20 Best Feed For Laying Hens (2023 Updated)

These are great pellets to mix with Naturewise’s feather fixer pellets. Our hens never had issues eating these pellets: even our smallest hen. These pellets are top quality, and they help keep my flock healthy and strong! Additionally, they seem to aid in our flocks’ ability to consistently lay deliciously nutritious eggs.

Our girls are free range all day, and these pellets seem to be a perfect well balanced and nutritious diet for them. Our hens have a variety of fresh vegetables and fruits. They get a high quality game bird scratch, and we will often add chia seeds too.

Our girls eat dried BSFL (black solider fly larva) daily too; so, they have a wide variety of healthy nutrients to help keep them in optimal health. Overall, I’ve observed the quality and benefits of these pellets since incorporating them into our hens’ diet a year ago when they transitioned from their starter grower crumble to layer pellets.

Last of all, it is APPROVED by ALL 10 of our hens!!! No problems ever!.

I bought this feed after feeding my girls an organic no soy no corn feed for a year and being disappointed with thin shells. I know this isn’t organic, but the fact that the protein comes from black fly larvae and not soy, coupled with the well-known oyster strong ingredients, convinced me that I could cut back on scratch grain treats (corn) and feel comfortable with this choice.

My girls love this feed, their egg shells are strong, and the eggs even taste better! We’ve been feeding this feed for about 6 months now, and couldn’t be happier.

I wanted to address the negative reviews about the product being a very fine grind as opposed to larger pieces. The smaller grind is safer for your chicks, until they reach an age where they can fully process seeds, I would say around 3 weeks or older.

I have had one chick die and currently one that may be going through a VERY expensive surgery from an obstruction caused by large sized grain being in the chick starter and subsequently causing an obstruction.

In my case it was peas and it was from another brand of chick starter, which did not screen out the larger pieces. If a piece of large seed such as a pea gets stuck, your chick will not be able to break it down, especially in the first few weeks of life.

If Scratch and Peck is making the seed a finer grind, there is good reason for it! I hope they continue to do so, and screen out large pieces, as this product seems far superior to more fully processed ones.

My chicks and chickens love it. The only reason I had tried another was the cost. If you are concerned about obstructions in your baby chicks, organic crumble is a good choice for the first two wks.

I like the ingredients of Scratch and Peck Organic Chick Starter Grower Feed, it’s probably the best retail chicken feed you can find. What I don’t like about it is how much dust is in each bag, as well as sticks and other debris.

The seeds and their casings get over grinded, so about half the bag is dust, so this is not a good feed to give to your chicks dry, but it makes a good wet mash, which the chicks devour, causing almost no waste of food.

So I recommend this food to feed as a wet mash, not as dry feed.

I really like seeing the ingredients in a less processed form, and the chickens seem to agree. They were wasting a lot less just feeding dry, but I hated seeing such a good feed scattered across the ground nonetheless.

So, I started soaking it overnight so that it sticks together a bit more and helps release the nutrients. They went nuts for it! It was a huge success and almost no waste. Then reading up on fermented feed, I decided to try that, and I love it even more.

I think feeding just dampened or even fermented is really the way to go with any feed, though I do keep a dry feed in a rat proof feeder in the coop for emergencies. That said, the chickens love the fermented stuff, or at least soaked.

Almost no waste and I feel good about the health benefits of the feed, especially since it eventually ends up in the eggs we eat.

Both my ducks were in bad shape when I adopted them, and not used to anything but the crappiest junk food. It didn’t take long to transition them to Scratch and Peck’s Organic Feed. The results are stunning — from raggedy, dull, dirty and bedraggled, they have both transformed to glossy, clean, bright-eyed and happy birds with the smoothest, silkiest, healthiest feathers.

And they love it!.

I am highly impressed with the quality of this organic feed, no fillers like others who say they are organic but don’t have the nutrients to support and full of fillers. My chickens have never looked better and they have not been sick, not one! The nutrition in Scratch and Peck builds natural immune systems that can save you tons of money and time! Totally worth it!!!.

I have been buying this brand for my hens for a while and mix it with other things. However, I wanted to supplement their feed with grower food, so I bought this. Imagine my surprise when it arrives and it was the EXACT same product I’ve been buying.

It’s for all stages and mixed flocks. I see that now that I look closely at the picture. but I was going by the title Chewy put and the brand that I was already familiar with. Not the end of the world – I’ll use it up.

However, if you have little chicks or ducklings, I would not rely on this as the sole source of feed.

