Commercial Poison (err... "Feed")

[Tango Charlie]

I'm an educated, middle-class, engineer and family man, and am usually averse to conspiracy theories. HOWEVER… I’d recently come across multiple stories about how backyard chickens weren’t laying anymore, and I could relate. We have 3 girls about 3 years old and they all stopped laying last June (2022). The theory is that they’re (whoever “they” are) putting something in the feed. Vaccines for bird flu, vaccines for people… other more nefarious stuff? Poor quality ingredients for sake of profit? Who knows?

In addition to not laying, our chickens were lethargic, didn’t free-range when the door to the run was left open and just seemed “off”. The commercial “feed” was Dumor 16% Layer Formula from TSC.

So my wife and I mixed up a homemade feed of various corns, seeds, proteins, oyster shell & gravel, and the results are amazing! Within a week, they started to venture out of their run. Within 2 weeks they started “squatting and stomping” (a sure sign of fertility / productivity) which they also stopped doing completely.

3 weeks after purging their commercial “feed” we got our first egg in nearly EIGHT MONTHS! Now 4 weeks in, we’re getting eggs DAILY. I’m telling you all it’s as if they’ve woken up from an 8 month coma. More accurately “purging an 8 month poisoning”.

 

[MysteryChicken]

I'm an educated, middle-class, engineer and family man, and am usually averse to conspiracy theories. HOWEVER… I’d recently come across multiple stories about how backyard chickens weren’t laying anymore, and I could relate. We have 3 girls about 3 years old and they all stopped laying last June (2022). The theory is that they’re (whoever “they” are) putting something in the feed. Vaccines for bird flu, vaccines for people… other more nefarious stuff? Poor quality ingredients for sake of profit? Who knows?

In addition to not laying, our chickens were lethargic, didn’t free-range when the door to the run was left open and just seemed “off”. The commercial “feed” was Dumor 16% Layer Formula from TSC.

So my wife and I mixed up a homemade feed of various corns, seeds, proteins, oyster shell & gravel, and the results are amazing! Within a week, they started to venture out of their run. Within 2 weeks they started “squatting and stomping” (a sure sign of fertility / productivity) which they also stopped doing completely.

3 weeks after purging their commercial “feed” we got our first egg in nearly EIGHT MONTHS! Now 4 weeks in, we’re getting eggs DAILY. I’m telling you all it’s as if they’ve woken up from an 8 month coma. More accurately “purging an 8 month poisoning”.

It's not the feed.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/feed-tests-more-results.1565804/

 

[Tango Charlie]

Ok. So what was it?

The only variable was the feed.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

Winter?

 

[MysteryChicken]

Ok. So what was it?

The only variable was the feed.

Stress, & environmental factors can result in hens not laying eggs.

Weather, Daylight hours, & sudden change, are some factors.

 

[nuthatched]

Please go read all the threads on this instead of starting a new thread.
Not one person on social media ran tests on the feed, just their mouths.
Most chickens who have been "poisoned" are covid chickens who reached 2 and 3 years old, so they don't lay their second or third winter or they've reached henopause. chickens stop laying for late summer molting, go into winter break and wait for needed 14 hours of daylight to lay. It's been unusually dark and cold this winter everywhere.
If you want to mix your own feed, this is a great place to research that but what is the approximate analysison your mix? It's hard to come up with a decent feed, especially if your source the recipe off the internet.
Imo, 16% layer isn't good enough for your modern dual purpose hens.
Tldr, nothings wrong with the feed, just tinhat Tony and homesteader Barbie who never bothered to educate themselves on the reproductive process in chickens blaming the feed for normal breaks in the lay cycle and running their fool mouths.
It's been dark, too dark to activate the pinal gland that controls laying, your hens were likely molting and taking awhile to come out of it as 16% protein isn't enough period, let alone during the molt. Find a good 18-20% feed.
First & third posts in this thread:
" https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/feed-tests-more-results.1565804/
This thread, posts 6, 10, 12, 14, 18, 22
https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...en-feed-craze-posted-testing-results.1564737/
Post 581 of this thread (I think this link will go straight to it; same feed as the one just above)
https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...-to-be-analyzed.1561749/page-59#post-26554912
This is the thread comparing feed labels (spoiler: not much changed.) The labels are sprinkled throughout many pages, so this one isn't a quick read. I doubt your client will care about this one, as she probably assumes they changed the feed but not the label.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/current-internet-theory.1561604/
As regards your client wanting something "better" for her chickens, maybe suggest that she try a particular kind of other feed. For example, "maybe you should give your hens chick starter instead, with a separate dish of oyster shell. They wouldn't bother to add an anti-laying ingredient to chick starter"

 

[nuthatched]

Ok. So what was it?

The only variable was the feed.

Daylight is the key factor, it was dark everywhere this winter, also stress, illness, lack of protein, newbie owners from covid not understanding lay/molt cycles... just a perfect storm of situations which a few 'influencers' exploited to make people hysterical and get views.
Byc is the biggest peer reviewed fowl website there is, if someone has bad info, it will be questioned, tested and proven. This is where there are some very smart people with decades of experience, who do scientific research on every aspect of bird keeping; people who can walk you through the process scientifically. ;]

 

[ChickyMudder]

Ok. So what was it?

