Best Fermented Grains/Feed for Chickens

[nipper75]

It depends a lot on whether and temperature but In the summer I ferment grain around 4 or 5 days.

Chris

Chris, I have a rather weird question, but, how do you serve the FF to the chickens?

 

[nipper75]

You don't want to read 300 pages of posts to get that?

[disclaimer - me not expert. just feed chicken and read long fermented thread]

Any grains / crumble / pellets / mash can be fermented. Most people on this forum do a mix of grains with a prepared poultry feed (i.e. mash) since grains alone does not provide ideal nutrient levels.

Deciding what to ferment is not really the right question. You should decide what you want to feed your chickens (in general) then ferment it. There's lots of resources about that...

My current fermented feed is a mix of 1/2 18% poultry stater mash and and 1/2 hen scratch which consists of whole wheat, whole oats and field fields. Everyone does something a little different. Some use barley cause it's cheap. There have been some unfavourable studies about the use of barley in the poultry industry but the backyard chicken folks seem to be having success with it.

My preference is to NOT to use cracked, cut or rolled, or otherwise processed grains because as soon as you process the grain in any way it starts to degrade. I use the starter mash for convenience to get the missing nutrients and keep the protein percentage acceptable.

Hi Island Roo... what brand of scratch do you use? ty

 

[Chris09]

Chris, I have a rather weird question, but, how do you serve the FF to the chickens?

I feed fermented grains, and I just top there regular feed with it.

Chris

 

[GulfStar]

The original thread here on BYC

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...-horrors-anyone-want-to-follow-their-progress

There are also other good threads about fermented feed, tons of info.

 

[nipper75]

Sorry Friends... I should have expanded on my question a bit. I was wondering if you have special sort of pan or bowl you put it in for them. I don't want to flop it on the ground. Thanks

 

[Chris09]

Sorry Friends... I should have expanded on my question a bit. I was wondering if you have special sort of pan or bowl you put it in for them. I don't want to flop it on the ground. Thanks

As I said in my last post, I just top there regular feed.
There regular feed is in a trough feeder.

Chris

 

[nipper75]

As I said in my last post, I just top there regular feed.
There regular feed is in a trough feeder.

Chris

oops sorry

 

[Island Roo]

Hi Island Roo... what brand of scratch do you use? ty

Its called Country Junction Hen Scratch. It's wheat, oats and peas - 13.5% protein. I thinks it's only available in western canada.

This is what my trough feeders look like but they usually hang outside. A piece of gutter screwed onto a piece of works too but like to hang mine.

 

[nipper75]

thank you Island Roo. That looks fabulous...

 

[mg15]

It depends a lot on whether and temperature but In the summer I ferment grain around 4 or 5 days.

Chris

Hi,
You say Grain,
can the flock starter crumble be fermented for four days ? Or shorter ?
Thanks