We have been purchasing this exact product for quite a while. We love it and our chickens love it! I purchased a bag at Tractor Supply last night. It was late and already dark outside, but I needed to get it down to the coop and into the metal trashcan we store it in.

I opened the bag in the dark and immediately knew something was different before I could even see it. It smelled very odd. So I turned on my flashlight and the feed was way darker than normal. Hoping this is just a “bad batch” but looks like another customer that left a review also had the same issue.

If this is a new formula, we will be looking at purchasing a different brand.

I started off with Demur, my chickens didn’t seem healthy or active, their feathers were dull, their combs and waddles were pale too. I switch to Purina Layena and after a week i noticed a difference in their energy level and their feathers were starting to look healthy.

After a month my chickens combs and waddles are a beautiful healthy looking red, they run around like chickens should, their feathers are shiny and healthy looking and they started laying eggs! So when i bought some baby chicks i got the medicated Purina chick feed.

I bought extra chickens because everyone said i should buy extra because i will loose some. Well i haven’t lost one chick and i’m on my third batch of babies. The other ones have grown into very healthy and beautiful 5 month old hens who i switched to all Flock until they start laying.

I highly recommend any of the Purina chicken feeds! Thank you for making such great feed for all stages of my chickens life!.

First, I will write that I free range my hens and it has been terribly hot here. I bought this configuration hoping to pique the girls’ interest. The first feeding was not taken well and now they barely peck at it.

Some of the “pearls” did not separate properly in processing, leaving several stuck together and not easily broken apart. I am making a cold mash of it for the hot afternoons “doctored up” with blueberries, raw egg and crushed egg shells.

This they will eat better. I will be going back to crumbles.

I tried this feed because it promised ‘complete nutrition’. Well, it doesn’t matter how complete the formula is if the chickens turn their beaks up at it. This brand looks like it’s 90% cracked corn, which chickens only like marginally.

Eventually they put a dent in what I have thrown to them but we’re talking over a period of 8-10 hours. There is an awful lot of corn scattered around the yard which they ignore. It seems I’ll have to go back to my old brand.

Not sure about egg production because I typically get 5-6 per week from each of my girls, and that goes up in the spring typically anyway. However, my girls picked out all the yummy grains and just left behind the pellets and the oyster shells.

They refuse to eat the pellets, even when starving. I end up fermenting the leftovers at the bottom of the feeder, and they’ll eat it that way, but that’s a hassle. They aren’t typically picky eaters.

This mix is awesome and my chickens love the mix. It’s a nice little treat to throw out for my girls and they gobble it up within seconds. The bag is huge and for the price its so worth it. I couldnt seem to find anything like this locally either that wasnt A.

a really small bag that cost lots of money or B. full of dried mealworms (which my gals dont love).

I am really, I really impressed with this feed! The only thing that I wish is that Farm and fleet carried the all flock maintenance version as well since I have non-layers in my flock. However, this mix is comprable or perhaps even better than Scratch N Peck brand that I had been getting for about twice the price.

It’s awesome that we can get this feed from Farm & fleet and also avoid the shipping costs by doing pickup in store or shopping in the store! My chickens and ducks absolutely loved it, and I’m really looking forward to also fermenting it during the summer months.

I would do it all year long because it reduces my feedbill significantly, but I just don’t have a warm place to do it through the cold months. I’ve even used this as a scratch grain because it’s just as delicious to the birds yet doesn’t bring down the calorie or nutrition value like some scratch mixes do.

When I mixed it into the Kalmbach layer pellets which are also fantastic by the way, the chickens would go for the grains first and then devour the pellets. They ate both very well, and I look forward to buying both.

The eggs we’re getting our amazing, strong shells, bright orange yolks, and great flavor. Again, the only thing I wish is that they carried the all flock version, but I’m very happy with this brand. Especially given that I had tried the cheaper Agrimaster all flock, but the low percentage of protein made our eggs very delicate.

The shells were totally fine, but the yolks would break almost every time.

Henhouse Reserve is unbelievable. Even older hens have once again started laying big beautiful eggs regularly. You’ll also feed less because it’s rich & satisfying. The entire flock (roosters, too) go crazy at feeding time.

Everyone’s feathers are glossy. My farm help inhaled the bag’s wonderful aroma & jokingly asked if I had any granola— they might dig in.

This is a beautiful mix of food, My chickens really love it and come running for it. They eat every bit of it, even the little pellets. It is quite a bit more expensive here at Chewy then my feed store though.

Which is just unfortunate, I really wished Chewy would lower the price $1 per pound for chicken food just seems crazy to me.

