This article is about my foray into the world of fermented feed for chickens.
It’s written tongue in cheek and is not meant to be a definitive guide to fermented feed. It’s a bit of fun that I enjoyed writing.
I do, I hope, produce some valid criticisms of much of the hype surrounding the health benefits of fermented feed for chickens and provide some advice about changing the chickens diet. The article mainly concentrates on free range chickens.
I look after a varying population of mixed breed, free range chickens. The population varies between twenty and thirty. These chickens live in small groups, each group having it’s own coop.
Each group has at least one rooster and often a cockerel. They range over approximately four acres comprising woodland, mixed grasses, sheep and donkey fields and a ‘lively’ compost heap.
I became interested in diet because I’ve had a number of roosters die over the last seven years from illness that doesn’t seem to effect the hens. The hens are living to almost a third longer on average than the roosters here. The symptoms the roosters had that died from unknown causes were, a comb going purple and even black, loss of appetite, lethargic behaviour and eventual death. Some lived what seemed a normal life for a few months, others died more rapidly.
The reliable published causes of such symptoms that I could find were, nitrate poisoning and heart disease. Other sources have suggested hereditary disease of a non specific nature and I read some anecdotal evidence that the high concentration of calcium in layers chicken feed could be responsible for either liver ,or kidney problems, that might produce these symptoms.
This was the main reason I became interested in changing the feed of the chickens.
A problem I’ve found with dry food, be it pellets or powder is the chickens scratch it out of the containers on to the ground. I’ve tried numerous ‘no waste’ feeding arrangements and none of them worked. The pipe feeders worked best but the chickens still pecked pieces out and threw them on the ground.
In an enclosed run I would expect the chickens to eventually clean up these scratched out remnants, but here, being free range, these remnants were often just left on the ground and apart from the waste, they attracted rats. Rats eating the food wasn’t that much of a concern, but they piss and shit where they eat and the chickens eat off the ground in the same place,so hygiene became a major concern.
I feed the chickens in approximately the same places twice a day; three or four feed stations depending on current populations.
Given the various groups eat at different locations I was left with up to five areas (the Muscovy ducks have to be fed as well) of rough ground where chicken food needed to be cleaned up if I was to discourage the rats.
I don’t leave food out for the chickens; I wait while they eat and pick the food up afterwards. This made the pipe feeders impractical as it did many other systems, so I went back to an a large open bowl system which allowed more than one chicken at a time to feed and meant less time waiting to make sure everyone got fed before I picked the bowls up.
I wasn’t really concerned about the nutritional content of the chicken food, bar the calcium issue.
There have been some days (when the flying ants hatch is a favourite) when the chickens hardly eat any of the commercially produced food.
It’s my belief that they could all probably survive quite well on what they forage throughout the day and the ‘treat’ food I give them last think at night to encourage them out of the trees at roosting time.
So, to recap, my objectives were, less waste, less calcium for the roosters and less time spent with a dustpan and brush in my hands trying to clean up feed pellets from the ground and if possible less time feeding the chickens.
I then made two potentially terrible mistakes (I blame BYC mainly) I looked on the internet for chicken feeds that were available here in Catalonia within reasonable travelling distance and decided I would learn a bit about the different feeds available for chickens.
It didn’t take long before I had a colossal headache and was showing signs of an imminent nervous breakdown. There was organic this, mixed grain that, GM free, probiotic additives and nutritional analysis that looked like a biochemists notebook. Thank **** the chickens can’t read was one thought that crossed my mind, they would be chewing their feathers off in anxiety over making the correct choice!
The feed I started with had 4.1 % calcium and 15.25 % protein by weight. I’m not going to bother with a full nutritional analysis, there isn’t a large variation in vitamins and minerals in the feeds I looked at and being free range, any shortfall in the commercial feed would probably be supplemented by the odd baby field mouse, plant seeds etc, and whatever it is they dig out of the sheep and donkey shit and compost heap!
The powdered feed I ended up with has 18% protein and 1% calcium by weight. It’s organic.
