This past week, I spent an hour on my radio show talking about an issue I knew nothing about just 24 hours before. I had gone home from my office and my daughter asked me about chicken eggs. Her teacher has some chickens and the chickens had stopped laying eggs. Rumors were circulating that corporations were putting something new in the chicken feed that stopped egg production.
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Finally, somebody's showing some common fucking sense.
Yes, people's chickens did stop laying. No, I don't think it had much if anything to do with feed. It's a normal cycle, and people that have raised chickens for at least a couple years will recognize that.
It's a plain and simple fact that unless the birds are put under lights when the days start getting shorter, they'll either slow down drastically or will quit laying completely during the winter months. Sometimes they'll lay normally through their first winter, depending on the breed, but the natural cycle kicks in after the first winter.
Why? It's nature's way of protecting them. Check it out: Chickens molt during the winter. They lose most of their feathers and look downright pitiful, all scraggly looking and shit. Seriously, they're uglier than that 2 AM Last Call girl at the bar. If they're laying while trying to regrow feathers, it puts too much strain on their little bodies and can kill them.
Why do chickens molt and lose all their feathers in the winter instead of the spring when they won't need them as much to stay warm? Fuck if I know, they just do. Mother Nature's a cruel bitch.
Okay, not all birds molt during their first winter. None of my Leghorns or Naked Necks molted during their first winter, and they did continue to lay, but just not as much. My newest additions, the Buff Orpingtons, didn't shed a feather this year and started laying between Christmas and New Year's.
So, like the author of the article, what I think happened with the feed thing is that there's been a jump in popularity for backyard chickens over the past two years. People bought chickens for their first time and they laid fine during the first winter, but when the second winter hit, the birds quit and instead of doing a little fucking research to find out why, they immediately blamed the feed. Somebody started the rumor that Tractor Supply's Producer's Pride layer feed and Dumor grain was causing chickens to quit laying and everybody jumped on it, blaming the feed for all kinds of shit. I even saw one woman that posted a video on youtube blaming the feed for her chicken's feathers falling out. I'm not kidding. I checked her comments and there were about 75 of them, and to her followers' credit, most of them were denouncing her as an idiot.
But people love a conspiracy theory. I saw another video where another girl said her birds quit laying completely, but then she switched from Producer's Pride (the feed that got the blame) to Purina and what do you know, her chickens started laying the very next day.
Okay, two things. Number One - had she had even a little knowledge about the laying cycles of chickens, she'd know that it takes about 26 hours for an egg to develop inside the bird which means that first egg was formed from the nutrients of the feed she blamed. That bird was going to drop an egg even if she hadn't fed it at all the day before.
Number Two - she switched from Producer's Pride to Purina and they miraculously started laying again.
Sweetheart, I hate to tell you this but Producer's Pride is made by Purina. It even says so right on the bag if you look close enough. I'll admit you look cute in your new Carhartt knit cap, but you ain't got much else going on up there.
Purina is such a large company that I'd be willing to bet they make a huge amount of the feed sold under different brand names in farming supply stores for folks that have backyard chickens.
I have a few homesteading/prepper channels that keep popping up on my youtube. I do watch them occasionally if the subject line catches my attention. Some of them I watch a little more regularly than others. Maybe I should say I did watch a little more regularly. There's a few I'll never watch again because they jumped on the bandwagon and helped perpetuate the rumor. I mean, these people claim to be helping but not a single one I saw offered a solution to replace the protein that's allegedly not at the right level for laying feed. All they did was smear the feed, making me wonder if they don't know these simple facts about chickens, what else are they trying to push over on their viewers?
Okay, one more thing. I want to say that if I'm wrong, I'll come clean with y'all and I'll apologize. I don't claim to be a chicken expert. But check this shit out.
I have 7 actively laying hens right now. There's the 5 Buff Orpingtons (The Daisys), one Naked Neck (Annie) and a brown Leghorn (the Brown Bitch).
I have fed all my birds nothing but Producer's Pride and Dumor grain, the feed that's supposedly causing chickens to quit laying, all their lives.
Annie and the Brown Bitch quit laying late October. Stopped suddenly and completely. Did I worry? Nope. It was just that time of the year. I never got another egg from them for the rest of the year.
I was hoping The Daisys would mature enough to start laying before winter because like I said, some birds will lay through their first winter, but they didn't so I figured I wouldn't get an egg one until the early spring. So I have liberal birds - expecting to be fed and housed but not giving anything in return.
Then I started hearing about the Great Chicken Feed Conspiracy. I shrugged it off, figuring I'd find out in the spring. I mean, my birds aren't laying anyway right now, so why trip? Plus, just how in the hell was I supposed to determine if they're laying or not when they're off cycle, right? But all of a sudden this shit blew up and I'm getting links from readers and seeing videos about this shit and I'm laughing - not at the folks that sent in the links for me to post but at the whining people in the articles. Most if not all of them were hipsters and youngsters - manbun and White Claw people. Hell, the second sentence in this article HERE ought to tell you all you need to know: "The theory gained steam on Facebook, TikTok and Twitter in recent weeks, with some users reporting that their hens stopped laying eggs and speculating that common chicken feed products were the cause." Yup, social media - the same folks that brought you the Tide Pod and Stick a Red Hot Knitting Needle Up Your Dick Challenges.
I had a few readers email me about their birds. They were new to raising hens and wanted to know if it warranted concern. I told them to be patient and cool their heels until the days started to get longer, but if they were all that worried they could supplement their feed with protein, and told them how by giving your chickens diced up hardboiled egg, mealworms, shredded meat scraps, or, if your birds aren't real flighty, letting them free-range during the day.
By the way, I don't feed any of my birds any of those supplements, and I don't let The Daisys free-range yet. I do toss them a handful of mealworms as a treat occasionally, but not enough to make a difference.
So, while all this speculation was flying all over the internet:
A couple days after Christmas I went out to clean the The Daisys' henhouse and found 2 warm eggs in the nesting box. That surprised the hell out of me considering we'd just had a week of zero temps at night, and I honestly didn't figure I'd get eggs for a couple 3 months yet.
It was like somebody turned a faucet on. I was getting 3 eggs a day until the two younger Daisys matured enough to start a couple weeks later. Then it was 4 or 5 eggs.
About a week after all The Daisys started laying, Annie and the Brown Bitch resumed laying too.
So now I'm getting about 5-6 eggs most days, sometimes 7, but never less than 4. Now, I eat 2-3 eggs every morning for breakfast, so now I've got more fucking eggs than I know what to do with, all from birds that are fed nothing but the feed that's supposed to make them quit laying.
So you can understand my skepticism about a feed problem, right? But let me ask you this: have you heard much about the feed issue in the past week or so? I haven't, maybe a couple articles, and nothing at all on youtube. It's becoming a non-issue. The days are getting longer and the birds are beginning their laying cycle again.
