$7.59 for a 50lb bag at Southern States Co-op for locally made layer pellets from locally grown corn, etc. 16% protein with no animal by-products or meds. I try to buy locally whenever possible.
Last edited:
How much are you paying for layer pellets?
- Thread starter magentamomma
- Start date
Ask yourselves if this is truly sustainable. If ten dollars a bag seems cheap think on this:
1. Layer pellet is a poor choice in the long term because you are not saving money, nor are you enhancing the health of your flock
Layer Pellets/Mashes and Crumbles are inefficient feed because:
a. disintegrate in ambient moisture
b. some percentage is already powder(fines) at the bottom of the bag
c. birds scatter the pellets on the ground while foraging in the hopper
d. pellets disintegrate while being consumed, some percentage is lost from the birds bill
e. a large percentage of the feed is not thoroughly digested; the hens manure is made up of poorly digested material.
2. Layer Pellets/Mashes and Crumbles contribute towards the cycle of disease and infection by:
a. disintegrated pellet fines- a powdery material mixes with fecal material and urea on the ground as the birds habitually scratch about the substrate of their pens.
b. disintegrated pellet fines, fecal material, feather dander and environmental dust cling together to become "poultry smut" the clinging, acrid smelling stuff that coats henhouses walls, perches and wire. Poultry Smut covers everything within a twenty yard radius of a poultry yard. It coats the birds' plumage as well their eggs. Poultry smut is an ideal home for
Mycoplasmas, Psuedomonas and other potentially harmful bacterium. Poultry Smut also feeds external parasites and the odor attracts vermin. Layer pellet is not only largely wasted, it is
c. prone to mold
d. nutrients deteriorate in short time
3. Layer Pellets/Mashes and Crumbles contribute to an unsanitary environment for both birds and people.
a. Poultry smut is inhaled
b. chicks begin their lives in crowded, overly bright ( artificially lit) environments where the air is thick with the dust of chick mash.
Because the chicks are active for extended periods of time , day and night, they cannot help but inhale feed particulates. This material becomes embedded in their air sacs, lungs and sinus cavities.
c.fecal material is copious as birds digest so little, resulting in greater potential for substrate contamination.
d. copious manure results in greater potential for fecal contamination of feedstuffs
e. heavy, wet manure, high in ammonia, produces an unhealthy environment for the birds and can become an issue in urban and suburban regions where there are laws against livestock odor or ordinances prohibiting livestock altogether
f. poultry smut clings to plumage, consequently, birds preen their feathers and in doing so ingest the material, becoming contaminated with fecal material.
I could go on and on here.
Somewhere in the last fifty or so years, someone very inventive realized that waste grain, a biproduct of agricultural commodities grown for human consumption, could be fed to livestock. Grains that are long past their prime are pulverized into fine powder and mixed with synthetic vitamins and minerals; soybean meal and so on to produce layer pellet.
The birds have to gorge on it to become satiated. It may seem relatively inexpensive for those of you that have never kept poultry in the tradition of the Great Depression.
What did poor folk have to feed their poultry then? Did the birds refuse to lay? If this were the case, why is it that poultry farming was the one form of agriculture even the poorest of sharecroppers managed to survive with?
Here is my suggestion. Save money and increase the health of your flock and your family by weaning yourselves of lay pellets, crumbles and mashes.
Why? Take a soil sample in your poultry yard and a few around your home and garden. Ask the health extension what these levels of mycoplasma could mean.
People may have been practicing this form of poultry farming for several decades, but at what cost? Who saved money? How many flocks have had to be replaced due to
infectious respiratory problems? How many hens have ceased laying two or three years into their lifespans? My grandmother's generation never replaced a hen until she were at least eight or nine.
Make that switch over to Whole Grain Scratch, skip the cracked corn if possible and do not buy any feed with raw whole soybeans in the mix.
90-95% of your laying hen's diet can be made up of these whole grains, provided that SUPPLEMENT the diet with the whole amino acids that omnivorous birds require.