I don’t measure the amount of feed I give with any degree of accuracy and I normally add a handful of cracked corn to the feed.
The organic powdered feed costs 16 Euros for a 25 kilo bag. The layers pellets cost 12 Euros for a 25 kilo bag.
Part of my plan was to do away with the cracked corn completely. It’s this that attracts the rats and given a choice, the chickens tend to pick out the corn and leave the layers pellets. A balanced feed should provide sufficient kerotine which is what the corn is supposed to supplement,
What about the oyster shells on the side for the hens some readers may be thinking. Well, I’ve got a bag of calcium powder but I don’t think it’s made from oyster shells and I certainly can’t afford to buy oysters...I don’t even like them.
The other mistake was I read about ‘fermented feed’. If I was to believe the claims made I would have bigger healthier chickens, they would lay more and better eggs, and I would definitely taste the difference. Their digestive systems would function like friction free machines, their shit would smell like roses, and they may even fly further! Strangely, I didn’t find any claims that I would spend less time with a dustpan and brush cleaning up the any spilt food which was one of the things I was really interested in.
I read pages of information regarding the benefits of fermented feed and the more I read the more sceptical I became. None of the authors seemed to have taken into account the feeding habits of the chicken, particularly those that free range. I read exaggerated claims about an increase in protein but the science just didn’t add up. I read that fermented food was easier for the chicken to digest. I read about the increases in various enzymes and vitamins. However, there was lots of things I couldn’t find any information on and some of these things I wanted to know are extremely relevant to the chickens health and their feeding habits and biology.
Undeterred, I decided to head for fully fermented food.
So, this is the first thing anyone who is considering changing their chickens diet needs to know;
it needs to be done in stages.
Chickens get used to a particular diet, even free range chickens. When the grapes fall here which the chickens love, all the chickens get’bad’ stomachs; it’s like the next morning after a ‘who can eat the hottest curry night’. Fortunately this doesn’t go on for very long, but if just one unusual foodstuff can have this effect., it doesn’t take much imagination to realise that a major change can push a chickens digestive system into shock and that’s not good for the chicken.
For the first three days I mixed the new powdered feed with the original layers pellets; approximately 20% powdered feed and 80% pellets. I still needed the dustpan and brush to clear up the mess.
Over the next week I gradually increased the proportion of the new powdered feed until the ratio above was reversed.
The mess was even worse; dust spread over a half metre radius and me still on my knees cleaning up with the chickens giving me baleful looks from under a nearby bush probably wondering why I was throwing away their mid morning snack.
Eager to get on the fermented track I started adding enough water to make the feed look like some badly mixed semi dry concrete. The chickens still eat the stuff and there wasn’t so much dustpan and brush work.
Encouraged by sighs of relief from my knees I progressively added more water each day for the next week, mixing a new batch each morning. The chickens still seemed keen, if not a bit keener, and the dustpan and brush stayed where I had left it.
Wonderful I thought, that’s the solution to the mess problem, but I still wasn't entirely happy, I wasn’t quite in with the fully fermented feed crowd yet.
At the end of that week I pulled out all the stops and went for just the new feed with enough water added to make a thick paste.
The chickens eat this as well.
I was getting terribly excited now, hardly able to resist the temptation to carry the best flying hen called Donk, and launch her from the sheep field to see if she could fly over the house and make the bottom of the donkey field; she’s already made most of the way when under pressure on dry layers pellets!
I was working up to the back slopping and sniffing the food during the day to see if it smelt like dough; the chickens watching with slightly bemused looks on their faces probably hoping I wasn’t going to start eating the stuff given my size in comparison to theirs.
The next week I made a batch, my very first batch, and let it brew overnight in a container with an open top. I didn’t want all those extra nutrients blowing the lid off while I slept dreaming of bigger and better eggs that even Jamie Oliver would be proud of.
I had enough mix to back slop now and as the week passed by, I tweaked the mixture by adding water and powder as necessary. It smelt like dough alright and I had little doubt I had at least partially fermented feed.
