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They always have grit available. The food isn't cold or wet. It's kept in the house and served every morning and an hour before coop-time. They usually gobble it up before it has a chance to get cold. They prefer to eat it off the flat surface of a big stump rather than from a dish. So it's presented in a variety of places. When they abruptly stopped eating it, I scattered it on the hay. They still didn't touch it. When I gave them dry pellets, they ate like they were starving. Meanwhile the FF is sitting there going to waste. It seems very odd that all 22 hens in two separate coops stopped eating it simultaneously. Besides the fact that the food was left in place, there was almost no poop under their roosts in the mornings. And I can't imagine all 22 are backed up at the same time. I guess I'll keep the dry pellets hanging and continue to serve a small dish of FF each day (even though I wind up tossing it) in hopes that they will renew their interest. But I'm not going to continue fermenting until they start eating again. That's simply a waste of money.
They always have grit available. The food isn't cold or wet. It's kept in the house and served every morning and an hour before coop-time. They usually gobble it up before it has a chance to get cold. They prefer to eat it off the flat surface of a big stump rather than from a dish. So it's presented in a variety of places. When they abruptly stopped eating it, I scattered it on the hay. They still didn't touch it. When I gave them dry pellets, they ate like they were starving. Meanwhile the FF is sitting there going to waste. It seems very odd that all 22 hens in two separate coops stopped eating it simultaneously. Besides the fact that the food was left in place, there was almost no poop under their roosts in the mornings. And I can't imagine all 22 are backed up at the same time. I guess I'll keep the dry pellets hanging and continue to serve a small dish of FF each day (even though I wind up tossing it) in hopes that they will renew their interest. But I'm not going to continue fermenting until they start eating again. That's simply a waste of money.
I just went through an interesting discovery in this area, but on the human side... PREbiotics and PRObiotics go hand in hand. I went on a raw diet to deal with some digestive issues, and most of it was based on prebiotics and probiotics. I started fermenting my food. And then I also started fermenting the chooks' food.. The fermenting uses both the bacteria (probiotics) and the "food" for the microbes, ie the "prebiotics" are found in the grain and things like onion, garlic, asparagus etc..those things that make us "gassy" 
