Commercial Poison (err... "Feed")

[aart]

blending your own feed is always superior.

Maybe, if you can afford to buy and to use up tons of feed before it looses it's integrity.

suggested you are unable to know or control the nutritional levels

Unless you test all your grains for protein content, you won't know.

but it is also more sustainable in the event of shortages.

You think if commercial feeds are 'unavailable' that bulk grains will be easy to get?

 

[NatJ]

Aside from the fact that I agree with your assessment of the commercial food, regardless - blending your own feed is always superior. Not only do you know exactly what is in there, but it is also more sustainable in the event of shortages.

That "always superior" is nonsense. Nothing is ALWAYS better.

If I make cookies, I know exactly what is in there. But that does not mean my cookies are a healthy complete diet for a person or a chicken. And if there is a shortage of flour or sugar, I cannot make my cookies either.

Likewise with chicken foods, someone can "know exactly what is in there" but make choices that do not provide what a chicken needs. And if there is a shortage of ingredients, they cannot make their chicken food either.

 

[Pipica]

My neighbor is an engineer. Recently a lot of the neighbors pitched in to get a some transfers of gravel for our shared road because it was getting pretty shabby. She refused to help.
A few days after the gravel was set down she had a load of red clay dumped over the steepest part of the road because “we ruined the road” and she was repairing the damage and making it “manageable.”
Red clay...on a steep mountain road...right before winter. She made it into a mud slide, but she’s an engineer so she KNOWS.

Generally I don’t like criticizing academics and professionals, but we’re just humans and we aren’t all k, a technical engineer while knowledgeable about their field may know nothing about epidemiology, nutrition, biology, or anything else, and high education doesn’t necessarily prove intelligence.

Having a diploma and being educated … two completely different things. Having a piece of paper doesn’t translate into being educated or smart. It means following through and finishing task. I have 4 kids with different level of education (all adults between 30 and 42).
One stoppEd school after high school, one master, one triple master (math, chemistry, physics) and still going forward and oldest … PhD in psychology !!! Guess who has no common sense whatsoever?!?!?? Yup , the last one ! Common sense (intelligence) is something one can not learn or purchase.

 

[LhickenChicken]

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”.

I agree with this, I've had this issue as well. I know each of my hens' and roosters' patterns and habits, so I know when something's off. This happened to me aswell, except it happened in early spring when they were supposed to start laying after the winter. Not normal. I mixed my own layer feed, but I still buy the chick starter and growers' feed from the store. I also supplement the mixed layer feed with high-protein feed so that they have plenty of protein to lay eggs and grow-back feathers after molts.
Please stop ignoring the truth. It's better to know what on earth you're feeding your chickens, because most people nowadays aren't honest with you. They could be adding toxins to the feed and you'd never know it.

 

[JewelsJj]

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”.

So happy to hear your chickens are doing better! I think homemade food is better than commercial anyway. Keep on posting .

 

[JacinLarkwell]

Oh good God, not this again

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I'm trying to stay out of it. Some people seemingly prefer emotion and selective facts (sometimes "facts") over math and science.

 

[Goosebaby]

Then


Every "proven fact" in this context has a dissent. It isn't ignorant to use the experience of others and your instinct when making decisions. Discrediting others experience would be consider ignorant.

This has nothing to do with discrediting someone’s expierience. No one here to my knowledge has denied that a flock stopped laying nor have I. Proposing the fact that the issue may be broader and not just because “the feed is poisoned” is not being ignorant. Blindly believing so is ignorant.

As it is the original poster was feeding his hens a low protein poor quality feed I’ve had issues with “Dumor.” That is more than likely the culprit in my own opinion, but they are not my birds, I don’t know what their living conditions are or any other variables that may have contributed, and so I can’t honestly say why his hens stopped laying other than by going off of the limited information shared by OP. Based on that limited information, the answer I suspect is that the hens were simply malnourished by an owner that decided to buy cheap feed and ignorantly blame the results on a mysterious agenda to stop people’s flocks from laying.

If we all sit around and ignore factual information or critical analysis in preference to our own “truths” wouldn’t that be ignorance? Everyone has their own “truth,” which “truth” is the right one?
How do we decide which is the correct “truth” without some actual testing, using science, and excercising unbiased reasoning? Maybe we should just ask the magic conch?

 

[LhickenChicken]

Based on that limited information, the answer I suspect is that the hens were simply malnourished by an owner that decided to buy cheap feed and ignorantly blame the results on a mysterious agenda to stop people’s flocks from laying.

But why would they get lethargic and not want to free-range, in that case? Ignore the not-laying, it might be because of the other conditions.

 

[Goosebaby]

But why would they get lethargic and not want to free-range, in that case? Ignore the not-laying, it might be because of the other conditions.

Lethargy is a symptom of so many things it’s impossible for me to say, but malnutrition also causes that. Thiamine deficiency as one example can cause a bird to be lethargic. Biotine deficiency as another example can cause fatigue and a poor appetite, and biotine is quickly lost as feed ages, so old seed can have low nutritional value.