FERMENTED FEEDS...anyone using them?

[Beekissed]

No A/C, heat with wood, one TV not hooked up to anything but a VCR/DVD player and only used in the evening and on weekends(power strip shut down), CFLs, one computer that only was run in the evening and got shut off each time via the power strip, very little microwave usage(power strip shutdown), water saver shower head turned off between wettings/latherings, no dusk to dawn lights, old farmhouse with leaky windows but had sawdust blown into the walls so it was cool in the summer and warm in the winter, turn off lights when leaving the room, heavy laundry hung outside in warm seasons, conserve laundry usage, small hot water tank located at the core of the house right next to the chimney so it absorbed ambient warmth.

Where we live now we average $35-$50 due to not having things on power strips and needing to run fans all summer due to having a hotter house with less insulation, two refrigerators, and just generally not being as saving on power.

 

[perchie.girl]

Here in the desert my walls are a foot thick R Value off the charts. South facing windows get tinfoil to reflect the heat. Something we used in Las Vegas in the sixties.... Cheap and it can be put up with just water spritsed on the window.

I use a swamp cooler for the summer. costs the same as a 100 watt light bulb. It takes the ambient temperature inside the house down from the 90s to the 80's. when its over a hundred degrees outside eighty is cool.

I use electric to run the refrigerator and freezer and controls for the stove. The washer and dryer controls are electric but the dryer is on propane so is the stove and water heater. I don't do loads of laundry till I have a full load.

No TV reception
No Radio Reception except Mexico
No Internet except dial up
No Cell reception..... barely Landlines but those work only if its dry out.

The other major consumer I have of electricity is the well. Right now its costing me 15 a month with the rest of the house completely shut down.

When I live there My bill is around 75 and I heat with an Electric OIl heater in the bedroom in winter time and a very small potbelley in the living room. I Maybe use one single cord of wood for the whole winter. All scavenged wood from tree trimming projects in the city. Or harvested Ribbonwood from my property. You can take a baseball bat out in the chaparal and knock dead branches off the Ribbonwood its surprisingly a hard wood. These branches can run around two inches in diameter. Most of it can be picked up off the ground.

So when i move home I will not be on any of my lists or here on BYC except when I come down off the mountain to visit mom.

deb

 

[rawheid]

I do need to go back and re read some posts. But I'm really struggling to figure out how much to feed. These birds are acting ravenous. Today I did 1/3 of an ice cream pail. There was still some extra left over after 25 min. So is this the right amount. They are still used to having 24 hr feed access. When I come near the coop now they associate me with food so I'm having a hard time knowing if it's just because or are they really hungry.

They are in a run that is 15x50. The coop is 10X14 ft. There 12 birds. Only 3 laying right now and 1 rooster. I have them in 17% laying ration. The 9 were hatched in June. The other 3 are about 18mths old.

 

[Beekissed]

I do need to go back and re read some posts. But I'm really struggling to figure out how much to feed. These birds are acting ravenous. Today I did 1/3 of an ice cream pail. There was still some extra left over after 25 min. So is this the right amount. They are still used to having 24 hr feed access. When I come near the coop now they associate me with food so I'm having a hard time knowing if it's just because or are they really hungry.

They are in a run that is 15x50. The coop is 10X14 ft. There 12 birds. Only 3 laying right now and 1 rooster. I have them in 17% laying ration. The 9 were hatched in June. The other 3 are about 18mths old.

I'd say YES. That's the right amount. You can't go on how hungry they act..without a constant presentation of food, they are going to act like they are starved from now on...mine free range and they act like that each and every time. Just feed that amount for awhile and watch their body conditioning, watch for changes...chests should be evenly full across unless you are dealing with a light, narrow breed or young birds~this is normal in young birds or slender breeds..

If you have heavy breeds and you notice their crop distention too much(a big bulge standing out from their chest after they have eaten), then they could be losing some conditioning in the body and you can increase the feed a little. If this is happening, you'll also maybe notice a line of feathers overlapping in the middle of their chest. Ideally, you shouldn't see a line there at all..just a full, even breast no matter if they just ate or if they didn't. In younger birds it's much harder to judge because they do not develop breasts until closer to maturity.

