I would buy my chicken feed from the Feedmill that was over an hour away from my house because of their prices. I would buy 1000 to 1200 pounds of chicken feed at a time at around nine dollars a bag. It was pulverized corn with supplements, chickens loved it and it was pretty cheap on the pocket book.
It depends on cattle, It depends on how much pasture you have, how you maintain that pasture, what you feed them to finish them off and your whole set up in general for example access to water etc.
With cattle pasture rotation is key, you can稚 let the cattle over graze and keep the grass cut short or it will stunt the grass and it won稚 produce as much forage per acre. You also have to have a weed management program in place or weeds will take over, as cattle eat the good forage it痴 less competition for the weeds and they get bigger and spread killing out the grass. I had to let my pasture recover this spring and let it grow up.
I learned a lot about grass when I got into hay, it痴 important the first cutting be later and let the grass to root, the taller first cutting is more fibrous and less energy, the second cutting is usually a short grow period, this hay will be high energy, much less fiber, highest alfalfa and clover mix and is most profitable, 3rd cutting needs to be timed in a way that you give the plant enough time to recover for winter.
Maintaining a pasture is much the same as growing quality hay, instead of cutting and bailing the forage, the cattle eat it, your growth cycles (first, second and third cutting) will be pasture rotation, let one pasture recover as the other is being fed.
Once you have a good system for cattle, it痴 pretty easy. My neighbor has cattle and a guy gives him brewers grains, he feeds some to my cattle when he feeds his cattle, I have a lady bring me bags of Panera bread, left overs that the store couldn稚 sell, I feed that to my cattle and give what I don稚 need to my neighbor to integrate it into his feeding program. Baked goods are very easy on cattle痴 stomach, it痴 easy for them to digest it because the grains have been baked. We feed stuff like this to our cattle instead of grain like corn, we will buy corn when the brewers grains and bread dry up which they do now and again. Another good feed is pumpkins, after Halloween collect pumpkins, buy unsold pumpkins from nursery痴, stores, farm markets etc, some will tell you to take what you want. Cattle love pumpkins, cut the stem out, step on the pumpkin to bust it open and throw it in the feed troth and the cattle have a ball, they eat about 80-90% of it. So cattle can be expensive but as a hobby it can also be very profitable. Cattle will eat table scraps of vegetables, bread etc, you can put the word out for local business to save stuff for you, we have neighbors around here that feed my neighbors cattle that are closer to the road, I see them out there a lot feeding them bread or table scraps. People will gladly donate stuff that otherwise would get thrown out if it goes to cattle or livestock.
I will warn you though, don稚 plan to raise the cattle to eat yourself, I thought I would save some for myself but every year I sell it all, I just can稚 bring myself to eat my own cattle.
Just yesterday my steer got out of my pasture and broke into my neighbors pasture, neighbor woke me up lol when he called me up and told me the steer was in his pasture, I got ready, found out where the steer got out and walked into my neighbors pasture to find his helper trying but failing to get my steer to go from Pasture A, to pasture B that boarders my pasture. When I walked up in pasture B my steer saw me on the fence line and it looked like he got excited to see me, it felt like a dog excited when I first come home. I met the steer at the spot he needed to cross at, he came trotting over and walked right threw for me, I walked threw pasture B and he stayed close paying no attention to my neighbors cattle in the same pasture, I walked out of pasture B to my pasture and instructed my steer to go in and he very willingly walked in for me, I had my halter but didn稚 need it, he acted more like a broke horse then he did a bovine.
Cattle know people, my cattle have always trusted me, I am the only person that they will allow to approach if they get out or are stressed, my neighbor and his helper scare my cattle, they will run away from them and won稚 do what they want, same as his cattle for me. So when MY cattle get out, no matter what I have to get out there to get the cattle or it痴 a losing battle for even someone that has cattle unless they know how to rope it lol. I have helped my neighbor get his cattle back to his pasture but he has to take point and I just cover holes the cattle can run threw, when cattle get stressed they turn more into a rhino lol, they drop their head and try to make a way to escape when they are cornered, it can be a small opening and they will blast threw it.
With all that being said having cattle is a lot of fun, I have it now where I rarely have to haul water (few times during summer, once a week in the winter), I have rainwater being collected for my cattle, now that I have only one steer, I didn稚 have to supplement him hay, I am now due to the grass is stunted but I feed with round bales so one bale every 2-3 weeks per head in the winter. So the past year has been little work. Setting up for cattle is a lot of work.
Another point is, if you collect rainwater and don稚 clean your waterer but a few times a year, drop in 4 or 5 feeder goldfish in the waterer, they help clean the waterer and provide better water for the cattle. I have been told by horse people that the horses preferred drinking out of the waterer that gets cleaned a few times a year but has the goldfish ca the waterer that gets cleaned weekly due to it being more accessible to be cleaned regularly, that waterer did not have goldfish in it.
Also my buddy痴 GF has horses at a near by horse ranch, he痴 friends with another horse owner that lets him use their trailer, they gave me permission to use the trailer also. I fold the divider and haul my cattle with it so I don稚 have to own a stock trailer.
As far as round bales goes, the farmer will have $15-$20 in each bale after fuel (cutting, raking, baling, fertilizer etc). If he sells for $30-$35 he痴 making about $15 per bale. First cut, second cut and third cutting is valued differently. Around here a 4x5 first cut is $25-$35, second cutting $30-$50, third cutting $35-$45. There is a lot of money in hay, if you can sell all you bale and you have a lot of ground.
A good trick with chickens I found out is to collect chopped up leaves off your yard and use it as bedding for the chickens, it gives them something to route threw and eat but it also is more springy for when when it gets cold out, bedding like sand will be like a rock for them in winter, when they fly down from the roost they much prefer landing on a bed of chopped up leaves then wood chips or sand. I layered their bedding in the winter, once a week I sprinkled more bedding in there on top of the leaves, like pine chips from the store or some straw, I would rotate the bedding I used. I chopped the leaves with the lawn mower, collected it and spread it about 10in thick in the coop, my coop was a few horse stalls so it was a lot of leaves lol.
