Best Chicken Feeds Available For Your Laying Hens
As food is essential for the human body, so is the feed for your laying hens. Proper and healthy feed determines the growth and development of your chicken. The right feed ensures your chicken is healthy and is laying eggs for you.
Now, when we browse the market for chicken feeds, you will have multiple options on the go. However, it is true that most of the feeds do not even consist of the whole ingredients that bring optimal results.
Here, chicken feeds that are high in calcium, phosphorous, and salt are much needed for your laying hens. Often they get calcium from meat, oyster meat, bone, or limestone. Also, these chicken feeds must contain extra protein and calcium as it helps your hen to lay eggs with strong shells.
Top Ten Best Chicken Feeds For Laying Hens
If looking for and buying chicken feeds from the market is quite overwhelming for you, you can also opt for homemade feeds. By choosing the ingredients yourself, you can make a quality feed perfect for your chicken.
Read more about: Nutritional Benefits of Chicken Feeds: Best Health of Poultry Chicken
Some of the must-have ingredients for your homemade feeds are wheat, corn, alfalfa, and field peas. Moving on, some of the additional nutrients that you will need to add are flaxseed, kelp, and oyster shell or bone meat.
For this, you can also search for online recipes and create a healthy mix by yourself. However, you can also opt for the readymade chicken feeds that you can find in the market. Below are some of the top mixes that are perfect for your laying hens.
Manna Pro Layer Pellets For Chicken
This chicken feed is organic with constituents of basic ingredients such as corn, barley, oats, and soybeans. Also, it is pretty nutritional for your laying hens as it has coral calcium, fiber, protein, and fats.
This particular feed is grit sized, and you can also mix it with your layer feed. Altogether, this bag is pesticides free with no artificial flavors or color.
Scratch and Peck Organic Layer Feeds
This particular feed is known for laying the foundational base for your chickenās growth and development. It consists of a high protein base and consists of ingredients like wheat, peas, barley, and flaxseed meal.Ā
Likewise, this chicken feed is soy and starch-free and provides raw nutrients for your laying hens. With high nutritional value, this unprocessed organic feed ensures stringer eggshells and enough nutrients for the baby chickens.
Kalmbach Feeds All Natural Layer Crumbles
This chicken feed is, in fact, not wholly organic, but it still has several nutritional values that are best for your laying hens. Well, this product consists of corn, soybeans, and wheat.
Best Chicken Feeds Available For Your Laying Hens
Likewise, they are high in calcium and are known for several vitamins and minerals that help the development of baby chickens.
Prairieās Choice Non-GMO Backyard Chicken Feed
One of the best chicken feeds, Prairieās Choice, is gluten-free and made will all-natural ingredients. Not to mention, this feed is much easier to digest for your chickens rather than any other market feeds.
Prairieās Choice contains nutrients such as fiber, phosphorus, salts, calcium, omega-3 fatty acids, and so on. Furthermore, this feed consists of a minimum of 18% protein with extra nutrients such as folic acid and vitamins A, B-12, D, and E.
Purina Layena + Omega 3
One of the underrated chicken feeds is the Purina Layena + Omega 3. This particular feed consists of all 38 basic nutrients essential to the health of your laying chickens.
In addition to it, this feed also has omega-3 fatty acids and amino acids which help for high-quality egg production. As per the sources, this chicken feed includes the marigold extract that helps to make a brighter yolk.
Know more about: HIGH PROTEIN FEEDS FOR CHICKEN
Altogether, this feed is pellet-style based and provides your laying hens with an improved immune system and digestive health.
Kaytee Laying Hen Diet
With extra calcium and amino acids, this particular chicken feed provides balanced nutrition to your laying hens. It is a pelleted feed with corn, soybean meal, 16% protein, marigold extract, and some small particles of peanuts and tree nuts.
Moving on, this chicken feed helps with good digestive health and a brighter yolk in the egg.
Small Pet Select Chicken Layer Feed
This particular chicken feed is primarily designed to create a healthy and balanced diet to produce high-quality eggs. In this feed, they do have lesser protein than usual but have higher calcium components.
This formula is a high-protein pellet, grains, and seeds with a base of omega-3 fatty-acid-rich vegetable oil. Also, it is soy and corn-free but contains ingredients such as wheat, oats, millet, triticale, sunflower seeds, flaxseeds, pumpkin seeds, and fish meal.
New Country Organic Classic Grind Layer Feed
Well, indeed, this chicken feed has been one of the top-selling products. As a fun fact, you can get them in various options like pellets, crumbles, and corn-free and wheat-free.
Some of its nutritional components include 17% of protein, 3.5-4.5% of calcium, and omega-3 fatty acids. All in all, it also includes kelp and alfalfa supplements.
Coyote Creek Certified Organic Feed
This can be one of the best feed starters for your laying hens as it assists them in creating pullet and egg layers. Some of the ingredients in this feed include corn, soybean meal, milo, and roughage products.
Well, you can also find the soy-free option in this feed. Altogether, they are said to be 100% organic feed with no artificial touch.
Naturally Free Organic Feed
Made with whole organic grains, this chicken feed is soy-free and corn-free. It provides a healthy balanced diet as it contains 16% protein and calcium to help with egg development and strong shells.
Additional Treat: Happy Hen Treats Mealworm Frenzy
One of the best ways to supply nutrients to your laying hens is through the mealworms treat. This particular feed constitutes of whopping 50% of the protein that comes from whole, dehydrated mealworms.
Yes, easy to feed and one of the great choices for luring your hens. But they do have low calcium. Altogether these feeds can act as a snack for your laying hens.
What To Look For In Chicken Feeds?
Choosing the correct feed with the right amount of nutritional value can be quite overwhelming. There are several products in the markets that tend to claim to be the best of the bests. But are they?
While you are looking for the perfect chicken feed, you will have to look for the primary three things about the feed.
Feeding Style And Frequency
With the product you are holding, you should understand its type. Learn whether your chicken feed is wholegrain, pellet crumbles, mash, organic, or any other. Among them all, crumbles are one of the best types you can get for your laying hens.
Moving on, the more your chicken grows, so does the feeding frequency. But if any of your chicken is laying, their demand for food also increases quite fast.
Hence, it is only acceptable if you feed them two to three times a day. In fact, it is much better if you have a constant supply of food throughout the day for your laying hens.
Ingredients And Nutrients
While buying chicken feed, always look for protein constituents around 16 to 24 percent. Not all the feeds have the right amount of protein in their ingredients, and lack of it may hamper their egg development.
Likewise, look for carbohydrates in the chicken feeds. This typically comes from whole grains such as corn, wheat, sorghum, barley, rye, millet, and so on.
Moving on, the feed also must contain a proper amount of omega-3 fatty acids. Often, the fatty acids are included in flaxseed, camelina, and fish meal.
Know more about: Steps for organic chicken feed formulation
Similarly, they also need vitamins such as A, B, C, D, and K. They are found in different concentrations in the chicken feed, and one particular feed may not contain all the vitamins.
Then, move on to check the necessary minerals, such as the presence of calcium, phosphorous, and salt. These minerals help in the formation of eggshells and bone formation.
Feed Storage And Management
After buying chicken feed, always ensure to store them in a cool, dry space. Additionally, you should also make sure to use them before their expiration date. Also, immediately discard the feed if you find mold.