Blitzing fermented feed

[Rubestmar]

Hi all,

One of our Cream Legbar girls roughly 4 yrs old now, has today had an op for crop impaction / sour crop. We'd tried everything advised beforehand and the op thankfully seems to have worked very well as shes eating drinking and wants out to play! She has to stay indoors until her soluble sutures are done which is fine by us, with a follow up.
Vet & me talked about fermented feed, understandably, as there was a lot of rancid grains in her crop and he wasn't condoning more fermented feed at this time. What he found in her crop was a lot of grains and some greens.
If we were to blitz grains first, would it still work lacto wise? Would it again bung her crop? All of our other girls seem fine albeit in moult atm.
Thankyou for any advice you can give

 

[lazy gardener]

Blitz????? Not familiar with that term. Since you just spent a lot of money on surgery for this chicken, you should follow your vet's advice. I would imagine that keeping her on a soft diet would be part of the recommendation for a while.

 

[Rubestmar]

We are following our vets advice. Blitzing means mashing all grains in a blending jug so all grains become finely chopped.

 

[lazy gardener]

Got it. If vet says to blitz, then you blitz!

 

[ChattyChickens4Life]

I agree with lazy gardener. The vet knows best, so doing what the vet says is smart! Hope your hen recovers smoothly!

 

[Rubestmar]

The Vet didn't say that. He recommended commercial feed.
We are thinking of blitzing the grains we ferment before adding water to ferment them, after all, isn't that what it's all about? This lacto stuff? So long as the grains are ground down and can't block the crop, will they still give the girls the goodness grains give?

 

[lazy gardener]

I would follow the vet's instructions explicitly in this case. You are dealing with an animal who has a huge incision in her digestive tract. Introducing bacteria of any kind is not appropriate at this time IMO. As she heals, in about 3 weeks, I might consider adding fermented commercial feed in very small quantities, with vet permission. I'd wait at least a month before progressing to whole or cracked grains.

Just be aware, that it's not a normal occurrence for a chicken to get an impacted crop. I've never had such issue, And my flock is exposed regularly to the very conditions that are considered to be contributing factors. (We dump the grass catcher bags into the runs all summer long, and there are plenty of pieces of grass/weeds of varying lengths and textures that the birds gorge on). So, your bird may have an underlying weakness that caused her issue in the first place, and she may be prone to repeat occurrence.

 

[tuesdaze]

To answer one of your questions - yes, if the grains are finely ground before fermenting, lacto-fermentation will still work. I can't say if it would again cause an impacted or sour crop. The vet would have to say what may have caused this in the first place. I am curious if the fermenting contributed to this or if the grains soured because they were stuck and what caused them to get stuck. Regarding commercial feed, I have also fermented the feed pellets and feed crumbles. My chooks didn't want to try it at first, but I mixed it with their fermented grains to get them to try it and now they love it. I discovered mine do not like it if it is too wet, so I lined my plastic strainer with a flour sack towel and left it to sit and drain before I gave it to them. Someone questioned if that drains away all of the good stuff, but I don't think it does. It still smelled plenty fermented. One guy said he just uses less water for the fermenting process. I think he said he uses equal parts water and feed. He doesn't have the one inch of water covering the top of the feed to make the anaerobic environment, but he said he has not had any mold or spoiling problems. I am going to try it that way once, because if it will work that way for me, too, I should be able to skip the draining step. I also read that the whey can be strained from the plain greek yogurt and added in with the water and feed at the beginning of the fermentation process to jump start the good bacteria. I haven't tried that yet. Hope your little lady has a speedy and full recovery.