Hog feed for eggs?

[TinyChickin]

I've heard that giving your hens hog feed is better for egg production. Is this true? Has anyone tried it?

 

[2ndTink]

I don't know hog nutrition but I'm going to say no, as long as your chicken feed is a good proper poultry feed. If your poultry feed is crud, then maybe.

It also depends on what nutrition recommendations you want to follow, are you going based on the absolute minimums that it takes to get a hen to pump out eggs for 18 month to 2 years like a commercial farm, or are you trying to target a long healthy life for your hens, or are you trying to produce the best possible hatching eggs that have everything a growing chick needs?

You will get a lot of opinions here, my opinion is that commercial feeds are too low in fat and many of the vitamins to provide optimal nutrition for hens.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I've heard that giving your hens hog feed is better for egg production.

If hog feed is better for egg production why don't commercial egg farmers use hog feed instead of special feeds blended for their chickens and egg laying? Think about that.

Hogs need different nutritional requirements based on growth stage: starter pigs, grower, and finisher so which phase are you talking about? The purpose of hogs is to provide meat efficiently. But you don't want to "finish" laying hens, you want to maintain them. Instead of meat growth you want egg production. Those are different things and require different nutritional mixes. An easy example is calcium. Hogs need some for growth, especially bones. Laying chickens need a lot more as a percentage of what they eat for eggshell production. Hogs need a lot of energy (carbohydrates). Laying chickens need some fat (yolks are about 1/3 fat) but they don't need the overall energy hogs need. It's just different nutritional requirements.

 

[FrostRanger]

As long as their food is providing what they need nutritionally, feed doesn't impact egg laying rate much (obvious caveat being the feed is nutritionally sound as subpar feed will negatively impact egg laying). The age and breed of the hen, the current season (with the changes in daylight that come with that) and stress have a far greater impact on egg laying than feed. A young healthy bird in spring of a high production breed with little environmental stress will be more productive than an older hen, especially of a breed not known to lay as much, and if it's fall or winter or there's something stressing the flock out, you won't get many if any eggs at all (with the caveat that many pullets lay through their first winter)

I'd just stick with a quality chicken feed, clean water and grit and oyster shell on the side and keep stress in the flock down and perhaps add a few pullets every 1-3 years, that should leave you with good production most of the time (winter will still not be great for production but adding light to the coop can help if you are inclined to do that. I don't 'cause I'd rather they have a break)