Chickens for 10-20 years or more? Pull up a rockin' chair and lay some wisdom on us!

[Beekissed]

I'd thought about using the same water as well and the experiments I read about called it "back-slopping" to reinfect the new batch of grain with the established cultures. I am doing my first batch right now and I kind of started it with some mother vinegar to see if I could speed up the fermentation.

I'll remember the stir paddle....

 

[Dead Rabbit]

on the other hand...alot more knowledgeable men than me have fed fermented oats for decades and decades and swear by them. there are even recipes out there that for fermenting oats that are quite elaborate. and the ingrediants do seem to have much good health benefits to them. i.e. vinegar, cinniamon, vit/elec. mixtures, other proabotics. and i fed this way for a long time. you can soak the oats for weeks and as long as they stay submerged, they will not rot. just stirr them occasionally.
i used to put a heat lamp over my bucket of oats so it wouldnt freeze in the wintertime. i know of others that fill 32 gall. plastic trashcans full of soaked oats and wrap it in heat tape. gets them to cook faster.
i never ever saw any bad effects from fermenting oats, except the loose droppings. im a student of MIKE STRECKER's book. and he couldnt find any benefits of soaked oats or grains to make it worth the effort. it was his writings that got me to looking at the droppings closer. there is alot to be learned by looking at chicken manure. but as mentioned, many swear by them old stinking fermenting oats.

if anyone does chose to ferment them, let them soak till they stink bad, and the white foam continually forms on top. with occasional bubbles. thats when they are ready to feed. the fowl LOVE them this way.

here is a good recipe that many swear by:

Get a 30 Gallon plastic garbage can...the heavy duty ones....rinse out thouroughly....into this add:
one gallon of apple cider vinigar
one pound of brown sugar
four quarts of vegetable juice concentrate
one cup of Red Cell
one half pack of vitamin/electrolyte powder
one 2 1/2oz. jar of ground cinnamon
now fill the can half full of water and stirr all the ingreidents thoroughly. add 100lbs. of whole recleaned oats... there are several brands o the market so just make sure that they are clean. Add more water till all of the oats are covered. Cover this and let set for 24 Hrs.... then add more water each day untill the oats quite soaking it up. I like to let mine set for 7 days before feeding them to my fowl. I calculate the ratio of my feed so that I am feeding 20 to 25% oats. You can add a pack of brewers yeast or as Doc does it a can of beer to the mix to speed up the fermentation process. These oats REALLY help in hot weather.

now i must add i never used this recipe exactly. i did use everything listed but the suger, cinnamon, beer. everything else i vouch for. i did not ever soak this many at once either. i never had that many chickens at one time to where this amount was necessary.

 

[Dead Rabbit]

couple yrs ago when i was still soaking grains, i would also soak whole corn along with the oats. i did this in the heat of summer time. figuring the corn would help put moistture back in their systems. i never fermented the corn (for obvious reasons) but soaked it enuff to where it was swollen from absorbed water. it seemed to help and they loved it even more.

 

[Beekissed]

I'm not soaking oats at all...I'm currently soaking starter feed and then later I'll be soaking cracked corn, barley and wheat together. I won't be adding any additional ingredients except vinegar to augment this feed mix.

I'll try keeping the mixture below the water line and stirring to aerate it...should have thought of that one.

 

[Kassaundra]

Thanks for the recipe. I do need to graduate to a bigger container. We started w/ the 5 gall buckets b/c we had them and this started as an experiment, so we didn't want to buy containers if it didn't work out.

 

[Dead Rabbit]

if i was to add anything, beside the vinegar of course, it would be the RED CELL. this is a horse suppliment. very pricey imo. but its a good product. and you use such a little amount in comparison. at least i did. this product is not always available. and not known in all areas.
i remeber one time talking to a horse vet from california. we were all staying at a bed and breakfast in lexington va. lexington is like the horse capital of va.....alot of shows were going on at the time. any who. i asked her about RED CELL and she said she never heard of the product????
so perhaps its not available or known of on the west coast.
i personally dont think its an absolute necessary. at the time i was raising performance type fowl and health was of the absolute necessary at all times. for your regular ol layer flock or flock of ornamental barnyard types i wouldnt use these types of products.

but if showing birds, i recommend it.

 

[Beekissed]

I finally covered my grain/mash with the liquid mix~which was already fermenting~and stirred it a couple of times and now I have a bubbling pot of fermenting grain! Yay! I'll keep it going like sourdough bread mix and just keep my good cultures good and heavy.

 

[bj taylor]

how does feeding fermented grains help in hot weather?

 

[Beekissed]

I'm not sure about your question...are you asking does it help in hot weather, in particular, or just how does it help period? I don't know that the benefits of feeding fermented grains changes from season to season, from what I understand from the studies done and from the folks who have tried it, it pretty much is beneficial any time.

 

[Dead Rabbit]

how does feeding fermented grains help in hot weather?

its a good way to add moisture to their system. dry grains and feed take moisture to digest just like any type of digestion process. the digestion process in a chicken creates heat. thats why feeding whole corn in winter is beneficial b/c it causes heat. keeps the bird warmer through an internal force. its not the corn per say, but the digestion of it. so if you soak your grains, it adds moisture, but it also makes the feed easier to digest. less digestion action taking place, less internal heat going on, less stress on an already heat stressed bird.

its a good way to add moisture to your birds in the winter too. when cold they dont want to drink, just like we dont. its easy to dehydrate in winter. this method keeps them hydrated when they dont want to take in moisture in a more conventional method.

feeding soaked grains or feed, is a win/win situation IMO. but its the fermenting process that im not sold on any longer.