I’ll expand a bit on what Percheron said. When the big commercial operations make chicken feed they add all the various ingredients and grind it to a powder. This is called mash. To make pellets that take mash, wet it to make a paste, and extrude it through a dye. They flash dry it as it is extruded and break it off into short lengths. To make crumble they partially crush the pellets. The form of the feed has nothing to do with the nutrients in it. It just depends on what ingredients they start with for that specific feed.
One of the major reasons they do this is that different automatic feed dispensers work best with different forms, mash, pellets, or crumbles. Waste is a consideration but so is moving it to the feeders and the types of feeders.
Another consideration is that with mash the different components can separate out based on densities. The denser particles sink to the bottom so the chickens may not be getting as good of a balanced diet as you expect. If it is mixed up, then wet, then dried it stays mixed.
A typical way to get around this is to mix the mash and wet it before you feed it. It keeps it mixed and it can cut down on waste with the right feeders. A potential problem with this is that if they don’t clean it up the wet mash can go sour or mold. Commercial operations get around this by only feeding what they can clean up in a short time, then waiting until they are hungry to feed them some more. They know exactly how much feed they want each chicken to eat. This timed feeding in portions keeps the food hogs from keeping the weaker chickens from eating their portion.
I’ve never done fermented feed. There are probably a few tricks to that but it should work well with mash. If you use crumbles or pellets they will dissolve in the liquid too so they will also work as fermented feed.
I also strongly suggest you look at the label. Chickens need a balanced diet, including certain amino acids usually added to feed. I don’t know what that mill is using in their feed. It’s quite possible the price is less because they don’t go through the full manufacturing process or are using local ingredients so transportation costs are less. That would be great. Or they may not be using all the ingredients they really need to. Not so great.