The only variable was the feed.

None of these other posters account for what would cause a flock to stop free ranging? Old hens - no winter eggs - possible. Old hens always free range in winter months.
Stressed hens being chased by a fox in the hen house ….. stop laying … not for 8 months!

If you believe the “tests” over your neighbors observations and experience than you havent been paying attention to the way our regulatory agencies operate. To those who have eyes to see, let them see. To those have have ears to hear, let them hear.

 

[NatJ]

I'm an educated, middle-class, engineer and family man, and am usually averse to conspiracy theories. HOWEVER… I’d recently come across multiple stories about how backyard chickens weren’t laying anymore, and I could relate. We have 3 girls about 3 years old and they all stopped laying last June (2022). The theory is that they’re (whoever “they” are) putting something in the feed. Vaccines for bird flu, vaccines for people… other more nefarious stuff? Poor quality ingredients for sake of profit? Who knows?

That theory doesn't fit most of the observed facts very well.

It is normal for hens to stop laying in the fall to molt, then not resume laying until the day get longer in late winter/early spring. The older the hens, the longer the break.

Weather and general stress can also cause hens to quit laying.

Most of the reports that are showing up on these forums deal with otherwise healthy chickens who quit laying (as expected for the season), and resumed laying when the days got longer (also as expected). Some flocks started laying after they were changed to another feed (usually a different brand/manufacturer). Some flocks started laying again with no change in feed.

In addition to not laying, our chickens were lethargic, didn’t free-range when the door to the run was left open and just seemed “off”. The commercial “feed” was Dumor 16% Layer Formula from TSC.

So my wife and I mixed up a homemade feed of various corns, seeds, proteins, oyster shell & gravel, and the results are amazing! Within a week, they started to venture out of their run. Within 2 weeks they started “squatting and stomping” (a sure sign of fertility / productivity) which they also stopped doing completely.

3 weeks after purging their commercial “feed” we got our first egg in nearly EIGHT MONTHS! Now 4 weeks in, we’re getting eggs DAILY.

That is definitely different.
Since your chickens were showing other signs of ill health, and recovered when you changed feed, I think it likely that the feed did make a difference in your case.

The timeline you give is also quite believable, if the feed was the problem.

Or else something else changed right around that same time.

As regards many of the other stories of chickens that quit laying: when people say they changed feed and the hens resumed laying "the next day" or "within a week," that is pretty good proof that it was not the feed. It takes longer than that for an egg yolk to grow to the right size and get turned into an egg. So very fast results mean that the change from not-layer to layer was already happening before the feed change. This is one way in which your story is quite different than many of the other stories that have been posted. Yours took about the right amount of time to show the results.

I’m telling you all it’s as if they’ve woken up from an 8 month coma. More accurately “purging an 8 month poisoning”.

My guess: more likely a deficiency than a poisoning, but of course I can't be positive either way.

Do you still have some of the "bad" feed? Would you be willing to send it to a lab for analysis, and share the results here? There are a number of people on this forum doing various amounts of research, including sending feed to labs and discussing the results, to try to figure out what is really going on.

 

[NatJ]

Please go read all the threads on this instead of starting a new thread.
Not one person on social media ran tests on the feed, just their mouths.
Most chickens who have been "poisoned" are covid chickens who reached 2 and 3 years old, so they don't lay their second or third winter or they've reached henopause. chickens stop laying for late summer molting, go into winter break and wait for needed 14 hours of daylight to lay. It's been unusually dark and cold this winter everywhere.
If you want to mix your own feed, this is a great place to research that but what is the approximate analysison your mix? It's hard to come up with a decent feed, especially if your source the recipe off the internet.
Imo, 16% layer isn't good enough for your modern dual purpose hens.
Tldr, nothings wrong with the feed, just tinhat Tony and homesteader Barbie who never bothered to educate themselves on the reproductive process in chickens blaming the feed for normal breaks in the lay cycle and running their fool mouths.
It's been dark, too dark to activate the pinal gland that controls laying, your hens were likely molting and taking awhile to come out of it as 16% protein isn't enough period, let alone during the molt. Find a good 18-20% feed.
First & third posts in this thread:
" https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/feed-tests-more-results.1565804/
This thread, posts 6, 10, 12, 14, 18, 22
https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...en-feed-craze-posted-testing-results.1564737/
Post 581 of this thread (I think this link will go straight to it; same feed as the one just above)
https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...-to-be-analyzed.1561749/page-59#post-26554912
This is the thread comparing feed labels (spoiler: not much changed.) The labels are sprinkled throughout many pages, so this one isn't a quick read. I doubt your client will care about this one, as she probably assumes they changed the feed but not the label.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/current-internet-theory.1561604/
As regards your client wanting something "better" for her chickens, maybe suggest that she try a particular kind of other feed. For example, "maybe you should give your hens chick starter instead, with a separate dish of oyster shell. They wouldn't bother to add an anti-laying ingredient to chick starter"

I agree with most of your points, but I think this poster does have one thing VERY different than most of the other accounts:

these chickens showed other signs of ill-health, not just a lack of eggs.

(These ones also started laying a reasonable length of time after the feed change, not the "next day" wonder stories that are biologically impossible to cause by changing feed.)

So this one might have warranted a new thread, because it does have some definite differences.