This is a beautiful mix of food, My chickens really love it and come running for it. They eat every bit of it, even the little pellets. It is quite a bit more expensive here at Chewy then my feed store though.

Which is just unfortunate, I really wished Chewy would lower the price $1 per pound for chicken food just seems crazy to me.

Our mom got this for us, and it is delicious, healthy, and you should see the yolks of our eggs! We get it scattered in the big backyard twice a day, and we love looking for all the yummy, colorful, super nutritious grains, seeds, pellets.

We highly recommend this high quality and super great food!.

Purchased this food after stumbling upon it on google. It definitely reminds me of a sweet feed for horses. Its a mix of all sorts of “treats” but still has the pellets of what they need for a full nutrition diet.

Trick is to not feed so much, if you continuously feed them new rations they pick out the “junk food” so i feed in the morning, and leave it be until the next morning, so at night they are forced to eat the heathy bits without getting more “treat” and this is the ONLY feed I give, I don’t supplement with anything else and still get good hard eggs.

I really wanted to love this feed. I did a ton of research and because our hens are pets and we want them to live a long, happy life, I wanted to feed them a soy free (less chance of certain cancers), whole seed food.

I feared that they might pick out the seeds and not eat the powder, which contains all the vitamins and minerals. I fed this food for about 6 weeks. My girls ate it with great happiness. They tossed it everywhere and made a huge mess.

But they seemed to really enjoy it. With that said, their eggs decreased in quality and then quantity. Then, one of my sweetest hens got super mean. I switched back to Kalmbach Organic crumbles and after about a week on Kalmbach, everyone is normal again.

happy, calm, laying healthy eggs. I am sure now that my girls were enjoying the seeds and had developed a vitamin and mineral deficiency, so be very careful with this food. The ingredients are superior, but it didn’t work well for my 6 beloved pet chickens.

TraduciMostra in lingua originaleI took these home and the chickens absolutely went crazy over them they love them. Usually if I try to give them feed Us treats to go in they aren’t fooled I have to mix some treats in with them yesterday I tried the same thing with these pearls and they went nuts they absolutely love them please keep making them and please put them in the 50 lb bag because this is great the silkies have a hard time with some of the feed but this is great for them too so far I just bought my first yesterday.

I previously was buying Purina Layena +Omega3. The hens loved it. I switched to this product and quickly noticed two things about it. The pellets are larger. Maybe no big deal although I viewed the previous (smaller) pellets as perhaps being more easily taken down by the hens.

Secondly our egg production went down. Perhaps this is to be expected at first when changing the hens diet? Time will tell if egg production bounces back. I plan to stick with this feed for the foreseeable future since it is more economical.

I do like the Purina brand in general, nice clean pellets and no excessive dust.

I will go out of my way, in the rain, with a broken-down truck, wearing flipflops and my PJ’s to purchase the Purina Layena Crumbles for my chickens. I started on big box store chick crumbles and switched to Purina once they started laying.

One day on the way home I get a call that we are out of chicken food. There was a terrible rain storm going on and I decided it was easier to stop and get a couple of bags of the box store brand than stopping at my local feed store to get the Layena; no big deal right? Grab some ‘layer’ food and hit the door.

Within the first 2 weeks, I gave away the box store brand food and went and got my Purina crumbles. and learnt my lesson. The shells were the first thing we noticed, just collecting them we had more breaks than we had ever had for the entire first year when they were on a strictly Purina diet.

Picking them up you could easily push your thumb through the soft shells; something that never happened to us before. The yokes, although darker and richer than store bought, was something we didn’t notice until after we switched back to the Purina.

they were nowhere near the quality of the Purina yokes. We laughed at ourselves for being such tools, and my laziness to get substandard food. The Purina Crumbles is our goto. from here on out! For the people who will argue that it may cost a little more than some of the other foods – I can only say this, sell a carton of eggs and offset the cost – it’s worth the money, it’s that easy.

I have purchased many bags of the Home Grown Purina layer pellet feed. One time I inadvertently ran out and went to a store that was closer to my home only to find out they did not sell the Purina Brand.

I bought another brand of chicken feed, took it home and fed my chickens. Oh my. They would not eat it!!! I guess they are spoiled because the next day, they still would not eat it. So-o-o-o I went to my regular feed store and bought the Purina Home Grown.

Wow!!! When I put this in their feeder, they rushed over and when they realized it was Purina, they really began eating voraciously so I guess I learned my lesson. Now I buy 2 bags at a time so I will not run out of the Purina Home Grown Layer Pellet Chicken feed.