That week I carefully checked the trees the chickens will insist on climbing into until I call them down for supper and bed. Had any leapt to higher branches with all that new found energy I wondered. Was I going to have to make an even longer pole to encourage the more recalcitrant hens from the higher branches. Nope, they were all in their usual spots waiting to see if there were walnuts for supper.
I made a new batch before the week was out. The aroma from the old batch had become so pungent that I was worried that people from the local village, four and half kilometre down the track might be on their way up to buy sour dough bread. There was no doubt in my mind that I had finally joined the chicken food fad jet set; I was fermenting and so was the feed.
The chickens still eat it.
The entire process took about three weeks. The chickens eat slightly more of the fermented feed than they had of the dry feed; about another handful between 21 chickens.
What was quite interesting is Dink, the mother of Donk (the best flyer mentioned above) who is a particularly fussy eater eat considerably more of the fermented feed than she used to of the dried. It didn’t stop her going up the Magnolia tree at night though.
Every now and then a little voice in my head says ‘what on earth do you think you’re doing’ and I stop and engage the reasoning part of my brain, sometimes too late to avert a disaster but ……
A couple of days ago I heard that voice and started thinking.
The first thing that came to mind was what do I know about the chickens digestive system.
Chickens don’t have teeth and what they ingest gets massaged into a storage unit called the crop by muscles in their oesophagus. Once food is present in the crop a mucus is released that contains mild digestive enzymes. This mucus softens the food and helps lubricate a tube also surrounded by small muscles called the proventriculus which massages the food and mucus into another organ called the gizzard.
It’s an interesting organ the gizzard. It to is surrounded by muscles, but these muscles are strong.
The gizzards function is to grind all those hard bits of food into pulp. It’s constantly working and the grit that chickens need in their diet is what the gizzard uses as grinding paste. Try biting on a piece of dry corn, it’s hard enough to chip a tooth! The chickens gizzard copes with it.
After the gizzard has done it’s job the mulch it produces go to the intestinal tract and here the nutrients are extricated; the waste, well, we know where that ends up!
One thing that is very different from the human animal is the chickens digestive system doesn’t rest as such. When a human sleeps, or is deeply relaxed the digestive system does likewise. This is one of the reasons it is healthier for a chicken to go to roost with a full crop. Apart from the discomfort of having a gizzard grinding on nothing but grit, no food in the crop at night means no nutrients either; no calories to help keep warm, no vitamins for feather growth, a stopped system in effect.
So, my first concern as I think about fermented food which is the equivalent to food partially digested is, is this good for the gizzard and the chickens digestive system in general? I know in humans for example if you just feed semi liquid diets for a period of time the stomach shrinks and because there is little fibre and roughage the digestive system doesn’t work as it should.
The next issue there is an awful lot of stuff is written about the increase in the availability of various vitamins and minerals. A bit of common sense is required here. Humans and chickens need a certain quantity of these vitamins and minerals each day to remain healthy. Some like the B complexes can be stored by the body, vitamin C on the other hand gets passed through comparative quickly and the body only takes what it needs while it is available.
I am led to believe that the chemists and nutritionists who compile the necessary ingredients in order to provide the chicken with a healthy balanced diet have calculated what a chicken needs much like nutritionists have for humans. There isn’t much point in me buying a foodstuff that claims I will be able to absorb 20% more of a particular chemical if my body only needs a fixed amount and I get that with a normal diet. For some compounds constantly overdosing the system can lead to ill health. One would need to know if a chicken was, for whatever reasons, deficient in a particular mineral or vitamin for an excess dose to make any sense.
It seems that those who advocate fermented feed may not have faith in the chickens ability to digest other feeds. Chickens have been around an awful long time and I haven’t heard of any dropping dead because they can’t digest their food without human aid.
The claims regarding protein can be quite interesting; they go from the downright misleading to vague. I’ll deal with a common claim and that is the protein is better quality and more easily available.
