How to Feed Chickens Cheaply & Without Buying Feed

Taking Back Control of Your Flock’s Food Supply

I’ll never forget the first time I looked at my feed bill and thought, This is ridiculous.

When I started with just a few hens, I didn’t think much about the cost of feed. A bag of layer pellets here, some scratch grains there—nothing that made me pause.

But then the flock grew.

Four chickens became six, then ten, then a dozen. Suddenly, I wasn’t just picking up a bag of feed whenever I happened to be at the store. I was planning feed purchases, making sure I had enough for the week, checking prices, and wincing as the total at checkout seemed to creep higher every time.

At first, I brushed it off.

“It’s just part of raising chickens,” I told myself. “They’ve got to eat.”

But the nagging feeling wouldn’t go away.

I wasn’t just spending more money—I was becoming dependent. Every few weeks, I had to go somewhere, buy something, and bring it back just so my birds could keep producing eggs.

What if one day, I couldn’t get fed?

What if I didn’t want to keep pouring my money into an industry that treated farming like a business transaction instead of a way of life?

What if the answer to feeding chickens was never supposed to come from a store in the first place?

When you start raising chickens, you quickly realize how much modern farming is designed to make you buy things.

At first, it’s just the basics—feed, waterers, maybe a coop. But before long, you’re looking at supplements, additives, pre-mixed grains, fancy feeders, and new formulations that promise better eggs, healthier chickens, or faster growth.

The feed store makes you think you need them.

And yet, for thousands of years, chickens survived without commercial feed. They thrived on scraps, bugs, forage, and whatever they could scratch up.

So, I started asking a different question.

Instead of “What’s the best feed?” I asked, “How do I stop relying on feed at all?”

Thinking Beyond the Feed Bag

At first, I tried to stretch my feed supply.

I cut back on grain and let the chickens forage more. They were already scratching around the yard, but I started paying attention to what they ate—grass, weeds, bugs, kitchen scraps.

The more I watched them, the more I realized something.

Chickens don’t need commercial feed. They need food.

And food, as it turns out, is everywhere.

That’s when I remembered something from my hydroponic fodder experiments. In Thinking Outside The Soil, I had already proven that plants don’t need soil—just nutrients and water. What if chickens didn’t need “feed” either—just access to the right food sources?

So, I stopped thinking of feed as something I had to buy and started looking at what I already had.

I let them out earlier in the morning. The sooner they got outside, the longer they had to hunt for their own food.

At first, they pecked at the usual spots—turning over dirt, searching for grubs, chasing grasshoppers in the garden.

But after a few weeks, I noticed something interesting.

They started getting smarter about where they foraged.

They discovered that the compost pile was full of scraps and protein-rich insects. They learned to scratch through fallen leaves, where worms and beetles hid. They started plucking seeds from weeds before I even had a chance to pull them.

They were feeding themselves—and doing a better job of it than I ever could.

Letting my chickens forage was a huge step, but I still needed to provide food—especially during the winter, when bugs and grass weren’t as easy to find.

So, instead of buying feed, I started growing it.

The easiest place to start was fodder, which involves sprouting grains like barley, wheat, and sunflower seeds into lush mats of green food.

A single $25 bag of barley from the feed store could be stretched into four times the amount of usable food just by sprouting it.

It wasn’t magic. Just a simple process:

1. Soak the grains in water overnight.

2. Drain/Rinse the jars daily.

3. Wait 7 days.

By the end of the week, I had dense, nutritious jars of fresh green fodder—and my chickens devoured it.

I also started planting perennials in my yard that could provide food year after year. Comfrey and clover are all plants that chickens love and that grow stronger every season.

My feed bill kept going down.

But I wasn’t done yet.

One morning, as I watched my flock dig through a fresh pile of compost, I had a thought.

This is what farming is supposed to be.

Not a transaction. It's not an industry. A relationship.

I was not just keeping chickens but integrating them into a system.

They weren’t just livestock. They were workers, waste processors, and foragers.

They were helping to grow their own food.

Instead of tossing old produce scraps in the trash, I threw them in the compost pile—where chickens could pick through them first. They ate what they wanted, scratched through the rest, and turned waste into rich soil.

Instead of throwing away eggshells, I crushed them up and fed them back to the hens for extra calcium.

Instead of relying on the feed store, I let the land do what it was designed to do.

The Path to True Food Independence

I didn’t stop buying feed overnight. It started small—reducing bagged feed by 10%, then 20%, replacing it with sprouted grains and compost foraging.

But with each change—each new discovery about what chickens could eat, what they could find on their own, and what I could grow for them—I bought less and less.

And then, one day, I realized I had stopped completely.

For too long, we’ve been told that farming has to be done a certain way and that we have to buy the right feeds, supplements, and equipment.

But what if we didn’t?

What if the real key to feeding chickens—and feeding ourselves—wasn’t in buying more, but in taking back control?

The First Step Toward Food Sovereignty

Those who control the seed control the world.

But what if you could take that control back?

For too long, the industrial food system has dictated how we grow, what we feed, and even what we’re allowed to farm. But the key to food sovereignty isn’t in fighting the system—it’s in building something better.

The Lost Chapter is the blueprint for doing just that.

It reveals how sprouting, hatching, and regenerative farming work together to create self-sustaining food systems—systems that put control back into your hands, not in the hands of corporations.

This isn’t just a chapter—it’s the first step toward designing your own future.

Download it today and start breaking free.

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