What Protein % is Best for Laying Chickens?

It depends. It all depends on the quality of the protein in the feed. Crude protein numbers don't mean very much since crude protein is an easy thing to manipulate if a manufacturer is just building a feed that will assay out at their label percentage. The numbers that really mean something are these two: lysine % and methionine %. Those should be on the label. I'd set the floor at .85% for lysine and .47% for the methionine. That could be anywhere from 17% crude protein up. You may need 19-20% to achieve that. The more filler junk is in there the higher the crude protein level will need to be to get to those numbers for the amino acids lysine and methionine.

Most mills do not formulate by amino acid because doing that is a relatively new method and doesn't really pay them back. It pays back the birds and their owner, but it doesn't necessarily give you a high number for CP for the label and that is what feed store feeds are generally judged upon.

So -- short answer is -- look at the lysine and methionine numbers on the label and pick a feed with .85% lysine, .47% methionine, or as close to it as you can get.

Alice

Union Point Custom Feeds

Brownsville, OR

www.unionpoint.com

"Sustainable Feeds for Sustainable Farms™