pounds in that bag you can get a thousand pounds 500 pounds whatever gachaaan mount you want you don't have to get a full plate cool so we were here last year right about this time and we picked up a thousand pounds for our meat birds and man they gobbled that stuff up I've been wetting my food do you know anything about wetting the food before you feed them there are a lot of people do that a lot of people do it's just a personal preference of what people like to do some people do like the wet it first sprouted it a little bit yeah and there it makes supposedly releases more sugars into the feed or something like that yeah there's all sorts of schools of thought guys will talk to they talk to you a little bit about that when we get home Georgia's got work to do and we got it load up this big ol thing of feed and hopefully my truck doesn't rust completely in two we've got the old Dodge truck today so hopefully it doesn't rust in bust in half but George I know these crazy times will kind of do that I thank you so much for bringing us through your feed mill here guys if you have any questions please post them down there in the comments section we're gonna head home George has been kind enough offer a Stoney Ridge farmer discount so if you go to read fork farm.com report farm comm you can buy feed and you got ship all over the country ship all over the country can we make deliveries we go we make on the first Thursday of every month we go towards Raleigh and around down there making we have stops we make tomorrow's the second Thursday that's the day we go towards Asheville and got through Charlotte a lot of stops down that way so they deliver feed basically all over North Carolina so you can find a spot go to Reedy Fork farm calm and people you can look it up and find out where they're gonna be and you can order your feed preorder it and have it all ready there use the Stoney Ridge farmer discount all you got to do is type in Stoney Ridge farmer or mention it just mention it yes and we'll take care of it and if you don't want to go to our website just give us a call to place an order awesome or come by the store here to see us cool well thanks George all right thank you appreciate it air shake alright guys we're gonna load this big old thing of feed up and we'll get her home that's a lot of feed Wow I'm totally nervous about this one ton of food and my 3/4 ton truck she's gonna squat as this truck is old and rusty I was a little bit worried the bed still may fall off of it so we'll see you guys back at the house here and we'll show you our baby chicks let's get back to the Stoney Ridge well guys this is mrs. Stoney ridges first trip to the grain mill what'd you think it was very interesting yeah it was cool to see the computer program how they set it all up and how it's all done it's it's just not willy nilly okay guys a nutritionist and animal nutritionist has designed all these different feeds that they make out here at Reedy fork so we're gonna go on back home we'll show you guys the baby chicks give you a little update on those guys and look at this gigantic bag of feed it's a huge man these birds are gonna be happy organic feed organic birds good for the tummy we're back to the house we got the John Deere and we've got the bag of feed loaded up and let's go in here I'm going to show you our new baby chicks and you can follow along on the channel if you like jump in pound the like button subscribe to the channel there's all kinds of fun stuff so these are our meat birds there are 50 Cornish cross and 50 rainbow Ranger or Ranger broilers in here okay and those are all from Murray McMurray hatchery cool so they're doing absolutely awesome if you haven't seen the video on the brooder setup that we have right here it's pretty cool very important for your birds to have the proper nutrition that's what this whole video is about to show you guys a pretty cool place where you can go get organic feed if you're a local North Carolina person or you can order it anywhere in the country it's awesome it works great this is what we finish out our meat birds on so after the birds come out of the brooder they're gonna go right down here and the mobile coop and then we'll have meat birds and that'll be all of our meat for the next two years all of our chicken awesome guys thanks a lot for joining me here today I hope you enjoyed the video hope you learned a little bit about bird nutrition and how feeds made and this good stuff here on the park thanks a lot we'll see you next time on the Stoney Ridge don't break [Music] Pierce we've had some ways opposed Denise Tony Reed [Music]