At Tractor Supply last month I made a terrible mistake. Acting on the advice of another customer who seemed to know a lot about chickens, I bought a bag of Producer’s Pride Layer Feed Mini Pellets instead of Dumar’s Layer Feed Pellets, the brand I’d been giving my flock for over a year. As I soon learned, chickens hate change and refused to eat the new offering. But I wondered, would they dislike all new offerings? Or did I have to go back to their original feed? So I made another trip to Tractor Supply and bought five additional varieties and did the experiment.
To provide the different feeds to the chickens I constructed mini feeders out of tonic water bottles, then filled them as follows (going from left to right in photo below):
- DuMor Layer Pellets
- DuMor Organic Layer Crumbles
- DuMor Layer Mini Pellets
- Producer’s Pride Layer Mini Pellets
- Flock Party Egg Layer Pellets
- Purina Layer Pellets.
Below are photographs that show levels remaining in the bins for 10 days.
My five hens strongly preferred DuMor Organic Layer Crumbles. They consumed it so quickly that it will be the only feed I buy in the future, though I will definitely give the non-organic ($5-cheaper) version a try. The only drawback, as many customers point out on reviews, is that a portion of the bag is powderized and thus wasted. If the bag has been handled a lot the waste is apparently substantial. Here’s a photograph showing the remaining power:
DuMor Layer Mini Pellets, Purina Layer Pellets, and Flock Party Egg Layer Pellets (ranked #2, 3, and 4) were acceptable to the chickens but clearly not something they were super excited to eat.
They clearly disliked their original feed, DuMor Layer Pellets, which I found surprising. I feel awful for giving it to them for years.
Finally, they absolutely refused to eat the Producer’s Pride Mini Layer Pellets, choosing instead to forage on the ground for spilled pellets from any of the other 5 options. I was curious whether they’d eat the feed before starving to death but in the end decided to end the experiment early. It turns out that this was the cheapest feed, too.
The other big surprise in writing this post is that I couldn’t locate similar experiments to reference. If you know of any, please leave a comment.
If you want to see my chicken coop, here’s a blog post with details.
Just looked at the BlogPost about your chicken coop and it reminded me of a great book – mostly about building a chicken coop – Chickens, Gin, and a Maine Friendship: The Correspondence of E. B. White and Edmund Ware Smith
Thank you for the experiment. We noticed a reduction in eggs and a reduction in consumption. Our birds free range so they get a lot of natural. Maybe why we still had between 20 and 50% production. We switched their feed to small producers goat feed for supplement. 1 day it will be down next day all of them lay. It’s only been for a few days, waiting to see if we go back to consistent laying. Note: we live in south Texas and rarely have much of a drop off in production. This batch of birds are young, healthy and most of the pure breed is bread out.
Thank you, Dave
We just reluctantly bought a bag of Dumor organic crumbles as tractor supply was out of stock of our normal crumbles. Egg production was at best 35% of normal egg count. Switched back to our regular feed today. I’m expecting that egg production will get back to normal soon. I had heard/seen of many similar experiences with this brand, I believe made by Purina.
Hope they are back to normal. Do you think it was because they ate less of the organic one? Or was it something about the organic crumbles?
This is very interesting. I was told that the DuMor Layer Pellets was a Tractor Supply re-branding of the Purina Layer Pellets. If this is true, it is odd they would be consumed at different rates.
That’s indeed very interesting. I didn’t know about the funny business with re-branding, but am not surprised now that I’m told. I did some quick searching and also found that it might be regionally different, so perhaps that’s an explanation for my finding. E.g., it might be essentially the same recipe and with same owners, but ingredients differ in some small way that might vary. The other possibility for my result is that it was merely a position effect. I had no replication so that’s always a possibility.
My chickens prefer crumbles over pellets. I used to put some pellets through a grinder for my bantams. If I then ran low on pellets, I’d pull from the crumbles I made. It was the same feed, Purina Layena, and the chickens would eat the crumbles, leaving the pellets. So, that’s one thing to consider in experimenting with the feed. I like Purina, but their price increase has made it challenging to continue to use it.
Packaged dates, and/or expiration dates would have helped.
My chickens are not fussy and actually do seem to enjoy a variety instead of always having the same thing. Nine times out of 10 I buy pellets because there is no waste. Crumbles always end up spread throughout the grass and on the ground and end up being feed for Slugs. I have used almost every brand of feed imaginable. Producers Pride is consistently their least favorite. It is well worth $1.20 per bag more to get DUMOR. The chickens like it better, the egg shells are better, and egg production is better. Nowadays, anything higher priced than DUMOR is usually only bought with coupons or when on sale.
Excellent info. Thank you!