You can buy alfalfa meal as meal/powder in 50 lb. bags, and is usually cheaper than the alfalfa meal pellets (pelletizing adds to the cost).
It is actually one of the components in Epsom's line of organic "-Tone" fertilizers.
Deer won't be able to eat the meal powder and it breaks down and works in faster than the pellets.
Cottonseed meal is another amendment that is cheap when bought at a feed store in 50 lb. bags (don't buy the stuff labeled for garden or lawn use, it's way more pricey.)
Worth wrote a whole diatribe about cottonseed meal and its marketing some time ago.