That's right, chickens are not vegetarian. Are there any ingredients in your layer pellet that originated in anything but vegetable material? The Good Lord did not create a chicken to scratch the ground and give them a hooked beak to glean grains from the field like a seed eating bird or graze the pasture like a goose. Yes, your chooks can and do consume these feedstuffs but their most important nutrition is going to come from invertebrates, insects, pill bugs and the like and small vertebrates like mice. A free range chicken may
procure a nice portion of live animal food each day, but lets face it, nowhere in these Palearctic regions where we live, would a Junglefowl thrive. Domestic chickens are nothing but tamed Junglefowl. While they are genetically selected to live on inferior feedstuffs like grains and soy, it does not lead to long healthy life spans. It greatly reduces them.
People will chime in how they feed plenty of kitchen scraps to ameliorate their girls diets. But lets be real here. If your children lived on dry cheerios all day every day, would you be content with them gleaning whatever left overs were made available in the compost bucket? Where is the consistency in this form of supplementation?
If you put out bacon grease and fish guts every few days then you are meeting their dietary requirements. Vegetables- yes they will forage on them but what precisely do the birds have to gain from this vegetable material? Fiber, vitamins and a few trace minerals all valuable but useless without adequate amounts of the base amino acids required by insect eating and omnivorous bird species.
So - 90-95% of their feed can be whole grains- no waste no mess- mix in a bit of vegetable oil before feeding if it is dusty-
and only put out as much as they can eat in a day - not two weeks- it attracts vermin and comprises nutrients- resulting in a waste of feed.
The rest of the diet needs to be animal protein and animal fat plus oystershell, calcium carbonate or baked eggshell fragments.
Whole Grain Scratch - mix your own- whole corn, whole millet, whole oats, whole rye, whole barley- its your choice- and yes there are differences in nutritive values of each grain- but lets also deal with the fact that each batch of each grain can differ by a surprising count based on age and just quality- whole grain scratch provides carbohydrates- protein and satiation-
nonetheless, how much $ is whole grain scratch compared with lay pellet? Ask yourselves, how many times has the whole grain that is used to make the pellet/crumble-how many times has it had to be driven about and processed in various ways to become a processed pellet, mash or crumble?
Compare that with how much energy, fuel and so on has gone into harvesting and bagging up whole grains -without processing them into processed feed?
The difference is expressed in terms of price. The difference is substantial in the long term. Get out a calculator.
This makes for a big savings not only because it is cheaper at the onset of the purchase, but also because birds eat much less of it at the end of the day. There is little or no waste and it takes a forenight for a hen to thoroughly digest and breakdown whole grains versus a few minute with the lay pellet.
The complete nutritional balance is not reached feeding scratch exclusively. You will need to supplement some % of the diet with a high quality extruded kibble.
Many people use dried cat food. For those of you that have small enough flocks and can afford it, look into Mazuri brand exotic pheasant kibble.
Better yet, utilize Farmer's Helper brand Poultry Optimizer Kibble. Its expensive but its so packed in optimal nutrients tailored for this specific husbandry strategy- a single forty lb bag will last for months - as only 5 to 10% kibble is mixed into relatively inexpensive, waste free and mess free scratch or wiild bird seed. Additionally ~ 40% Less Feed is ingested a day.The manager puts out that much less food a day because not only do whole grains and kibble take longer to digest- they are also superior in nutrition.
I like fast food here and again, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that cheap fast food is not the best food. Just have a good long look at who is serving it. You can always tell who has been working at these joints for more than six or eight months...When you eat fast food you're hungry again a few hours later. It's designed that way.That' the point.
These big feed companies have us all addicted to fast food for our chickens. We are none the wiser because it seems cheap and the hens are not complaining.
Do yourself a favor and have a good long look at the manure your birds are producing. Take a dropping and dissolve it in a bit of warm water- inside a clear glass.
What do you see? What do you smell? That's undigested nutrients -wasted protein- wasted money staining the water. Droppings should be firm. light weight and fairly free of odor.
