Complementary and alternative medicines such as tea tree (melaleuca) oil have become increasingly popular in recent decades. This essential oil has been used for almost 100 years in Australia but is now available worldwide both as neat oil and as an active component in an array of products.
Conventional Grain and Legume Feeds for Chickens. Most grains in commercial feed for poultry (corn, legumes, and small grains such as wheat, rye, oats and barley) are easy for the homesteader to grow. I grow âHickory King,â a. vigorous, large-ear feed corn.
Other easy-to-grow seed crops include millet, sorghum and sunflowers. Simply throw the whole seed heads to your chickens. Many common garden cover crops â alfalfa, clover, annual rye, kale (and its close relative, rape), turnips, mustard, buckwheat and grain grasses â provide abundant feed for poultry. All can be cut and carried to the chickens, or the chickens can graze these crops. The biggest challenge with conventional feed grains is not growing them, but harvesting and threshing (which are labor-intensive), plus finding the space to store them. You can eliminate these issues by growing grains as cover crops and allowing them to mature before sending in the chickens.