Chicken or the Egg First?

My vote is going to be the egg. The egg is packed with all kinds of nutrients, proteins and fats to feed either us or a chick. If you don’t feed the breeders well, the egg won’t have the best nutrition in it. Remember the old saying, “you are what you eat”? In this case it is very true. An egg is made up of many parts and each play an important role in chick development. If the nutrients are not available, it may quit development altogether. If it does fully develop and hatches, it may have deformities or unseen issues and die then, this is called lack of vigor or failure to thrive. If it lives beyond a few days, remember it is still surviving on the yolk sack nutrients for a few days, it may not have the best chance to live to its full potential.

If you want your birds to be healthy and their offspring to be healthy, spend a couple extra dollars per bag of feed and give them quality feed to live up to their best genetic potential and to provide your family with the most nutritious eggs.

I personally find the Kalmbach feeds work really well and fairly readily available. I use a combo of Tucker Milling Feed and Kalmbach feeds with the Fertrell supplement. Grit! Grit! Clean water.

If you would like more detailed info on exactly what a feed label should look like, I encourage you to visit Poultry Nutrition Group and Poultry Keepers 360 on Facebook and look in the files section.