If not, you are wasting money and helping your birds decrease their life spans.
Again, only put out what your birds can eat in a few hours. Mix a bit of vegetable oil, or better yet bacon drippings, lard etc into the dry food to bring down the dust.
If you insist on using your lay pellet, mash or crumble, you really owe it to yourself to insure that you saturate the material Lightly with lipids of one edible sort or another.
Dont over do it and remember that sanitation is key- sterilize your feeding dishes as often as humanly possible. If you have a teenager at home playing video games or watching tv
let them know that that privilege begins only after sterilizing the feed and water dishes... it works for me until the cheeky dastards went to college...
to recap: make that switch to whole grains, scratch grain and or wild bird seed- supplement this insufficient though highly palatable and attractive grain/seed diet with
a high quality extruded kibble. For those of you on a very fixed budget, utilize your local dollar store any buy inexpensive dry catfood. Its going to be ~ 20% dry cat food to 75% grain/scratch/seed and 5% oystershell/calcium bicarbonate
If you can afford it and have smaller flocks look for Mazuri brand exotic pheasant kibble- this will be a 75% Mazuri exotic pheasant kibble to 20% grain/seed/scratch and 5% oystershell/calcium bicarbonate
For those of you a bit further on in your husbandry and stewardship, locate a retail outlet for Farmer's Helper Poultry Optimizer Kibble - when using this supplement, its only 5%-10% -depending on the breed and life cycle- kibble- to 90% grain/seed etc.+ calcium bicarbonate or oystershell.
When you do utilize extruded kibbles in place of pellets - DO NOT mix and match them. Each kibble has its own unique vitamin and mineral premix. When you mix dog kibble and cat kibble, poultlry kibble and fish kibble together you are not optimizing your diet - you are only nullifying it. Pick one supplemental kibble and use that exclusively.
Ask yourselves: how much of this "cheap" feed are my girls actually digesting versus ingesting?
What does their manure smell like? Is it reeking with ammonia? Are droppings copious, heavy and wet ? Do your birds seem like they are constantly famished?
Ever feed your kids on cheerios for a few days? How about cheerios with no milk? Think on that.
In the end, when you utilize an extruded kibble in conjunction with whole grains/scratch you can save upwards of 20% of your feed budget- and this includes limiting how much you put out twice a day- rather overfilling hoppers- you cannot limit the amount of lay pellet you put out a day because it is designed to be gorged upon.
Whole grain/scratch= grapenuts
Lay pellet/crumbles = cheerios
which is more filling?
How can you make these cereals more nutritious? By adding milk ( fat/ sugar) and fruit ( vitamins/fiber/antioxidants)
If you cannot get off your lay pellet fix, at least mix rice bran oil into the dry feed and put out dry cat food every two to three days- enough that each hen ingests ~ two tablespoons of it.
1. Layer pellet is a poor choice in the long term because you are not saving money, nor are you enhancing the health of your flock
Layer Pellets/Mashes and Crumbles are inefficient feed because:
a. disintegrate in ambient moisture
b. some percentage is already powder(fines) at the bottom of the bag
c. birds scatter the pellets on the ground while foraging in the hopper
d. pellets disintegrate while being consumed, some percentage is lost from the birds bill
e. a large percentage of the feed is not thoroughly digested; the hens manure is made up of poorly digested material.
2. Layer Pellets/Mashes and Crumbles contribute towards the cycle of disease and infection by:
a. disintegrated pellet fines- a powdery material mixes with fecal material and urea on the ground as the birds habitually scratch about the substrate of their pens.
b. disintegrated pellet fines, fecal material, feather dander and environmental dust cling together to become "poultry smut" the clinging, acrid smelling stuff that coats henhouses walls, perches and wire. Poultry Smut covers everything within a twenty yard radius of a poultry yard. It coats the birds' plumage as well their eggs. Poultry smut is an ideal home for
Mycoplasmas, Psuedomonas and other potentially harmful bacterium. Poultry Smut also feeds external parasites and the odor attracts vermin. Layer pellet is not only largely wasted, it is
c. prone to mold
d. nutrients deteriorate in short time
3. Layer Pellets/Mashes and Crumbles contribute to an unsanitary environment for both birds and people.
a. Poultry smut is inhaled
b. chicks begin their lives in crowded, overly bright ( artificially lit) environments where the air is thick with the dust of chick mash.
