⠀ Our chickens stopped dying or reproductive organ failure when we switched to this feed.

[gabscilla]

My 4-Hers have golden sexlinks, black sexlinks, and red sexlinks, that they get through the Chick Chain each year. They have has as many as 60 birds. They have 47 right now. They sell the eggs and this money is used for spending as well as college/"flying the coop" savings. A year ago we started losing birds unexpectedly. They have a guardian dog, so they have never lost chickens to predators. This is unusual around here. Everyone else we know loses their chickens to predators before they reach "old age". She is a really amazing dog. (Great Pyrenees, for anyone interested.) So when they noticed a sick bird and then she died it was unexpected, for sure. Then a few days later another. We had that chicken tested for parasite and bacteria at the local vet. He couldn't find anything and so he sent her to the state lab for testing. They returned results of infection in the vent and broken egg. The next two birds came back with the same results and we were told it was reproductive organ failure due to the birds aging and laying an egg every single day. These egg production birds tend to wear out early, we were told. We lost 5 chickens total.

We had always fed them either co-op layer pellets or DuMOR layer pellets and offered calcium or oyster shell on the side. Sometimes we mixed it into their food. We also felt that the eggs still had thinner shells than store bought eggs no matter how we tried to remedy it. So, we took the plunge and switched to the Purina layena pellets with Omega 3. We are so happy we switched. We haven't lost a single bird since. That was 9 months ago. I wish I had known there was a 30 day challenge.

I did the 30 day challenge when Purina came out with Purina One Smart Blend for Seniors dog food. My senior house dog (lab mix) went from acting too old to move much to acting like a puppy. It was a good food for him. We don't use Purina for our livestock guardian dog. We use Victor High Performance for her. This is better for her, as a working dog. But we do love Purina, products overall. And I am glad to have the ability to share our experience, and satisfaction with this food.

 

[sourland]

Interesting post.

 

[ChickNanny13]

Curious, what is the protein % in the Dupont Layer vs Purina Layena?

 

[gabscilla]

Curious, what is the protein % in the Dupont Layer vs Purina Layena?

LOL! So sorry! It's Dumor not Dupont. I need to correct that in the post. According to Purina mills website and Tractor Supply's website they both have 16% protein.

 

[ChickNanny13]

Looked it up on the internet, Dumor came up so thought maybe a typo

I was purchasing Home Grown feed (Dels/TSC but once they were out & gave me Dumor. Tried it but did not like it at all. The poop was very dark & soft to runny, poo stunk so bad even when fermented. I then searched others opinions, alot said the same about it. I switched to Flock Raiser (Oyster Shells in a separate dish) and never looked back.

Sorry to learn it caused issues with your chickens. Hope you wrote the company of your Vet findings. Here in Hawaii we don't have the selection you all have nor availability, and when shipments can't come in due to high and/or turbulent ocean, we take whatever we can. We used be able to get Layena here but not anymore, heard it was a good feed.

 

[gabscilla]

Looked it up on the internet, Dumor came up so thought maybe a typo

I was purchasing Home Grown feed (Dels/TSC but once they were out & gave me Dumor. Tried it but did not like it at all. The poop was very dark & soft to runny, poo stunk so bad even when fermented. I then searched others opinions, alot said the same about it. I switched to Flock Raiser (Oyster Shells in a separate dish) and never looked back.

Sorry to learn it caused issues with your chickens. Hope you wrote the company of your Vet findings. Here in Hawaii we don't have the selection you all have nor availability, and when shipments can't come in due to high and/or turbulent ocean, we take whatever we can. We used be able to get Layena here but not anymore, heard it was a good feed.

I had not heard that about Dumor. I did speak extensively with several co-op representatives about it. All of them insisted, even after further research, that they had never heard a complaint like ours. I did not even think to contact Dumor. We tried to buy the co-op brand feed the most because it is local and we try to always shop local first. But their store hours are shorter and so sometimes we'd be scrambling to get feed on Sunday when the kids would decide to tell us the chickens were completely out of food. When I spoke to a local feed mill about switching to his feed (as recommended by other 4-H Chick Chain families) he explained to me that his feed was formulated especially for game birds and also that switching the feed needs to happen over a couple of weeks time because it can upset the chicken's digestive systems. It was then that we decided to go with a Tractor Supply feed that we can get consistently even though that means traveling to the town next door to get it. And we settled on the Purina because of past experience and especially because of the added oyster shell since we weren't convinced that our free range chickens were eating enough oyster shell or calcium carbonate on their own. Although it would be more cost effective to give them oyster shell separately along with co-op brand layer pellets. But having those added Omega 3 fatty acids was a big bonus and their customers like knowing that too.