To the best of my knowledge a protein is a protein. A complete protein comprises 9 fixed value amino acids. These acids are either present, or they are not. There is a case to be made for having the correct enzymes in order to digest a protein but phrases like ‘better quality’ or ‘more easily digestible’ don’t actually mean anything. I believe that fermentation works at the amino acid level and for fermentation using water to increase the actual protein levels in a food, there would need to be an overall increase in all the amino acids. I have yet to read anything that makes this claim specifically.
There’s more, the human digestive system can only digest a given amount of protein in a period of time. I can’t recall the time limit but the quantity is for an average human around 35 grammes. So, while eating that half pound steak may be gratifying, any protein above that nominal 35 grammes gets excreted with the faeces. There is a simple answer if you think your chickens need more protein, buy a feed with a higher protein content.
With modern feeds and with the chickens here I find it hard to believe that they are short of protein.
There may be occasions when one wishes to boost the protein in a chickens diet and a higher protein feed. or a protein supplement is all that’s necessary.
For contained chickens with constant access to feed, fermented or not, much of the following doesn’t apply.
The chickens here forage for as much of the day as climate and opportunity permit. There is an interesting caveat to this though, while the roosters may forage, they tend to give what they find to their hens.
The effect of this with the roosters here is they tend to eat more of the commercial feed than the hens and consequently ingest more calcium in an eating period. The commercial feed isn’t seen as treat food by the hens, or the roosters, so the rooster doesn’t gain any status in his hens eyes by offering them this food.
I wondered if this could in part be responsible for calcium overload if this is in fact harmful for the roosters. This is total conjecture I should add.
Roughly, the chickens here spend as much of the morning as the temperature permits foraging. Once being exposed to direct sunlight becomes a problem for thermal regulation the chickens go and seek shade. Even so, they still peck and dig occasionally where sufficient shade permits. The nature of their digestive system requires a steady input of food for optimal crop and gizzard functioning. This it seems is more important for the hens than it is for the roosters, I assume because the hen needs a more regular supply of nutrients for her eggs. Ask the roosters here and they’ll probably tell you the hens are just greedy.
As soon as the temperature drops the chickens are back out foraging.
(One day I should monitor the temperatures at which their foraging starts and stops.)
The point that needs emphasising here is the way the chickens body utilises food requires a constant intake to ensure the crop can drip feed the gizzard and with free range chickens fed with commercial feed, nutrient loading at specific intervals seems rather pointless.
We all buy commercially produced chicken feed on the assumption that the producers have calculated the correct amounts of protein, vitamins and minerals to ensure the chicken has sufficient quantities to remain healthy. If you believe for whatever reasons that your chickens need a bit more protein, or a few more vitamins ,the first thing I would ask is how do you know?
From the posts I’ve read it seems to be a completely subjective judgement.
When I think I need more of something, say I’m losing weight, I just eat more of everything.
Effective assimilation of nutrients depends on having a combination of food types and the enzymes to digest them and of course as mentioned with protein, there is a limit to what the body can assimilate in a fixed period of time.
Fermenting chicken feed alters some of the feed components, the list of possible changes to various combinations of foodstuffs is exhaustive and the reader would need to pick a particular combination and hope someone had analysed the changes that combination had undergone at specific stages in fermentation to evaluate exactly what it is they are feeding their chickens. From what I’ve read it isn’t what the nutritionists who ‘designed’ the food intended. In short, fermentation alters the nutritional value of the feed and I certainly don’t know if such alterations are any healthier for the chicken.
The claim that fermented food is more easily digested by the chicken, is this good for the chicken?
It seems to me a bit like going on a diet of pre cooked canned food. It’s easy to digest but my digestive system is designed to work with fibre and prolonged eating of canned food is likely to lead to digestive problems at some point, probably when I try to eat an apple or some greens!
There is such a range of feeds for chickens available with recommendations for specific types of chicken and differing keeping circumstances that tinkering with the feed by fermentation in the hope that it will benefit the chicken is rather like playing darts blindfolded.
So, am I going to keep on going with fermented feed. Oh yes, I haven’t had to sweep up for days!
I’ve settled on a two day program so in effect I’m feeding a mash. It’s a compromise and I’ll probably get thrown out of the fermented feed club, but I won’t have sore knees and that’s all good.