Because the chicks are active for extended periods of time , day and night, they cannot help but inhale feed particulates. This material becomes embedded in their air sacs, lungs and sinus cavities.
c.fecal material is copious as birds digest so little, resulting in greater potential for substrate contamination.
d. copious manure results in greater potential for fecal contamination of feedstuffs
e. heavy, wet manure, high in ammonia, produces an unhealthy environment for the birds and can become an issue in urban and suburban regions where there are laws against livestock odor or ordinances prohibiting livestock altogether
f. poultry smut clings to plumage, consequently, birds preen their feathers and in doing so ingest the material, becoming contaminated with fecal material.
I could go on and on here.
Somewhere in the last fifty or so years, someone very inventive realized that waste grain, a biproduct of agricultural commodities grown for human consumption, could be fed to livestock. Grains that are long past their prime are pulverized into fine powder and mixed with synthetic vitamins and minerals; soybean meal and so on to produce layer pellet.
The birds have to gorge on it to become satiated. It may seem relatively inexpensive for those of you that have never kept poultry in the tradition of the Great Depression.
What did poor folk have to feed their poultry then? Did the birds refuse to lay? If this were the case, why is it that poultry farming was the one form of agriculture even the poorest of sharecroppers managed to survive with?
Here is my suggestion. Save money and increase the health of your flock and your family by weaning yourselves of lay pellets, crumbles and mashes.
Why? Take a soil sample in your poultry yard and a few around your home and garden. Ask the health extension what these levels of mycoplasma could mean.
People may have been practicing this form of poultry farming for several decades, but at what cost? Who saved money? How many flocks have had to be replaced due to
infectious respiratory problems? How many hens have ceased laying two or three years into their lifespans? My grandmother's generation never replaced a hen until she were at least eight or nine.
Make that switch over to Whole Grain Scratch, skip the cracked corn if possible and do not buy any feed with raw whole soybeans in the mix.
90-95% of your laying hen's diet can be made up of these whole grains, provided that SUPPLEMENT the diet with the whole amino acids that omnivorous birds require.
That's right, chickens are not vegetarian. Are there any ingredients in your layer pellet that originated in anything but vegetable material? The Good Lord did not create a chicken to scratch the ground and give them a hooked beak to glean grains from the field like a seed eating bird or graze the pasture like a goose. Yes, your chooks can and do consume these feedstuffs but their most important nutrition is going to come from invertebrates, insects, pill bugs and the like and small vertebrates like mice. A free range chicken may
procure a nice portion of live animal food each day, but lets face it, nowhere in these Palearctic regions where we live, would a Junglefowl thrive. Domestic chickens are nothing but tamed Junglefowl. While they are genetically selected to live on inferior feedstuffs like grains and soy, it does not lead to long healthy life spans. It greatly reduces them.
People will chime in how they feed plenty of kitchen scraps to ameliorate their girls diets. But lets be real here. If your children lived on dry cheerios all day every day, would you be content with them gleaning whatever left overs were made available in the compost bucket? Where is the consistency in this form of supplementation?
If you put out bacon grease and fish guts every few days then you are meeting their dietary requirements. Vegetables- yes they will forage on them but what precisely do the birds have to gain from this vegetable material? Fiber, vitamins and a few trace minerals all valuable but useless without adequate amounts of the base amino acids required by insect eating and omnivorous bird species.
So - 90-95% of their feed can be whole grains- no waste no mess- mix in a bit of vegetable oil before feeding if it is dusty-
and only put out as much as they can eat in a day - not two weeks- it attracts vermin and comprises nutrients- resulting in a waste of feed.