I started using Homegrown products about a year ago and worried the quality wouldn’t be as good as other Purina products; but my chickens have flourished! When I splurged and got Layena for them, they scratched it all out of the feeder and wasted it.

I’m sticking with Homegrown in the future (just supplement with oyster shell for thicker egg shells!).

I have only fed my girls Purina. They are strong, healthy happy and beautiful girls. Everyone that sees them can’t believe how beautiful they look. I have recommended this brand to all of my friends with chickens.

My girls like it and seem to be thriving.

Used to feed my 6 girls their original layer mix- was “ideal” or so I thought as it had the mix of grains they like as well as the “micro-pellets” that seemed a good compromise between powdery crumbles and pellets so big they won’t eat.

Unfortunately, I found this “crumble” to have too many long “whole” pieces of pellets- at first thought that might be good as I mentioned so many other brands of crumbles end up with FAR too much “dust” that I then have to either waste or use to ferment food for them.

While most of the pellets in this crumble food will break up plenty easy enough and results in a perfect texture without too much “dust”, UNFORTUNATELY, there are VERY hard light colored pellets that can be quite long and are very difficult to break up- found myself having to actually use snippers to cut them up- WHAT a pain considering I was trying to get away from high maintenance for me with the original mix as my picky girls would not eat the whole oats or wheat- had to soak them or they just got knocked to the ground.

Ugh. haha Therefore this does not work for me as a stand alone food BUT I feel SO good about the quality of Grubblies feed that I decided to continue mixing into their new other brand crumbles handfuls of these crumbles and have set aside the majority including all the hard to break up pellets to ferment food for them that I mix seeds and grains they like and use as a “topper” over their food each am.

(hmmm- wonder how they ended up SO spoiled!! 😉 haha) Overall- if you don’t have picky chickens that will knock out the longer harder pellets on the ground then this is a super high quality layer feed- as is the original one! I’ve not had to waste it as they love the fermented results that this food makes up the majority of along with all the “dust” of their other crumble food that thankfully also has the BSFL as the protein source! LOVE them some Grubblies!!! Btw- company is great- very nice and took care of an issue we had with one bag of food quickly- great customer service!.

So far I’ve been very happy with the switch to Fresh Pecks! I had been using Purina Layena with my small backyard flock, full size hens age 1-6 years old. Looking for something with less filler, helping my older girls age beautifully, and of course helping with molt recovery and laying lots of gorgeous eggs! I started with the pellets but found that my hens made a huge mess by “picking out” the pieces that they wanted.

So much waste! BUT I contacted Grubbly Farms and they suggested the crumble. Same great ingredients, but all pieces look the same. Aha! What a great solution, and now no mess at all. I’m happy to support this company as well as give my fluff butts amazing nutrition that will benefit them for the rest of their lives.

Real Simple Mama is a happy chicken tender! You can see our honest reviews at Jurasschic Park on YouTube, just search for RealSimpleMama!.

The use of grub protein over fish meal drew me to this brand as well as the mixture of pellets and whole grains. I was using Scratch and Peck, but the chickens wasted a lot of the dust/supplements. Figured this would be the right fit for us as long as the chickens accepted pellets (they’ve never had pellets before).

They did! We needed to do a gradual food transition as was recommended – the hens has loose poops when I tried to switch too soon – but that was on me for being too excited that the ladies enjoyed their new food so much.

After the food switch was done, poops were back to normal, and better than before with one of my ailing senior hens. This food ferments really well too! So yes we are all happy that we switched to this brand as it meets all our needs, my standards, and the hens love it.

😊.

Great product! I had been using standard feed and was getting shell-less eggs or partial shells. DuMOR 16% Egg Maxx Pellet Poultry Feed solved those issues.

Saw a big difference in the quality of eggs produced compared to other feed. The eggs used to be watery but now they have nice yolks and whites! Very orange yolks too!

I have used this for my chickens solely as their main feed and they are healthy, happy and laying beautiful eggs. Highly recommend!

I started using these for my Racing Pigeon (Breeders) this year and they are the best pellet I have ever used. Droppings are excellent (for pellets) and the youngsters are in outstanding health and condition upon weaning.

I previously used to use Purina Nutrablend Green Pellets for pigeons and those are good as well (but I still prefer these). The Nutrablend had become difficult to find/order locally this year and so I needed to switch.

The two alternatives I tried both produced terrible droppings with the birds. I figured removing the Soy from the pellet would help and sure enough it did. Without the soy the droppings are firm and overall these pellets have a better ingredients list than typical pellets.