It’s written tongue in cheek and is not meant to be a definitive guide to fermented feed. It’s a bit of fun that I enjoyed writing.
I do, I hope, produce some valid criticisms of much of the hype surrounding the health benefits of fermented feed for chickens and provide some advice about changing the chickens diet. The article mainly concentrates on free range chickens.
I look after a varying population of mixed breed, free range chickens. The population varies between twenty and thirty. These chickens live in small groups, each group having it’s own coop.
Each group has at least one rooster and often a cockerel. They range over approximately four acres comprising woodland, mixed grasses, sheep and donkey fields and a ‘lively’ compost heap.
I became interested in diet because I’ve had a number of roosters die over the last seven years from illness that doesn’t seem to effect the hens. The hens are living to almost a third longer on average than the roosters here. The symptoms the roosters had that died from unknown causes were, a comb going purple and even black, loss of appetite, lethargic behaviour and eventual death. Some lived what seemed a normal life for a few months, others died more rapidly.
The reliable published causes of such symptoms that I could find were, nitrate poisoning and heart disease. Other sources have suggested hereditary disease of a non specific nature and I read some anecdotal evidence that the high concentration of calcium in layers chicken feed could be responsible for either liver ,or kidney problems, that might produce these symptoms.
This was the main reason I became interested in changing the feed of the chickens.
A problem I’ve found with dry food, be it pellets or powder is the chickens scratch it out of the containers on to the ground. I’ve tried numerous ‘no waste’ feeding arrangements and none of them worked. The pipe feeders worked best but the chickens still pecked pieces out and threw them on the ground.
In an enclosed run I would expect the chickens to eventually clean up these scratched out remnants, but here, being free range, these remnants were often just left on the ground and apart from the waste, they attracted rats. Rats eating the food wasn’t that much of a concern, but they piss and shit where they eat and the chickens eat off the ground in the same place,so hygiene became a major concern.
I feed the chickens in approximately the same places twice a day; three or four feed stations depending on current populations.
Given the various groups eat at different locations I was left with up to five areas (the Muscovy ducks have to be fed as well) of rough ground where chicken food needed to be cleaned up if I was to discourage the rats.
I don’t leave food out for the chickens; I wait while they eat and pick the food up afterwards. This made the pipe feeders impractical as it did many other systems, so I went back to an a large open bowl system which allowed more than one chicken at a time to feed and meant less time waiting to make sure everyone got fed before I picked the bowls up.
I wasn’t really concerned about the nutritional content of the chicken food, bar the calcium issue.
There have been some days (when the flying ants hatch is a favourite) when the chickens hardly eat any of the commercially produced food.
It’s my belief that they could all probably survive quite well on what they forage throughout the day and the ‘treat’ food I give them last think at night to encourage them out of the trees at roosting time.
So, to recap, my objectives were, less waste, less calcium for the roosters and less time spent with a dustpan and brush in my hands trying to clean up feed pellets from the ground and if possible less time feeding the chickens.
I then made two potentially terrible mistakes (I blame BYC mainly) I looked on the internet for chicken feeds that were available here in Catalonia within reasonable travelling distance and decided I would learn a bit about the different feeds available for chickens.
It didn’t take long before I had a colossal headache and was showing signs of an imminent nervous breakdown. There was organic this, mixed grain that, GM free, probiotic additives and nutritional analysis that looked like a biochemists notebook. Thank **** the chickens can’t read was one thought that crossed my mind, they would be chewing their feathers off in anxiety over making the correct choice!
The feed I started with had 4.1 % calcium and 15.25 % protein by weight. I’m not going to bother with a full nutritional analysis, there isn’t a large variation in vitamins and minerals in the feeds I looked at and being free range, any shortfall in the commercial feed would probably be supplemented by the odd baby field mouse, plant seeds etc, and whatever it is they dig out of the sheep and donkey shit and compost heap!
The powdered feed I ended up with has 18% protein and 1% calcium by weight. It’s organic.
I don’t measure the amount of feed I give with any degree of accuracy and I normally add a handful of cracked corn to the feed.