The rest of the diet needs to be animal protein and animal fat plus oystershell, calcium carbonate or baked eggshell fragments.
Whole Grain Scratch - mix your own- whole corn, whole millet, whole oats, whole rye, whole barley- its your choice- and yes there are differences in nutritive values of each grain- but lets also deal with the fact that each batch of each grain can differ by a surprising count based on age and just quality- whole grain scratch provides carbohydrates- protein and satiation-
nonetheless, how much $ is whole grain scratch compared with lay pellet? Ask yourselves, how many times has the whole grain that is used to make the pellet/crumble-how many times has it had to be driven about and processed in various ways to become a processed pellet, mash or crumble?
Compare that with how much energy, fuel and so on has gone into harvesting and bagging up whole grains -without processing them into processed feed?
The difference is expressed in terms of price. The difference is substantial in the long term. Get out a calculator.
This makes for a big savings not only because it is cheaper at the onset of the purchase, but also because birds eat much less of it at the end of the day. There is little or no waste and it takes a forenight for a hen to thoroughly digest and breakdown whole grains versus a few minute with the lay pellet.
The complete nutritional balance is not reached feeding scratch exclusively. You will need to supplement some % of the diet with a high quality extruded kibble.
Many people use dried cat food. For those of you that have small enough flocks and can afford it, look into Mazuri brand exotic pheasant kibble.
Better yet, utilize Farmer's Helper brand Poultry Optimizer Kibble. Its expensive but its so packed in optimal nutrients tailored for this specific husbandry strategy- a single forty lb bag will last for months - as only 5 to 10% kibble is mixed into relatively inexpensive, waste free and mess free scratch or wiild bird seed. Additionally ~ 40% Less Feed is ingested a day.The manager puts out that much less food a day because not only do whole grains and kibble take longer to digest- they are also superior in nutrition.
I like fast food here and again, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that cheap fast food is not the best food. Just have a good long look at who is serving it. You can always tell who has been working at these joints for more than six or eight months...When you eat fast food you're hungry again a few hours later. It's designed that way.That' the point.
These big feed companies have us all addicted to fast food for our chickens. We are none the wiser because it seems cheap and the hens are not complaining.
Do yourself a favor and have a good long look at the manure your birds are producing. Take a dropping and dissolve it in a bit of warm water- inside a clear glass.
What do you see? What do you smell? That's undigested nutrients -wasted protein- wasted money staining the water. Droppings should be firm. light weight and fairly free of odor.
If not, you are wasting money and helping your birds decrease their life spans.
Again, only put out what your birds can eat in a few hours. Mix a bit of vegetable oil, or better yet bacon drippings, lard etc into the dry food to bring down the dust.
If you insist on using your lay pellet, mash or crumble, you really owe it to yourself to insure that you saturate the material Lightly with lipids of one edible sort or another.
Dont over do it and remember that sanitation is key- sterilize your feeding dishes as often as humanly possible. If you have a teenager at home playing video games or watching tv
let them know that that privilege begins only after sterilizing the feed and water dishes... it works for me until the cheeky dastards went to college...
to recap: make that switch to whole grains, scratch grain and or wild bird seed- supplement this insufficient though highly palatable and attractive grain/seed diet with
a high quality extruded kibble. For those of you on a very fixed budget, utilize your local dollar store any buy inexpensive dry catfood. Its going to be ~ 20% dry cat food to 75% grain/scratch/seed and 5% oystershell/calcium bicarbonate
If you can afford it and have smaller flocks look for Mazuri brand exotic pheasant kibble- this will be a 75% Mazuri exotic pheasant kibble to 20% grain/seed/scratch and 5% oystershell/calcium bicarbonate
For those of you a bit further on in your husbandry and stewardship, locate a retail outlet for Farmer's Helper Poultry Optimizer Kibble - when using this supplement, its only 5%-10% -depending on the breed and life cycle- kibble- to 90% grain/seed etc.+ calcium bicarbonate or oystershell.