My pullets are just starting to lay, but for the past few weeks I’ve been dismayed at how many small feathers I was raking up every morning. They even floated to the bathroom adjacent, and there was always a lot of feather-sheath dandruff on my patio chairs where they nap.

I had raised them on an organic, soy free starter/grower, but in the last few weeks I fed an organic feed with soy. Then I switched to Nutrena Hearty Hen Layer Feed, and I am seeing a 95% reduction in feather shedding! My daughter remarked how beautiful my girls looked and I just said, “Oh, well, that’s because they’re young!” But the remarkable change in their feather loss and the healthy shine is amazing, so I can only attribute it to this wonderful feed! Because of the botanicals and essential oils, it also smells lovely.

The girls were a little askance at first, but now they are gobbling every pellet (less waste, too!), and looking fine because of it!.

I have fed 4 bags of the HeartyHen (new formula) to my layers and my chickens are LOVING it!!! My eggs have looked and tasted “eggscelent”! Their feathers are full and and fluffy, NO pasty butts. NatureWise, HeartyHen is a SUPERIOR Chicken Feed that caters to the individuals who desire to have soy free feed either due to severe soy allergies or other health concerns.

Thank You Nutrena for NatureWise HeartyHen!!!.

I bought this because I was expecting the chicks and it was available. I figured that the chicks all had diarrhea for the first week from the extra stress from shipping. I was constantly cleaning up pasty butt and this is the worst it has ever been.

Nearing the end of the bag, I purchased another bag of starter from my local feed store and within a day the diarrhea cleared up! There is a huge difference between the quality of the feed from my local feed store vs the Purina which is mostly crushed powder, vs feed store is uniform crumbles (not powder).

This is my fourth year with baby chicks and my first year using this starter. This is also the first year I have ever lost a chick. The normal brand I buy was out of stock so I picked this up since I use the layer crumble for my hens and ducks.

Right out of the bag it is the size of the crumble I give to my laying flock. At two weeks old I am still having to crush this up for my chicks. This is the very first time I have had to crush feed for babies.

I do not crush it into a powder but drop a solid metal pipe on it a few times to break the pieces up. I have 45 chicks and two feeders hanging one with feed right out of the bag and one with the crushed feed.

The one with crushed feed is the only feeder they will use. I just went two days without any crushed feed but wasn’t convinced the smaller babies were eating the feed right from the bag, once I put crushed feed out it has been mobbed for hours, with them kicking no feed out.

The babies will empty an entire hanging feeder on the ground straight from the bag, lookin for smaller pieces I guess. The baby I lost was a Maran pullet, which makes this a very expensive bag of feed.

My picky hens love this! I used to give them layer crumble from the same company, but they didn’t like it as much and were making a lot of mess while eating, so a lot was going to waste. We switched to pellets from a different company but then they weren’t laying as many eggs.

Recently, we tried these layer pellets, and now they are laying well. We’ll be sticking with these pellets.

I kept running into an issue of not being able to order my regular feed. This is very similar to my regular feed and thought I’d give it a try. My girls like it and they do just fine with it. They definitely prefer the pellets than crumble.

Would recommend.

My chicken just wants treats but has tried this food more often than the last feed I had. I will stay with this brand for awhile to see how she does. My duck has even tried it. I would recommend this feed.

Bought this feed because I was having a problem with eggshell quality on our previous feed. Hearty hen has definitely improved my hens eggshell quality. No more soft sided cracked eggs in the nest! My girls recently started molting and I’ll be trying the feather fixer formula to see if that helps them through better.

The only thing I’d change is that Nutrena could come up with an organic version of this feed for people who prefer to feed their hens organically!.

I am always skeptical buying my chickens new feed as they love to turn up their beaks at anything new. Even more so, this feed is a pellet feed, not crumbles which my chickens have been raised on all their lives.

However I was quite surprised at their curiosity about this feed and found that half of them converted fairly well to the pellets pretty quick. BUT, there were still a few hold outs. I am fortunate to have a grain grinder in my coop, so I ground it down to crumble sized bites.

Well that did the trick! My birds love this stuff and I just placed another order for more Henny Penny!.

This is a great size of quality “chicken layer” food. I have a European Starling who needs just a little bit of layer food so this size is much better than a giant bag. He only needs about a half cup a month and the shelf life of all feeds is about 6 months.

Thanks for carrying, Chewy!.

These layer crumbles seem much more appealing to my hens than the pellets. At first they liked them, then left them untouched. Now I am left holding the bag!