My own chickens eat my horse pellets like everything else around here. Expensive but nonmedicated. These new ones were on a (medicated) grow mash and hen scratch. I bought chopped corn and tried to get unmedicated grower feed. I ended up having to get game bird starter and paid a whopping $10.80 for it. (at least twice what the medicated stuff costs.) (Turkeys and game birds can't handle the additives they put in regular chicken feeds.)
Someone was explaining that at the mill itself (talking about dog foods), they add preservatives so they don't have to list it as an ingredient on each bag. And, to get it bagged without chemicals, takes a separate process and milling system so they have to (yeah, right) charge more for it. Muenster Feeds here in Tx is organic, and they were talking about how tough it was to get a mill to process their different blends of feeds so they ended up milling it themselves. Purina and Acco and the other name brands figure if someone is persistent enough to want organic grains in their livestock feeds, they must be willing to pay triple for it. I don't like these feeds because everything comes out of a central mill and by the time the local feed stores get it, it's already old. My local mill puts a date stamp on each bag so I see exactly when it was filled and sewed shut. I don't know about the rest of the feeds, but the horse pellets are rarely over 2 - 3 days old by the time I have to use them. I've even had to wait at the dock while the mill was finishing a run, now that's fresh! At least in season, my hens get very organic, high protein grasshoppers added to their diet, plus the exercise to go catch them themselves.