When you do utilize extruded kibbles in place of pellets - DO NOT mix and match them. Each kibble has its own unique vitamin and mineral premix. When you mix dog kibble and cat kibble, poultlry kibble and fish kibble together you are not optimizing your diet - you are only nullifying it. Pick one supplemental kibble and use that exclusively.
Ask yourselves: how much of this "cheap" feed are my girls actually digesting versus ingesting?
What does their manure smell like? Is it reeking with ammonia? Are droppings copious, heavy and wet ? Do your birds seem like they are constantly famished?
Ever feed your kids on cheerios for a few days? How about cheerios with no milk? Think on that.
In the end, when you utilize an extruded kibble in conjunction with whole grains/scratch you can save upwards of 20% of your feed budget- and this includes limiting how much you put out twice a day- rather overfilling hoppers- you cannot limit the amount of lay pellet you put out a day because it is designed to be gorged upon.
Whole grain/scratch= grapenuts
Lay pellet/crumbles = cheerios
which is more filling?
How can you make these cereals more nutritious? By adding milk ( fat/ sugar) and fruit ( vitamins/fiber/antioxidants)
If you cannot get off your lay pellet fix, at least mix rice bran oil into the dry feed and put out dry cat food every two to three days- enough that each hen ingests ~ two tablespoons of it.
Last edited:
- Sep 28, 2008
- 4,801
- 18
- 376
Wow just found this post... Good advice!!! I have always known that bagged feed didn't work for my dog or cat... why in the world would it work for my chickens.. They always seem hungry...I went to feeding bird seed along with wheat etc.... which they love... They eat a LOT less and the droppings are so much fewer.... I can't wait to find the kibble and suet cakes.... Just waiting for daylight here!!! Thanks again Res... I will let the rest of you know how it goes!!!
I feed my cats and dog things they would choose to eat if they were wild... I am sorry folks corn is not it and niether is rice. They also do NOT smell and do not eat nearly as often and are very healthy...All this make complete sense to me... The feed companies market to the masses for best distibution... I am going to get the Tumeric also.. Geez in fact I have a cauliflower in the house that is earmarked for that recipe I looked up!!! Wow... I have a few new brain wrinkles tonight... I feel rich!!
I feed my cats and dog things they would choose to eat if they were wild... I am sorry folks corn is not it and niether is rice. They also do NOT smell and do not eat nearly as often and are very healthy...All this make complete sense to me... The feed companies market to the masses for best distibution... I am going to get the Tumeric also.. Geez in fact I have a cauliflower in the house that is earmarked for that recipe I looked up!!! Wow... I have a few new brain wrinkles tonight... I feel rich!!
Quote:
Hey,
I know the post is old but I am hoping that you will be able to help me.
I am looking for organic layer pellets. The Payback you're using seems to cost $19.99 here in Vancouver,WA. HOw do you get yours so cheap???
Thanks for you help!
Conny
Hey,
I know the post is old but I am hoping that you will be able to help me.
I am looking for organic layer pellets. The Payback you're using seems to cost $19.99 here in Vancouver,WA. HOw do you get yours so cheap???
Thanks for you help!
Conny
$10.00 for 16% Layer pellets (Faithway Feed)
- Mar 23, 2014
- 25
- 2
- 22
mine costs £8.20
I see all these posts were in 2008-9. I'll bet the price of layer pellets have gone up since then.
I'm in Calif and I pay $24 for organic non GMO pellets for 50lb bag. Seems high but I don't buy cheap brands. Here in Northern Calif I buy Bar Ale feed. They are only on Northern Calif.
I'm in Calif and I pay $24 for organic non GMO pellets for 50lb bag. Seems high but I don't buy cheap brands. Here in Northern Calif I buy Bar Ale feed. They are only on Northern Calif.
The price here for non GMO is $20 for 40lbs. Organic is $24. I'm sure Purina is cheaper, but I won't buy it.
What brand do you use?
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