Farmgate layers pellets

The only problems I get with Farmgate are occasionally there are clumps of food in the bag rather than free running pellets, which I have to throw as they won't go through the feeder properly,  never found anything else in them though and have used them for years.

This can happen with any feed the minerals that ae added can clump together to form large lumps but I suspect this happens in the milling feed lines and is due to less than perfect cleaning of the machinery and feed hoppers between batches ie the dusty minerals which are added to the feed clump in traps in the feed conveyers and are dislodged during cleaning and not completely evacuated before the next batch of feed using the same machineery and feed lines is produced.  This is not necessarily just the poultry feed either it can be other from other animal feed mixes such as cattle and in fact is more likely to occur when feed batches are changed when the lines are cleaned and purged.  

You might also see that ocassionally there's a large pellet which looks different from the other poultry pellets in the feed and this might well be a pellet from a horse feed which was from a previous horse feed run.  When dealing with bulk feeds through batch processes such occurances are inevitable as a milling line is never dedicated to a single product and purging the systems completely 100% between products is never going to be achieved.  Such pellets will not be harmful and will either be eaten by the birds or just rejected if unpalatable.  If you see this sort of thing too often or in a significant proportion of the feed though it indicates that poor cleaning proceedures are in place in a mill and you should let the company know.  With mash feeds there is probably a similar issue but you are much less likely to notice it.

HF

Never had a problem with Farmgate pellets but I am paying far too much at £9.99 per 20k bag.

£5.40 for 20kg up north .
[/quote]And I thought it was just grim oop north.

IN ,some, layers pellets :(i have found the odd trace of what looks like a blue/green piece of rubber/plastic .I think that ,thet look like bits of rubber gloves ?. Just a thought.

Whose pellets were these? If you do get any foreign material in feed it will almost certainly be a specific mill problem and probably due to poor proceedures and will not be specific to pellets generally.

Start to worry when you find the fingers though
HF

Quote from: BIG ZOOK on February 28, 2011, 19:38

Quote from: Ice on February 28, 2011, 19:16

Never had a problem with Farmgate pellets but I am paying far too much at £9.99 per 20k bag.

£5.40 for 20kg up north .

£5.40 here too 'up north' (east though) 

But £7 and £9.99!!           Daylight robbery!! Or is it cashing in on the new 'trend' of allotments and chicken keeping lately??

They've just gone up to £8.00 here. You may find that some of you live closer to a BOCM mill than others, as transport costs really are beginning to show up in animal feed prices across the board. Strangely though so far, wheat which was supposed to be the problem crop this year and the mainstay of so many human and animal food products reamins the same price.