The organic powdered feed costs 16 Euros for a 25 kilo bag. The layers pellets cost 12 Euros for a 25 kilo bag.
Part of my plan was to do away with the cracked corn completely. It’s this that attracts the rats and given a choice, the chickens tend to pick out the corn and leave the layers pellets. A balanced feed should provide sufficient kerotine which is what the corn is supposed to supplement,
What about the oyster shells on the side for the hens some readers may be thinking. Well, I’ve got a bag of calcium powder but I don’t think it’s made from oyster shells and I certainly can’t afford to buy oysters...I don’t even like them.
The other mistake was I read about ‘fermented feed’. If I was to believe the claims made I would have bigger healthier chickens, they would lay more and better eggs, and I would definitely taste the difference. Their digestive systems would function like friction free machines, their shit would smell like roses, and they may even fly further! Strangely, I didn’t find any claims that I would spend less time with a dustpan and brush cleaning up the any spilt food which was one of the things I was really interested in.
I read pages of information regarding the benefits of fermented feed and the more I read the more sceptical I became. None of the authors seemed to have taken into account the feeding habits of the chicken, particularly those that free range. I read exaggerated claims about an increase in protein but the science just didn’t add up. I read that fermented food was easier for the chicken to digest. I read about the increases in various enzymes and vitamins. However, there was lots of things I couldn’t find any information on and some of these things I wanted to know are extremely relevant to the chickens health and their feeding habits and biology.
Undeterred, I decided to head for fully fermented food.
So, this is the first thing anyone who is considering changing their chickens diet needs to know;
it needs to be done in stages.
Chickens get used to a particular diet, even free range chickens. When the grapes fall here which the chickens love, all the chickens get’bad’ stomachs; it’s like the next morning after a ‘who can eat the hottest curry night’. Fortunately this doesn’t go on for very long, but if just one unusual foodstuff can have this effect., it doesn’t take much imagination to realise that a major change can push a chickens digestive system into shock and that’s not good for the chicken.
For the first three days I mixed the new powdered feed with the original layers pellets; approximately 20% powdered feed and 80% pellets. I still needed the dustpan and brush to clear up the mess.
Over the next week I gradually increased the proportion of the new powdered feed until the ratio above was reversed.
The mess was even worse; dust spread over a half metre radius and me still on my knees cleaning up with the chickens giving me baleful looks from under a nearby bush probably wondering why I was throwing away their mid morning snack.
Eager to get on the fermented track I started adding enough water to make the feed look like some badly mixed semi dry concrete. The chickens still eat the stuff and there wasn’t so much dustpan and brush work.
Encouraged by sighs of relief from my knees I progressively added more water each day for the next week, mixing a new batch each morning. The chickens still seemed keen, if not a bit keener, and the dustpan and brush stayed where I had left it.
Wonderful I thought, that’s the solution to the mess problem, but I still wasn't entirely happy, I wasn’t quite in with the fully fermented feed crowd yet.
At the end of that week I pulled out all the stops and went for just the new feed with enough water added to make a thick paste.
The chickens eat this as well.
I was getting terribly excited now, hardly able to resist the temptation to carry the best flying hen called Donk, and launch her from the sheep field to see if she could fly over the house and make the bottom of the donkey field; she’s already made most of the way when under pressure on dry layers pellets!
I was working up to the back slopping and sniffing the food during the day to see if it smelt like dough; the chickens watching with slightly bemused looks on their faces probably hoping I wasn’t going to start eating the stuff given my size in comparison to theirs.
The next week I made a batch, my very first batch, and let it brew overnight in a container with an open top. I didn’t want all those extra nutrients blowing the lid off while I slept dreaming of bigger and better eggs that even Jamie Oliver would be proud of.
I had enough mix to back slop now and as the week passed by, I tweaked the mixture by adding water and powder as necessary. It smelt like dough alright and I had little doubt I had at least partially fermented feed.
