I'm Sending Feed to be Analyzed

[Aunt Angus]

Stay tuned.

 

[Geena]

Every year my chickens almost or completely quit laying from November to January, and I just assumed that's what chickens do. Who knew it was THE MAN trying to screw me over all along.

Don't waste your time or money. If it turns out the feed is exactly as stated on the label with nothing nefarious added, they will just come up with reasons why your test wasn't accurate or applicable to them.

 

[Aunt Angus]

What analysis? What is your benchmark, just the tag guarantees?

I'm just doing this to show folks how unlikely it is that it's the feed. There are too many variables. But folks seem certain that there's something different going on. So when the feed comes back with the same analysis as what's on the label (which is what I'm hearing is the biggest conspiracy atm), then at least that will have been examined. Maybe I'll send some of the other non-tsc stuff, too.

 

[Aunt Angus]

I noticed that, but ya know spreading rumors and conspiracy theory is fun and exciting, spending extra money and doing the testing is not.

I don't mind. It's not that expensive. I've had forage tested before. I'm just waiting for the folks who are convinced our chickens are being manipulated by The Man to tell me which labs. I'm getting crickets... Folks would rather talk about it than actually do anything about it. Their silence is rather proving my point.

 

[Aunt Angus]

I think the key is keeping an open yet critical mind. Profit is an incredible driving force. I have a hard time believing that a producer would want to jeopardize their business by becoming putting out a damaging product. I also have a hard time believing that chicken food sellers would want their customers stop raising chickens.

At the same time, the reality of our times is that a handful of corporations have an incredible amount of control. The corporation is bound to work towards the profitability of the shareholders and not the 'good of the community.' Those do not always coincide.

Also, any time I hear 'conspiracy theory' as a term thrown around to discredit something I have to stop and think of conspiracy theories of years gone by. Operation Northwoods, Operation Mockingbird, MKUltra, Project Sunshine, Gulf of Tonkin, USS Liberty.

Power is also an incredible driving force .... money and power can do make people to crazy things.

At one time the idea that Covid was a byproduct of a bioweapon lab in Wuhan was a crazy conspiracy theory. People that shared facts that supported it were professionally attacked.

I'd feel much more comfortable about all of this if there were test results out already. Why people haven't done this yet is beyond me. There's the one YouTuber, but reading that guy's bio does not instill confidence in a truthful report. Heck, I'm volunteering my time and money and I'm not even one of the affected parties. I've got more eggs than I know what to do with, and I use TSC feeds.

But if so many people all over the country are so concerned, why haven't we seen any actual proof that the feed is to blame? It very well could be the feed.

I'm pretty good at searching for this stuff. But the more I search, the more disheartened I become. It takes about 5 business days to get results from most labs, and there are many labs out there. If this has been reported on since late December/early January...??? I'd be all over it if it were my chickens. I don't want them to be unwell.
I'd switch feed (not to goat feed, for goodness sake) and have my go-to feed tested ASAP. I certainly wouldn't make the light year leap from "my chickens aren't laying well" to "the government/the WEF/Bill Gates is poisoning my chickens to control me" and spread that idea as a fact to the masses without doing some due diligence - which is exactly what's happening to the detriment of society as a whole. And I certainly wouldn't be so irresponsible as to repeat it as a hard truth without some actual proof. And, no - anecdotal evidence is not reliable without something more concrete to substantiate it.

Questioning = good. Making unsupported claims = bad.

 

[Shadrach]

Stay tuned.

Where? The society of gourmet chickens? The confederation of roosters with unappreciative hens?
The methonine rehab clinic for senior hens?

 

[Aunt Angus]

UPDATE:

@Sherry68lynn has kindly offered to send some ad feed my way! Thank you!!!!

I'll send it off as soon as it arrives

 

[Aunt Angus]

can someone in the US explain to one who's not why plain old crime is overlooked in favour of conspiracy theories and weird govt behaviour? We all know food prices have shot up since covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and issues with the food supply chain have been front and centre in media of all sorts. Historically in such circumstances food gets adulterated to make it go further. Animal feed is subject to less checks and interest than human food, so is even more likely to feel the squeeze. And homogenized products, which make it impossible to identify the ingredients on sight, are more obvious candidates for adulteration than recognizable things.

I don't buy commercial feed so I have no flesh in this game and no axe to grind. I just think if a lot of people are complaining about the feed, it is a bit patronizing to suppose they're all idiots, or arrogant to deny their expressed experiences, or lazy to blame social media, or dismissive to label them conspiracy theorists.

I'm not dismissive of the idea that the feed may be altered. It absolutely could be. That's why I am TRYING to get my hands on the "bad" feed to have it analyzed. No one seems to want to help me out, though

But I'm a lil dismissive of the idea that this is all being done deliberately to shut down small scale farmers or price gouge on eggs or to starve people into submission.

 

[3KillerBs]

I know that corn, wheat, etc. grown in poor soil will not be as nutritious. Maybe some lots were made with the "same" but not as high a quality of ingredients?

Feed mills test each batch of ingredients as they come into the mill and adjust their formulation according to that information.

if there really are a measurable number of chicken keepers who are experiencing depressed chicken laying -- taking into consideration time of year and age of flock.

My theory is that people's Covid chickens are hitting their 3rd winter and the natural slowdown to be expected from hens of that age in winter and, because they don't know what's normal for chickens -- it being their first flock -- they think that there is something wrong that must have some kind of external cause.

 

[Aunt Angus]

One person has mailed their feed and sent me the bag's info. I'm hoping to get it this week.

Another edit:
Every single one of my layers laid eggs yesterday. Today, all but two did. Mine are currently on Dumor.

I think I've decided that my chickens are just better than everyone else's.