I have 14 chickens for eggs and went through this egg problem. Bought my feed at TSC. Anyone else experience this?

[batoncolle]

Yes we had an issue. At first I thought people were just blaming the feed for the normal winter/molting, but we're going through it right now actually.

Background
We have 16 chickens and one rooster, and they're in their 3rd year of laying. During the summer months, we typically get 12+ eggs per day. During the winter months, it drops to about 8 - 10 eggs per day. When they molt, it drops to 2 - 4 eggs per day. 90% of the time we give our chickens feed from a local feed store. Occasionally we'll pick up the Tractor Supply chicken feed. Our chickens free range 3 - 4 days per week, and we also give them table scrap treats.

So this winter our chickens molted in December, and by early January we were back up to the normal winter laying of 8 - 10 eggs per day. They have been eating the local feed store feed this entire winter. Approximately two weeks ago we gave them a bag of Tractor Supply feed, and the egg laying has dropped off to no more than 2 eggs per day. Yesterday the TS feed ran out, and we're back to our normal local feed so we'll see what happens.

Btw this was posted on Gab 5 days ago:

BeachMilk on Gab: '“We can CONFIRM now that Tractor Supply's brand o…'

BeachMilk on Gab: '“We can CONFIRM now that Tractor Supply's brand of chicken feed, Producer's Pride 16% Layer Feed Mini Pellets, contains about TWICE the amount of the poisonous weed killer GLYPHOSATE, than any other brand we tested. The next highest brand was Purina Layena Layer Crumbles...

gab.com

 

[rbstern]

Btw this was posted on Gab 5 days ago:

BeachMilk on Gab: '“We can CONFIRM now that Tractor Supply's brand o…'

BeachMilk on Gab: '“We can CONFIRM now that Tractor Supply's brand of chicken feed, Producer's Pride 16% Layer Feed Mini Pellets, contains about TWICE the amount of the poisonous weed killer GLYPHOSATE, than any other brand we tested. The next highest brand was Purina Layena Layer Crumbles...

gab.com

I'm gonna call b.s. on this. First of all, claiming something IN ALL CAPS without any data presented is no better than saying you're "The most trusted name in news..." (CNN). Saying it and it being true are entirely different things.

Second, glysophate, the current legal punching bag for extracting money from Monsanto, is not durable. It breaks down quickly in natural environments, which is why it's so successful as an herbicide. The idea that a brand of chicken feed contains "twice as much glysophate as other brands" may refer to tiny, trace amounts of the the chemical, but I doubt it could be meaningfully measured.

It's an unsupportable claim.

 

[Dice]

Bumbles and his admiserablestration will be coming along soon with a perfectly good explanation

I bet you money Bumbles couldn't boil an egg for himself.

 

[BEREZKA]

I'm gonna call b.s. on this. First of all, claiming something IN ALL CAPS without any data presented is no better than saying you're "The most trusted name in news..." (CNN). Saying it and it being true are entirely different things.

Second, glysophate, the current legal punching bag for extracting money from Monsanto, is not durable. It breaks down quickly in natural environments, which is why it's so successful as an herbicide. The idea that a brand of chicken feed contains "twice as much glysophate as other brands" may refer to tiny, trace amounts of the the chemical, but I doubt it could be meaningfully measured.

It's an unsupportable claim.

Lol "breaks down" its in the food you eat and water you drink. Its part of the reason so many millennials and gen z are gay

 

[batoncolle]

I'm gonna call b.s. on this. First of all, claiming something IN ALL CAPS without any data presented is no better than saying you're "The most trusted name in news..." (CNN). Saying it and it being true are entirely different things.

Second, glysophate, the current legal punching bag for extracting money from Monsanto, is not durable. It breaks down quickly in natural environments, which is why it's so successful as an herbicide. The idea that a brand of chicken feed contains "twice as much glysophate as other brands" may refer to tiny, trace amounts of the the chemical, but I dought it could be meaningfully measured.

It's an unsupportable claim.

I assume you mean glyphosate, and there are ways to test for trace amounts in food and animal feed. https://safefoodalliance.com/testing-analysis/testing-your-product-for-glyphosate/ In fact the FDA does it https://www.fda.gov/food/pesticides/questions-and-answers-glyphosate and they even have home tests now https://detoxproject.org/testing/glyphosate-test-home-food/.

Now whether or not this would have any meaningful impact on egg production, I don't know, and I'm not aware of anything that says it does. If true, it's just another data point.

But based on my recent experience with the TS feed, where nothing else has changed, I won't be using it again.

 

[buellbrewer]

that settles it..Im not using anymore RoundUp.... I don't want to become gay. (not knocking it, just not my thing)

 

[jaxyaks]

I've been feeding purina produced Dumore feed from TSC for 4 years with completely normal laying and molting patters...I guess I know how to pick out the good bags!

I think a lot of this is a whole bunch of amateur new chicken owners around the country that get a big surprise when they realize chickens don't lay eggs all year or every day.

It could be possible that a batch of feed had lower protein content (which will cause a reduction in laying) but I am not sure I would attribute that to a purina led conspiracy, I would probably attribute that to manufacturing feed on a large scale. But I have not seen any batch testing that would show this yet. And those batches would be regional at any rate.

 

[rbstern]

I assume you mean glyphosate, and there are ways to test for trace amounts in food and animal feed. https://safefoodalliance.com/testing-analysis/testing-your-product-for-glyphosate/ In fact the FDA does it https://www.fda.gov/food/pesticides/questions-and-answers-glyphosate and they even have home tests now https://detoxproject.org/testing/glyphosate-test-home-food/.

Now whether or not this would have any meaningful impact on egg production, I don't know, and I'm not aware of anything that says it does. If true, it's just another data point.

But based on my recent experience with the TS feed, where nothing else has changed, I won't be using it again.

Fair enough.

 

[jamie1475]

I have only six hens but I get 4-5 eggs daily summer or winter. Never fed Tractor Supply food though. FRM from local feed store and haven't had an issue.

 

[GeauxLSU]

Don't have them anymore but fed mine some high dollar organic, non GMO, high protein, blah blah, from the local feed store. Wasn't Dumar. They free ranged. Production would go to ZERO in the winter. Start slowly picking up in the spring. I didn't use lights.
Copper Moran, Easter egger, Americana.