Fermented feed - What to put it in?

Redbirdacres

Songster
Mar 22, 2022
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So I'm starting to ferment some feed for my meat birds. They waste SO much feed. Every time we move the tractor, there's tons of feed on the ground and while we have found a higher quality, larger bag of food for cheaper from a local place, I still don't want to go through a bag every 3-5 days when it should last them at least a week!

My question is, what do you feed it to them in? Obviously the gravity hanging feeders we have aren't going to work. I thought about bowls but with a larger flock, will they fight over it? Several bowls? As a new chicken mama, I'm not sure what materials are safe for them to peck at and what isn't. Thanks!
 
I use the galvanized base from the gravity feeder. The metal gravity feeders with the cylinder and base come apart from each other. I just use two of those for my ducks and fill them plumb full. Depends on how many birds your feeding, but works for me.
 
I use the galvanized base from the gravity feeder. The metal gravity feeders with the cylinder and base come apart from each other. I just use two of those for my ducks and fill them plumb full. Depends on how many birds your feeding, but works for me.
Because fermented feeds are mildly acidic, and I've found nothing but low quality galvanized stuff lately (particularly at the welds), i'm going to suggest using other materials.
 
I've found terracotta dishes - like the bottom of flower pots - to be the best thing for feeding chicks from. I've got a few large ones. The one downside is the lip on them isn't very high so if they are so inclined they can scratch the feed out. Some people will say not to use unglazed dishes but I rinse them each day, and given my flock finds mucky puddles to be the best place to drink, I'm not going to worry about it.
 
They waste SO much feed. Every time we move the tractor, there's tons of feed on the ground and while we have found a higher quality, larger bag of food for cheaper from a local place, I still don't want to go through a bag every 3-5 days when it should last them at least a week!
If you just want to cut down on waste, getting the food wet should work. No need to wait for it to ferment.

My question is, what do you feed it to them in? Obviously the gravity hanging feeders we have aren't going to work. I thought about bowls but with a larger flock, will they fight over it? Several bowls? As a new chicken mama, I'm not sure what materials are safe for them to peck at and what isn't. Thanks!
I've used lots of food-safe plastic containers. Sometimes it is shallow ones that originally contained hummus, sour cream, lunchmeat, etc. Sometimes I cut the bottom quarter off a plastic milk jug, and use that. They can be rinsed and re-used as often as you like.

I have also spooned wet food in a line on a board (3 to 5 feet long, 4 to 6 inches wide, depending on what I had available.) That's good for letting them all eat at once, but not good for holding large amounts.

I've don't know how many meat birds you have, so I don't know how many of what shape containers you will need. Past a certain point, a single long container is easier than a bunch of other shapes.

I would not expect them to actually fight over the food. I would expect the biggest and bossiest to stand there gobbling it, and the ones further down the pecking order to stay back and wait their turn. If there is enough space for them to all eat at once, or if there is enough food for the first ones to get full and move away, the timid birds can get their share too. But if the big ones eat it all up, the timid birds might not get enough.

Meat birds will tend to eat more food each day than they did the previous day, so you will need to keep adjusting the amount you give them.
 
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