Anyone Want to Test my Suspected Bad Feed on Your Egg Laying Hens?

[saysfaa]

Gotta wonder if 'testing', and only for a week, now older feed will be worth any kind of quantification?

I agree the fresher the better but it wasn't terribly old to start with. It will be a data point.

 

[Joel Just Joel]

You got any feed left?

Sorry, all gone.

 

[saysfaa]

Why don't you spend your own money for the analysis that's right on the bag. You assume ...

He did spend his own money for just that in sending some to Aunt Angus. Not as much as she did but some.

He also spent $15 (more than I thought it would cost), to get 5 pounds to me to try another way of testing. This way was the best hope of seeing whether something was done to the feed that wouldn't show up if it was tested for basic things.

And offered to put more money into it by also sending some to anyone else willing to put some skin in the game.

 

[saysfaa]

Started the feed Monday morning. Cold turkey and nothing else for the duration.
Four hens.
Two eggs Monday
Two eggs Tuesday
Four eggs Wednesday

 

[Geena]

Started the feed Monday morning. Cold turkey and nothing else for the duration.
Four hens.
Two eggs Monday
Two eggs Tuesday
Four eggs Wednesday

Sorry if I missed it, but did you keep track of what they laid last week?

 

[saysfaa]

Sorry if I missed it, but did you keep track of what they laid last week?

I was gone for nearly 3 weeks; that is why this is so late.
Dh told me how many eggs every day but I would have to scroll through a LOT of text messages to get them.

He said they usually laid 2 or 3, sometimes 4 and sometimes 1. The singles less often lately. He does numbers for a living so he is probably very accurate.

Today (Thursday): 2 eggs

 

[Joel Just Joel]

Started the feed Monday morning. Cold turkey and nothing else for the duration.
Four hens.
Two eggs Monday
Two eggs Tuesday
Four eggs Wednesday

Thank you so much for volunteering your hens to do this test, @saysfaa!
My interpretation: your hens are laying just fine while eating my suspected bad TSC PP feed, so it was probably not bad feed at all. My initial suspicion was based on circumstantial evidence when our egg production drastically dropped off immediately after I began a new feed bag, plus I was swayed by the anecdotal tales of others online who claim they had bad chicken feed. I cannot confirm or deny the truth in anyone else's situation, but I don't see any bad feed on my farm.

I didn't reveal this before because I did not want to sway saysfaa's testing, but after feeding my hens with new, local feed for a couple of weeks, I went back to the old feed and noticed that their laying picked up (in spite of the "bad feed") as the weather warmed up and the days got slightly longer. Now they are laying just fine even though still eating TSC PP, albeit a different batch. Also, the lab testing done by @Aunt Angus Angus didn't show anything out of the ordinary.

So, I conclude that in my isolated case, I did not have TSC PP feed that stops hens from laying eggs.

 

[Ponyiqandhens2]

well, that's great that you have no issues but as you can see, mine don't look the same at all, not even close.

It matters where you are, everything is not milled at one mill. Also, depending on the feed,if a mill is in an area with a severe selenium deficiency they will alter the formula ( the tag is correct the ingredients just may not be identical to same feed milled 1800 miles away)

Your particular mill may be using different ingredients,may be milling other feeds through the same lines and have a crap cleaning crew..

 

[saysfaa]

Started the feed Monday morning. Cold turkey and nothing else for the duration.
Four hens.
Two eggs Monday
Two eggs Tuesday
Four eggs Wednesday

Two eggs Thursday
Two eggs Friday
Three eggs Saturday
Five eggs Sunday/Monday (I got them too early on Sunday and too late on Monday to know how many were on which day.)
Three eggs Tuesday unless there is one much later than usual

And they have finished the feed sample as of sometime yesterday.

I plan to edit tonight to add today's egg count. Then stop unless something really unexpected happens very soon.

Edited to add Tuesday's egg count