Old chicken keeper told me I was feeding my flock all wrong

I was giving my hens straight scratch grain for months until a guy at the feed store said they need a balanced layer feed with at least 16% protein. He showed me how my birds were getting fat but not laying well because of all the corn. Has anyone else had a big change in egg production after switching up their feed?

2 comments

2 Comments

amyb5416d ago

Wait, you mean straight corn isn't a complete diet for chickens?

robert24816d ago

Yeah I mean "straight corn isn't a complete diet" sounds like something you'd read on a bag of feed or hear from some chicken keeping influencer. But let's be real here, chickens have been scratching around farms eating whatever they find for centuries. My grandma kept chickens her whole life and they mostly got table scraps and whatever bugs they could find, none of them died from malnutrition. I'm not saying ignore the science completely but sometimes people online act like you need a PhD to feed a bird. If you're giving them a mix of stuff and they seem healthy I wouldn't lose sleep over it.