Remember too that feed adjustments shouldn't be of large amounts...a simple 1/2 cup or cup one way or the other can mean the difference between good conditioning and lack thereof in a normal, healthy bird. For instance, the day before yesterday I realized I would need to increase feeds when I saw some crop distention showing in a few of my older, heavier breeds and some overlapping feathers in my younger birds. So I did...increased by a cup and a half or so that day and the next and today they look like pigeons again...full, fat breasts and running like they belong on an NFL team..just lumbering along. I'll take them down to 3 1/2 cups cups of feed for a bit to make sure everyone is back on point.

It just comes with practice and you'll get the hang of it, but don't worry about starving the chickens. Put some deep litter in the run and keep building on it so they will have something to do, maybe some different levels of being by adding a hay bale, natural roost or stump of some kind and let them just learn to occupy themselves with things other than food. You can even add some grow frames and plant some grass so they can "forage" for some foods so they feel more natural being penned up.

 

[rawheid]

ok this morning the girls looked great. Ate all there food plus a little left over in about 25 minutes. This afternoon. I went and looked at them and I see the crop is bigger (It's on their right side?) and there are feathers overlapping in the middle of their chest. Does this mean they are hungry? I do have heavy breeds. Wyandottes and chanteclers. I'm sorry for all these questions. I hope I figure this out soon.

 

[rawheid]

Ok I just saw a picture on fresh eggs daily of a chicken with a full crop. http://www.fresh-eggs-daily.com/2012/02/sour-crop.html (scroll down) and thats exactly what the chickens look like. So I think they're just fine. Just addicted to their good food.

 

[Beekissed]

It doesn't mean they are hungry, but on adult birds of a heavy build, one should rarely see that big of a bulge as depicted in that picture and the deep overlapping of feathers either. Ideally, the breasts should be so developed that a full crop lies between the two halves and if it sticks out at all, it should be more aligned in the groove between the two breasts when full, so one sees a full, even breast line. On lighter weight birds like the RIR in that picture, you'd see the bulge more prominently but the overlapping feathers tells me that bird has recently lost some conditioning....if not, the feathers would fit her chest instead of having to overlap that far. When I see that on my birds, I increase the feed until I no longer see that big of an overlap or the bulge is not so apparent when they have a full crop.

Here's the difference, though you can't see it as clearly. The first is a pic of a bird that I got back from a bad caretaker after over a year of bad management...you can see how slender she is and how her chest bulges to one side when her crop is full. In a dual purpose breed, you really shouldn't be able to see their full crop as clearly if they are in good condition....now, that doesn't always have to do with flock nutrition, so if you see it in only one bird in your flock and the rest are fine, then it's a bird problem and not a flock problem.




Same bird, some time later...you can clearly see the groove between her breasts where her crop would lie when full, so when she has a full crop now, you really can't see that enormous bulge so well as it fits neatly in between her breast muscles and causes the chest to be full all across the chest......




.....like how she looks with her full crop in this picture...

 

[kpgoldstar]

Big lesson learned. I have four 4 week old chicks that I started on fermented feed about a week and a half ago. I've only had them for 2 weeks. The blog I read on creating the feed mentioned an anaerobic environment, so I have been developing my feed in a one gallon glass jar and securing the lid between each feeding and replenishing of the mash. I didn't use any sort of starter, simply commercial chick feed and water. I get a few bubbles but it's not excessive. I leave it at room temp in the house which is high 70's as we are still seeing some 90's during the day where I live. I am sure you can all guess what happened... awoke this morning to an exloded jar with water and wet food covering my entryway tile.

So, of course I tossed it all out in fear that there could be glass shards in any of the feed. Restarted it this morning in a plastic food grade bucket. I am just curious about anaerobic vs aerobic as I have heard some people say to loosely cover the container and others say to cover it tightly. I realize the feed when it is settled under water is then in an anaerobic environment. Thanks for all your help. I have been following the thread in regard to the crop and the lay of the feathers. My girls are slowly getting accustomed to very little food in the evening. I do the big feed in the morning as they are in the run all day, then they only get about 1/2 hr on the lawn due to darkness. I tried yogurt for a treat last night and it was another fail. So far they haven't eaten any food scrap I have tried, even apples!! I did read a blog of using fresh herbs in the coop and pen so we did that yesterday and it helped to keep them occupied, pecking for seed and playing with the sticks and rose petals. We give them just a small amount after that before putting them to bed.

