Starting my bunch on Nutrena since my local co-op doesn't sell much of the all flock feed and it is bug riddled after a few days of having it. The Nutrena All-flock sure smells good and the 40# bags will actually be a help to me with a small flock. I added a small amount to their existing feed to try and get them used to the new, I also put some out for a "treat" and they seem to be eating it right off.
My co-op fella said I was supposed to be feeding a layer feed instead of the low calcium high protein feed hence the reason it is so old and pest riddled apparently....so I went to TSC and retrieved my new feed. I hate to not do business local but that's the way it goes sometimes. Guess he should be reading this forum!! LOL
In defense of the local co-op guy, they are likely supporting commercial poultry operations by mom and pops under contract to egg purchasers. For those buyers, margins are so very tight, that a cheaper, minimally nutritious feed to get the birds through a year of production before being "repurposed" is the only thing that makes economic sense.
There are few studies, sadly, but the one I'm most familiar with indicated that the differences between a 16% crude protein feed and a 20% crude protein feed of near identical AA profile increased egg size, and egg frequency of lay as well as slight improvement in feed efficiency and reeduced mortality. That's the positive.
Now the details. Those improvements were measurable, but generally in the realm of 1-3%. about 1gm in egg weight, on average. perhaps as many as 10 additional eggs in a production year from a single bird. Maybe you lose only 98 birds in a year out of a flock of 4,000 instead of 100. On the other hand, your feed cost jumps probably 20%.
On a commercial scale, under commercial managment, that's just not good business.
The flip side is most of us BYCers, whose birds are more pet than commodity. There the couple extra dollars in feed each year for a bird that both looks, and is, healtheir, that molts faster, and is more disease resistant, generally better "put together" and likely to live longer if repurposing of the commercial layers didn't occur makes good economic sense.
There is no one right way. There are thousands of wrong ways. Feeding your birds is part of a system - what is best for one is not always best for others. Though All FLock + Oyster shell is, in my opinion, the best choice for the majority of BYCs with the majority of flocks. Pure commercial layer flocks and flocks of pure "meaties" being both extremes, for which differing feed methods make much more sense.
