My chickens prefer crumbles and my smallest bantams like the seramas and japanese either can't or completely refuse to eat pellets. Which is fine cause crumbles is all I can get at nearby stores. Pellets though will have less waste and cost you less in the end than crumbles.
All of mine like crumbles better. They seem to have more waste with pellets they scratch the pellets every where. I feel thcrumbles are easier for they to eat.
Mine prefer crumbles. If I had made the switch to pellets when they first switched to layer feed, I think they would have taken to them better. I waited until they had been laying for about 6 months, then didn't realize that they weren't eating much of the pellets. I thought the feed was lasting longer because they weren't wasting as much.
They free ranged daily, so got much of what they needed from the yard. Then I built them a pen, and the pellets still didn't seem to be getting eaten. Egg production dropped to nearly zero. I switched them back to crumbles, and, I'll be darned if egg production didn't go back to normal in about 3 weeks.
That was in the summer. No one had been molting. NOW, they are molting, so egg production is down again. I will stick with crumbles. Switch to pellets early if you're going to do it.
For some of us with larger flocks waste is a big issue, so the pellets offer us a little savings, but they are better for large fowl, although my quail love them just as well.