Oops, forgot to mention the vinegar which I added too. I stirred it well then let it set for two days, it was working very good then, the smell changed more toward the sour sweet smell so I went ahead and gave it to them. Being where I am in Costa Rica I don't have to worry about mash freezing. If I lived back in Wisconsin and had to have the mash working outside I would get an old non-working fridge and put a light in it that stays on all the time for heat and do my FF in there. The colder the FF gets the slower it will work. I would think that good working FF would be OK just below freezing but if it were left in the cold like that it would stop working. But if you are concerned about when you feed it I don't think it would freeze very fast unless it was extremely cold then the chickens would have to eat fast.That's very interesting. How long did it take to change the smell? I probably would have added more vinegar instead of sugar but that would have been a wild guess. I did have some chick starter scratch mixture fermenting in bowls in the house (I still don't have my bucket system set up. Still trying to figure out the best way so I don't spend money and then have to do something different). The chicks started eating less and this bowl didn't get used. When I made more, I forgot about that bowl and it sat on the table for two days, fermenting away, and I uncovered it the other night and boy did it smell! Not bad, but definitely very strong! I added some more vinegar and a little water and used that bowl first in the morning.
I wanted to ask... what do you guys do in the winter? How do you protect your ff from freezing? This is something I will have to take into account before I get my bigger system up and running too.