What's the best brand of chick starter?

[welovechickens]

My 13 chickens have already finished off about 40lbs of chick starter! This first bag was Purina Start & Grow. What other brands are good-quality?

We bought a 50lb bag of Golden Oak chick starter from a local feed store because it was cheaper, but it was full of powder! Nasty. We started feeding it to the chicks and they are fine, but I am still a bit concerned about the quality.

 

[Hangin Wit My Peeps]

I always used Purina becasue it's animal by-product free.

 

[4-H chicken mom]

I feed Purina Show Chow to my chicks including my meat birds. It gets them off to a real good start.

 

[Schroeder]

Does it matter if you switch brands each time you buy a new bag?

 

[speckledhen]

Doesn't matter if you switch. I raised my first batch on the Purina, but the last several batches have had the Tucker Milling starter and/or ADM Alliance Pen Pals, both of which contain animal protein. I'd rather have animal protein in mine.

 

[Glenda L Heywood]

your looking at the way the feed is milled
and all dust doesn't really make it better
generally chicks do not like it dusty
I would read the label against the purina feed label
and ofcourse corn will be the bggest part of the crumbles
then as it lists the next ingredient you will then be able to see what is in it as to what is in purina

 

[desertgirl]

Quote:
WHy?

 

[ChooksChick]

Quote:
It can have different ingredients in it for the medication- if you're using medicated- be certain that it has the same goods.

I used the Manna Pro medicated starter and hated buying the little 3# bags (all I can get) and went to the kind our feed store sells in 40# bags- not the same thing! The chicks hated it, and it didn't have the same medication, anyway. I gave it to my neighbor.

Back to the tiny bags until I can find Manna Pro in big bags!

 

[cockadoodle]

I started mine on the ManaPro medicated starter and realized soon that those small bags were going to end up costing me a fortune. After my first bag ran out, I switched to Nutrena starter. 50lb bag, only cost 3 times more than the small manaPro stuff but easily has 10 times more food. I compared bag tags and the ingredients as well as percentages of protein, etc seemed nearly identical. My chickens don't appear to notice any difference in this nutrena food at all. My wallet definitely prefers it.

~Mark

 

[MoodyChicken]

I like MannaPro chick starter. It's expensive but it's a good feed. Very small for very small chicks.