People who have the misfortune of spending a lot of time with me know that I have a tendency to talk about chickens. One person even went so far as to call me an expert. Flattering, yes, but I don’t expect there are enough years left for me on this rock to truly attain expert status. I estimate most subjects take a solid 20 years or so to become a competent amateur. But I’m having fun, so I think I’ll just keep on trying for those poultry merit badges as long as I can.
This Wyandotte is trying to count her eggs before they’re laid.
Much has been made of a new type of arithmetic —chicken math— that Americans have been exploring these past few years. They think having a few chickens will be fun, save them money on eggs, and provide them with better food. Well… a possible 2 out of 3 ain’t bad! Somewhere along the way, a few of us get the chicken bug — 3 chickens lead to 7, 7 lead to 13, 13 lead to 27 and a pair of goats, and the next thing you know the honey-do list has ‘build an ark’ on it and your coffee table is covered in books titled “Understanding Cubits” and “How to Compost Manure Before it Buries Your House”. There is another type of math many people don’t seem to be aware of and the recent scuttlebutt around the interweb suggests they ought to learn this quickly — it’s a little ol’ thing we call feed math, and it’s a very big deal at Star & Sparrow.
For those of you with the strength to avoid social media (#respect), the controversy of late is that many people have found that their chickens aren’t laying this winter and have decided it has something to do with the big corporate commodity feed they’re buying from Rural Lifestyles R’ Us. It is true that poultry feed, like so many things, has been impacted by the last few years’ worth of major global events (#pandemic #inflation #hashtag). Maybe a few of these people are right and something fishy is happening over at Big Feed; it’s happened before. We saw a big difference in feed quality ourselves, though it never seemed to impact bird health or egg laying volumes directly. Our issue had more to do with the feed being finer (as a consequence of the surplus being drawn down), drier, and coming out of the mill much more powdery than usual. This made waste more of an issue, but didn’t seem to affect our bird health and performance negatively. In fact, it led to an improvement.
In order to prevent the feed fines from being wasted, we started feeding less food so the chickens would clean up every last bit. Once we saw that there was no more powder left in the feeders, we increased the rations until they started to leave a little bit behind. Eventually, we found the right amount (#happy) but along the way something very cool happened –– our egg production increased! (#evenbetter) We don’t call them feather-pigs for nothing. There is such a thing as over-feeding chickens, and a drop in egg production is a common result. For those of you that are interested, our basic feed math for adult birds looks like this:
16% protein organic layer mash with calcium between 3% and 4% at a rate of 0.2 pounds (3.2 ounces) per chicken. For all other bird types (except quail) we feed the same thing and multiply it by their chicken-equivalent (Muscovy = chicken x 1.3, geese = chicken x 4 unless they are on pasture daily, then geese count as 2 chickens).
Now you might think “great!” I’ve got an expert’s magic feed math! But hold on there, partner. First, how fine is your feed? If you’re feeding crumble, that coffee can you’re scooping with is going to hold less of your feed than it will mine. And if you’re feeding pellets, it might be less by volume, but more by weight! Also, your chickens are not on our pasture, so their diet can never be identical. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it at least 99 more times — always do your own math.
If you’ve been struggling this winter with your egg production (or just want some insight into what us chicken people are going through as you shake your head at the current price of eggs), here are a few things to consider:
How old are your hens? If they’re over 3, they’re basically pets. Pets are fine, but those are bonus eggs — do not count them before they’re laid!
What kind of hens are they? Our leghorns are laying machines, they give us so many eggs… even though we can’t find 10% of them. Our Ameraucanas, not so much, and sometimes nothing all winter long.
Do you have Easter Eggers? Are they from a backyard breeder that started less than 20 years ago? Ameraucana are commonly used to make Easter Eggers — combine that with a low bar for selection and you’ve got: more pets, less eggs.
Is it cold? Is it hot: are you heating a coop too much? Are they stressed by predators, roosters, flying monkeys, Mark Zuckerberg, or two year olds? More stress = less eggs.
And last, but probably not even close to last, are you feeding them anything other than their properly formulated chicken feed? Feather-pigs, remember? They will happily gobble up all those fresh organic veggie scraps, bugs, pasture plants, flowers, and occasionally your nylon tarps. Everything they eat changes the balance of nutrition — a 16% protein feed going into a crop already full of carbohydrates from your kitchen means they are getting a lot less than 16% protein.
And that’s just off the top of this amateur’s head. I like a good conspiracy theory as much as the next person, but let’s remember what the most common factor in all our efforts are — us!
Update:
In the few days since I wrote this, there has a been an proliferation of conspiracy theories in fantasy land, I mean um… the wonderful world of social media, about feed problems and lack of laying. Everything from an increase in the amount of glyphosate (Roundup) in conventional feed (very believable) all the way to major feed producers deliberately reformulating chicken feed to halt egg laying. Though I have no credible sources to reference on these stories, I find the latter very intriguing considering the deep well of anxiety felt in our society about the power and control that so many large companies wield over our lives. It is also a wickedly ingenious way for an industry to recoup profits after being devastated by government mandates to destroy birds, IF it is true that feed quality is being undermined deliberately. In the meantime, we have had no issues with our feed other than the above-mentioned over-feeding issue from last year. At the risk of sounding boastful, we do get very positive feedback on the quality of our eggs. This might have something to do with paying top dollar for certified organic feed sourced in our region and milled for us by a company with which we have a direct, first name-basis relationship. Now, before crying fowl (haha sorry, couldn’t resist) when I tell you that our chicken eggs technically cost between $16 and $20 a dozen to produce (the labor being 75 to 80 percent of that), let me remind you that we do a lot of math here. Eggs at the current prices are not expensive. The more accurate way to look at this is that Americans have been getting away with highway robbery while expecting what would normally be a seasonal product to be cheap and available all the time. Just FYI — beef is probably next, and if weather and political volatility continue to increase, staple crop prices will likely become increasingly unpredictable. Sorry for the gloomy post-script. Next time I will try to write about something more fun. We are expecting something other than pennies on the dollar from our eggs soon — something very cute and fluffy!