 

[Beekissed]

Big lesson learned. I have four 4 week old chicks that I started on fermented feed about a week and a half ago. I've only had them for 2 weeks. The blog I read on creating the feed mentioned an anaerobic environment, so I have been developing my feed in a one gallon glass jar and securing the lid between each feeding and replenishing of the mash. I didn't use any sort of starter, simply commercial chick feed and water. I get a few bubbles but it's not excessive. I leave it at room temp in the house which is high 70's as we are still seeing some 90's during the day where I live. I am sure you can all guess what happened... awoke this morning to an exloded jar with water and wet food covering my entryway tile.

So, of course I tossed it all out in fear that there could be glass shards in any of the feed. Restarted it this morning in a plastic food grade bucket. I am just curious about anaerobic vs aerobic as I have heard some people say to loosely cover the container and others say to cover it tightly. I realize the feed when it is settled under water is then in an anaerobic environment. Thanks for all your help. I have been following the thread in regard to the crop and the lay of the feathers. My girls are slowly getting accustomed to very little food in the evening. I do the big feed in the morning as they are in the run all day, then they only get about 1/2 hr on the lawn due to darkness. I tried yogurt for a treat last night and it was another fail. So far they haven't eaten any food scrap I have tried, even apples!! I did read a blog of using fresh herbs in the coop and pen so we did that yesterday and it helped to keep them occupied, pecking for seed and playing with the sticks and rose petals. We give them just a small amount after that before putting them to bed.

Let me guess...the Natural Chicken Keeping Blog?

Thank you for reporting back on that, because it is a concern and an issue. This whole anaerobic and aerobic thinking is just extreme over thinking of the process. Fermentation is taking place in water....two molecules of hydrogen and one molecule of oxygen. It's a foregone conclusion that leaving the lid on the container is not going to keep oxygen from entering into the process. Botulism lives and thrives in an anaerobic condition as well...shall we try to maintain optimal conditions for that as well by sealing the container? The very yeast spores that are drawn into the mix come from the air...the air, which has oxygen aplenty.

The metabolism of these organisms is done anaerobically, which means they do not require oxygen from the surrounding air to perform digestion and conversion of sugars and proteins.

from within the input material. When the oxygen source in an anaerobic system is derived from the organic material itself, then the 'intermediate' end products are primarily alcohols, aldehydes, and organic acids plus carbon dioxide. In the presence of specialised methanogens, the intermediates are converted to the 'final' end products of methane, carbon dioxide with trace levels of hydrogen sulfide.[2] In an anaerobic system the majority of the chemical energy contained within the starting material is released by methanogenic bacteria as methane.[3]

Water over the feed, lid on the feed, anaerobic systems to keep out oxygen....mean nothing to the fermentation of the feeds except trapping the carbon dioxide and/or methane and making for a dangerous situation at farms sometimes when sileage is being made. Good ventilation is recommended for this type of fermentation...as you have found out. Someone could have been really hurt if standing nearby.

Please report this incident back to that blog site so they will stop recommending this.

 

[kpgoldstar]

Yes that is the blog I am referring to. I have had a sourdough starter for many years so I understand the concept. Obviously my sourdough is not airtight in my fridge. I am happy to report that I constructed a new hanging feeder in the run and just fed the wet food that I had a chance to start after finding the HUGE mess this morning. I fed a little more than normal amount as it was not fermented and I wanted to test out the feeder. Prior to that since they are just chicks and have spent most of their days still in the brooder I was feeding in little Tupperware dishes. When I got home at nearly 6 tonight, they had not finished their mash. YAY! They are catching on! They only got to range on the lawn for 20 min before dark, and I put a small dish of feed out there with them and they weren't interested in the least.
Tonight is their first night out in the big bad coop! They chirped loudly for about 15 minutes then have been quiet since. They have a small dish of feed and their water. Right now it is 76 out there but the coop has had sun all day. They are accustomed to the garage at 85 - 90 even at night. It has been mid 60's in the AM but we've been transferring them from brooder to run every morning so I think they will be fine.
I did post on the NCK thread about fermented feed and my glass jar exploding. I will report back if I get a response.