The Truth About Chicken Feed

Chicken feed, like other feeds, must only contain the ingredients specified on the label and meet the nutritional analysis stated there. These rules give feed producers lots of leeway to use cheap ingredients of questionable nutritional value. This is true even of so-called organic formulas. They are allowed to label generically ("grain by-products, plant protein products" etc) so their ingredients can be anything from grain dust, to ground nut shells, to wastes from distilling and other industrial processes. The feed may technically meet the nutrition information on the label, but it's not the sort of food that chickens evolved to eat.