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Top dressing feed with a product means you add that product to the feed. You can mix it in or just literally put some on top, it's your choice.

The major feed manufacturers have done legwork, but what they do is least-cost formulate a feed mix that will work well enough for most layers or broilers at varying stages but isn't particularly well optimized when considering the effect of things like house temperature, changes in feed intake...

If you are formulating feed, you wouldn't necessarily go changing the actual ingredients (e.g., corn, soybean meal, oyster shell, dicalcium phosphate, iodized salt, etc.) to meet the nutritional needs of the bird, all you'd change was the relative ratios of them in the finished feed. That...

It depends on how you are looking at it. Generally, the three main ingredients in a good layer feed are a protein source, a carbohydrate source, and a calcium source, followed by sources of other nutrients like salt, phosphorus, etc. In a good broiler feed, it'd be the same three main...

Dried Distillers Grains plus solubles is commonly known as DDGs. It's got a protein content similar to that of soybean meal, although the crude protein profile is different, being as how it's derived from corn, not soybeans. DDGs is a source of neutral detergent fiber as well that tends to...

The lighting spectrum actually does have an effect on egg-laying True story--when I was working in the layer industry, we had a guy purchase a bunch of CFL bulbs to replace the incandescents we were using on one of the farms. He thought he was doing something wonderful because the sales guy...

I know it does! I was used to layer populations in the 165,000 to 250,000 range per house. At larger population levels, statistically significant changes are easy to track. It's not something that you'd really think of as making much of a difference, but it really does.

One interesting side note about lighting--lighting skewed more towards the "red" end of the spectrum improves rate of lay as compared to lighting skewed more towards the "blue" end of the spectrum. Although you'd likely not see any noticeable change in rate of lay in a backyard flock based on...

Molting is an entirely natural process that hens need to do, and it's controlled by photoperiod. As mentioned before, this time is when the hen lets her plumbing recuperate so she'll be ready to lay at peak performance once the days get long enough. Even in commercial settings where hens are...

If I put in any Barred Rock, it'll be the bantam size version, I'm not keen on mixing sizes for obvious reasons. Anyway, thanks for the fine welcome, everybody, and I hope that my knowledge of commercial hen nutrition, feed formulation, and dietary manipulation will be an asset to the community.

Oh, a couple more things--I'm extremely familiar with commercial breeds like the Hy-Line W36 and W37, Babcock B300, etc. They are pretty much laying machines, and don't carry the weight of traditional and "backyard/barnyard" breeds, so you may want to run a hair rich on the protein end of...

It depends... Just because the birds are older doesn't automatically mean they can be fed a reduced CP diet, you have to take into consideration their rate of lay. If they are well off their peak rate of lay then you can probably run a 16% CP/0.3% available P diet pretty easily. If the...

I can have up to 10 birds based on local regulations, and I'm especially fond of bantams. I have a decided preference for clean-legged hens that are spangled or barred. I'm looking at Sebrights, Barred Rock, Golden Campine, etc.

Just looking at the nutrient percentages, even at peak lay, you are a few percent over optimum in terms of protein for a typical corn/soy feed formulation--you really only need to be in the 18%-19% range max, dropping lower as the hen ages and exhibits a reduced rate of lay. Also, the P content...

I'm originally from Kentucky, I currently live in Roanoke, VA, and I used to live in southern IN (Seymour area). I spent 6 years doing nutritional research, mostly on layers, but some on broilers, in typical commercial settings. I love chickens and now that I'm out of the animal ag industry...