That week I carefully checked the trees the chickens will insist on climbing into until I call them down for supper and bed. Had any leapt to higher branches with all that new found energy I wondered. Was I going to have to make an even longer pole to encourage the more recalcitrant hens from the higher branches. Nope, they were all in their usual spots waiting to see if there were walnuts for supper.
I made a new batch before the week was out. The aroma from the old batch had become so pungent that I was worried that people from the local village, four and half kilometre down the track might be on their way up to buy sour dough bread. There was no doubt in my mind that I had finally joined the chicken food fad jet set; I was fermenting and so was the feed.
The chickens still eat it.
The entire process took about three weeks. The chickens eat slightly more of the fermented feed than they had of the dry feed; about another handful between 21 chickens.
What was quite interesting is Dink, the mother of Donk (the best flyer mentioned above) who is a particularly fussy eater eat considerably more of the fermented feed than she used to of the dried. It didn’t stop her going up the Magnolia tree at night though.
Every now and then a little voice in my head says ‘what on earth do you think you’re doing’ and I stop and engage the reasoning part of my brain, sometimes too late to avert a disaster but ……
A couple of days ago I heard that voice and started thinking.
The first thing that came to mind was what do I know about the chickens digestive system.
Chickens don’t have teeth and what they ingest gets massaged into a storage unit called the crop by muscles in their oesophagus. Once food is present in the crop a mucus is released that contains mild digestive enzymes. This mucus softens the food and helps lubricate a tube also surrounded by small muscles called the proventriculus which massages the food and mucus into another organ called the gizzard.
It’s an interesting organ the gizzard. It to is surrounded by muscles, but these muscles are strong.
The gizzards function is to grind all those hard bits of food into pulp. It’s constantly working and the grit that chickens need in their diet is what the gizzard uses as grinding paste. Try biting on a piece of dry corn, it’s hard enough to chip a tooth! The chickens gizzard copes with it.
After the gizzard has done it’s job the mulch it produces go to the intestinal tract and here the nutrients are extricated; the waste, well, we know where that ends up!
One thing that is very different from the human animal is the chickens digestive system doesn’t rest as such. When a human sleeps, or is deeply relaxed the digestive system does likewise. This is one of the reasons it is healthier for a chicken to go to roost with a full crop. Apart from the discomfort of having a gizzard grinding on nothing but grit, no food in the crop at night means no nutrients either; no calories to help keep warm, no vitamins for feather growth, a stopped system in effect.
So, my first concern as I think about fermented food which is the equivalent to food partially digested is, is this good for the gizzard and the chickens digestive system in general? I know in humans for example if you just feed semi liquid diets for a period of time the stomach shrinks and because there is little fibre and roughage the digestive system doesn’t work as it should.
The next issue there is an awful lot of stuff is written about the increase in the availability of various vitamins and minerals. A bit of common sense is required here. Humans and chickens need a certain quantity of these vitamins and minerals each day to remain healthy. Some like the B complexes can be stored by the body, vitamin C on the other hand gets passed through comparative quickly and the body only takes what it needs while it is available.
I am led to believe that the chemists and nutritionists who compile the necessary ingredients in order to provide the chicken with a healthy balanced diet have calculated what a chicken needs much like nutritionists have for humans. There isn’t much point in me buying a foodstuff that claims I will be able to absorb 20% more of a particular chemical if my body only needs a fixed amount and I get that with a normal diet. For some compounds constantly overdosing the system can lead to ill health. One would need to know if a chicken was, for whatever reasons, deficient in a particular mineral or vitamin for an excess dose to make any sense.
It seems that those who advocate fermented feed may not have faith in the chickens ability to digest other feeds. Chickens have been around an awful long time and I haven’t heard of any dropping dead because they can’t digest their food without human aid.
The claims regarding protein can be quite interesting; they go from the downright misleading to vague. I’ll deal with a common claim and that is the protein is better quality and more easily available.
To the best of my knowledge a protein is a protein. A complete protein comprises 9 fixed value amino acids. These acids are either present, or they are not. There is a case to be made for having the correct enzymes in order to digest a protein but phrases like ‘better quality’ or ‘more easily digestible’ don’t actually mean anything. I believe that fermentation works at the amino acid level and for fermentation using water to increase the actual protein levels in a food, there would need to be an overall increase in all the amino acids. I have yet to read anything that makes this claim specifically.
