![]() Jeff Mattocks, Rip Stavely, and Karen Johnston of Poultry Keepers 360 (PK360) recently did a fantastic video titled, " Why is that in my feed, and what is it for? " PK360 also breaks down several other crucial topics on raising poultry. It wouldn’t be cost-effective or ethical.) (Still - no, the feed manufacturers are not putting hormones in feed. This doesn’t necessarily mean the feed is bad for your birds, but it may mean the feed is less nutritionally beneficial than it was previously. produce eggs. With rising costs, it’s no secret that feed manufacturers are looking for ways to cut costs by switching out ingredients for cheaper alternatives (for example: switching out wheat for corn or whole-roasted soybeans for soybean meal). ![]() In fact, they’re the cheapest feed brands available at my local TSC (and probably yours, too).Ĭheap feed often means that your birds may not get the essential vitamins, minerals, protein levels, and amino acids needed to 1. No, RNA is not causing your chickens to stop laying.Ĭhickens may stop laying for any number of reasons, including:įeed Quality - I've said this before, and I will say it again: cheap feed does not mean good feed. Producer's Pride and Dumor are about as cheap as you can get. If there is RNA present, it is simply because of the plants and animal protein used to manufacture the feed.Īddressing the rumor: No, chicken feed is not being pumped full of RNA. Big box feed companies are not adding RNA to chicken feed. It is not a "hormonal additive" that can be added to chicken feed. The reality: RNA is very similar to DNA and is essentially present in all cells of people, animals, and plant life. People say their hens started laying again once they switched their chicken feed to locally made or higher-quality feed. Surely this means that something in the Purina-manufactured feed prevents hens from laying, right? Preventing hens from laying eggs would force everyone, including backyard chicken keepers, to buy high-priced eggs from the grocery store. The theory is that this RNA stops chickens from laying eggs. The rumor: Purina is putting Ribonucleic Acid (RNA) in chicken feed. Purina is owned by Land-O-Lakes, which is not only a popular butter brand, but also supplies eggs to big box stores. ![]() Long story short: Producer's Pride and Dumor are white-label brands sold by Tractor Supply, and manufactured by Purina. (TSC) branded chicken food called Producer's Pride and Dumor. Either could reject or abandon the other without warning, so be sure to keep a brooder setup handy in case the grafting fails.I've recently seen a lot of misinformation circulating online due to the latest TikTok conspiracy: Tractor Supply Co. I always recommend keeping a close watch on the behavior of the surrogate hen and the chicks when facilitating surrogacy. They will imprint on her up until then, but beyond that age, they may not. ![]() Only attempt the Instamom route with chicks that are younger than 5 days old. She will wake up in the morning with her mission fulfilled, blissfully unaware that she didn’t hatch the chicks herself. #chickenmath The process for grafting chicks to a broody hen is simple: wait until she is asleep at night and tuck the chicks underneath her. Given that my local Tractor Supply Stores are brimming with spring chicks, I can buy baby chicks to give to Ellen to raise. The worst case scenario of employing this strategy with an untested broody is that she could kill the chicks. The fourth option for managing a broody hen is chicken surrogacy: make her an Instamom! I only recommend this route with a hen who has demonstrated previously that she is a good mother. I could give the eggs to Ellen to hatch, which would spare her the full course of broodiness and negative health consequences associated with it, but I’d rather watch the chicks hatch inside the incubator with my peeps on Facebook Live!Ĥ. I was gifted some Silkie hatching eggs by legendary poultry author, Gail Damerow several weeks ago, which have been developing in my office in an incubator. A hen has no concept of time, she doesn’t know it takes three weeks to hatch chicks from eggs, so it’s entirely possible to take eggs out of an incubator and give them to a broody hen to finish the job. Broody hens do not announce their intent to sit, which makes it impossible to rely on them to hatch when it is convenient for us, such as when we have eggs we’d like to set. ![]()
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