There are some people at my local
Tractor Supply that are pretty knowledgeable. Then there are the others. People are people.
There are three different textures, mash, crumbles, and pellets from the major suppliers. Someone can always come up with an exception, but I'm talking about the major name brands. They make mash by gringing up the different feed components to basically a powder. They make pellets by taking that mash, getting it wet to form a paste, extruding it in that cylinder shape, drying it, and breaking the cylinders off so you get the final shape. To make crumbles, they crack the pellets. The texture does not matter as far as nutritional value. The only reason for the different textures is that different automatic feeding systems work better with different textures.
Then you get the different named feeds. With the exception of Layer, the main difference in any of them is protein, listed as a percent. These percents can be off just a tad, but should be close to what you see.
Starter = 22% to 24%
Grower = 16%
Combined Starter/Grower = 20%
Flock Raiser = 20%
Grower/Developer = 15%
Layer is usually 16%. The difference with the others is that the Layer has a higher percent of calcium for the hens to use for egg shells. You should not feed Layer to growing chicks because the higher calcium can damage their internal organs.
The normal progression is Starter for the first 4 to 8 weeks, then Grower until 20 weeks or they start to lay. But it is really not that critical to follow the exact progression. Some of us don't have all the options available, so we mix and match as we can or as we wish. My only real rule is to not feed them Layer while they are still growing.