There’s more, the human digestive system can only digest a given amount of protein in a period of time. I can’t recall the time limit but the quantity is for an average human around 35 grammes. So, while eating that half pound steak may be gratifying, any protein above that nominal 35 grammes gets excreted with the faeces. There is a simple answer if you think your chickens need more protein, buy a feed with a higher protein content.
With modern feeds and with the chickens here I find it hard to believe that they are short of protein.
There may be occasions when one wishes to boost the protein in a chickens diet and a higher protein feed. or a protein supplement is all that’s necessary.
For contained chickens with constant access to feed, fermented or not, much of the following doesn’t apply.
The chickens here forage for as much of the day as climate and opportunity permit. There is an interesting caveat to this though, while the roosters may forage, they tend to give what they find to their hens.
The effect of this with the roosters here is they tend to eat more of the commercial feed than the hens and consequently ingest more calcium in an eating period. The commercial feed isn’t seen as treat food by the hens, or the roosters, so the rooster doesn’t gain any status in his hens eyes by offering them this food.
I wondered if this could in part be responsible for calcium overload if this is in fact harmful for the roosters. This is total conjecture I should add.
Roughly, the chickens here spend as much of the morning as the temperature permits foraging. Once being exposed to direct sunlight becomes a problem for thermal regulation the chickens go and seek shade. Even so, they still peck and dig occasionally where sufficient shade permits. The nature of their digestive system requires a steady input of food for optimal crop and gizzard functioning. This it seems is more important for the hens than it is for the roosters, I assume because the hen needs a more regular supply of nutrients for her eggs. Ask the roosters here and they’ll probably tell you the hens are just greedy.
As soon as the temperature drops the chickens are back out foraging.
(One day I should monitor the temperatures at which their foraging starts and stops.)
The point that needs emphasising here is the way the chickens body utilises food requires a constant intake to ensure the crop can drip feed the gizzard and with free range chickens fed with commercial feed, nutrient loading at specific intervals seems rather pointless.
We all buy commercially produced chicken feed on the assumption that the producers have calculated the correct amounts of protein, vitamins and minerals to ensure the chicken has sufficient quantities to remain healthy. If you believe for whatever reasons that your chickens need a bit more protein, or a few more vitamins ,the first thing I would ask is how do you know?
From the posts I’ve read it seems to be a completely subjective judgement.
When I think I need more of something, say I’m losing weight, I just eat more of everything.
Effective assimilation of nutrients depends on having a combination of food types and the enzymes to digest them and of course as mentioned with protein, there is a limit to what the body can assimilate in a fixed period of time.
Fermenting chicken feed alters some of the feed components, the list of possible changes to various combinations of foodstuffs is exhaustive and the reader would need to pick a particular combination and hope someone had analysed the changes that combination had undergone at specific stages in fermentation to evaluate exactly what it is they are feeding their chickens. From what I’ve read it isn’t what the nutritionists who ‘designed’ the food intended. In short, fermentation alters the nutritional value of the feed and I certainly don’t know if such alterations are any healthier for the chicken.
The claim that fermented food is more easily digested by the chicken, is this good for the chicken?
It seems to me a bit like going on a diet of pre cooked canned food. It’s easy to digest but my digestive system is designed to work with fibre and prolonged eating of canned food is likely to lead to digestive problems at some point, probably when I try to eat an apple or some greens!
There is such a range of feeds for chickens available with recommendations for specific types of chicken and differing keeping circumstances that tinkering with the feed by fermentation in the hope that it will benefit the chicken is rather like playing darts blindfolded.
So, am I going to keep on going with fermented feed. Oh yes, I haven’t had to sweep up for days!
I’ve settled on a two day program so in effect I’m feeding a mash. It’s a compromise and I’ll probably get thrown out of the fermented feed club, but I won’t have sore knees and that’s all good.
