Feed Changes

Hi all,

Most of you are aware that we recently changed the prices of our eggs. I wanted to give a little insight into why we made the change. The two major factors were:

• Using a local mill and local feed company (not a big box store)

• Quality of the feed

What sparked this sudden change revolved around a few things:

• The feed conspiracy

  • If you do a quick google search of “chicken feed conspiracy” you will find that a lot of people are saying the big box feed providers changed the feed to slow and\or stop egg production in backyard hens. Apparently most of the feed providers are also the egg producers. I personally dont believe it, but stranger things have come to be true!

• Low winter egg production

  • We were getting 15 to 20 eggs a day in the fall, and then after the first really cold spell we dropped to around 5 to 10 eggs a day.

• Partial flock molting

  • Also after the first big cold spell, around 5 or so of the hens went into molt. During molting the hens stop laying eggs and also require much more protein to help regenerate their feathers.

• The egg industry as a whole raising prices

  • Initially I started selling my eggs at a higher cost to actually make a bit of profit on them. What I found out was the market was flooded with cheap eggs, and people wanted cheap eggs over high quality pastured organic eggs, so I lowered my prices to get the eggs out the door. As time went on and people noticed the high quality of our eggs we saw the demand for them go up drastically. That demand and the rest of the egg industry collapsing gave me the opportunity to upgrade the feed and to raise the prices to not take a loss.

The images below show the old organic feed vs. the new organic feed. The hens love the new feed! During the transition I was giving them both, and they would only eat the new feed. That showed me that we made the correct decision…well that and the fact that egg production is around 20 eggs a day and all the molting finished very quickly after the change.

Old pellet ( left ) vs new cracked grain ( right )

Old scratch grain ( left ) vs new ( right )