[chrismahon]

Do any of the France resident forum members have experience of the La Fermette range of feedstuffs?


When our incubator broke we went into the local Agri-merchant and bought a new one plus 10Kg chick crumb and starter feed.


The chick crumb was excellent quality (unmedicated) and the chicks grew fast and strong. The receipt says 'Poussin Demar M' but I can't remember the actual brand other than it came in a brown paper sack with a picture of chicks on the side. We followed that up with Dobson and Horrell crumb which I bought from England, although needn't have bothered as the French crumb was so good.


We then used up the crumb and put the chicks onto a starter feed, again a 10Kg sack. Smelt rather strong but the tiny pellets would make the transition to full rearer size pellets a lot easier -we've had problems in the past. The brand is La Fermette and I was expecting it to be of the same quality as the crumb. Far from it! Within 24 hours their 'coop' (a large trailer) began to smell bad. 24 hours later the stench was unbearable and their poos had become a brown treacly mess. In fact it was so bad my wife could smell the trailer being opened 50 yards away. So the remaining 8 Kg went into the bin and they were switched onto Smallholder rearer pellets (bought 200Kg over with us). Usual problems, the smaller birds are going through them looking for crumb although the piggy TNN's have gone to them without problems. The poos are back to normal and the stench has gone.


Anyone else used these with the same issues and are there any other feeds they make we should avoid?