FERMENTED FEEDS...anyone using them?

[RoseMarie1]

This is super interesting. Do i just feed it once a day? I currently have hanging feeders with feed always available. How should I transition? Keep the hanging feeders? what do you put it into for them to eat? Does this replace the ACV in the water?

Can you tell I'm a rookie at this?

I feed mine once a day, in the evening. I just feed it to them the very next day once I made it. It can't be fed in metal and it has to be fed in plastic because it will corrode the metal and it wont be a good thing since it will get bad stuff into their food from it leaching out into it. Some use the acv in theirs but I use it in mines water. I was once a rookie to. We all have to start some where.

Are the hanging feeders plastic?
Once I got my fermented food made, I started feeding out of it the very next evening and I didn't offer them a choice in the foods. Some leave out the dry stuff and some don't and I didn't either. Thing is, this is some very good stuff for them and mine dearly love it. For some reason and I can't remember why, but I did have some dry in a hanging dish I used to have and they wouldn't eat it once they tasted the ff. It was in their roosting area and it took them days to every finish it off once they got the taste of the ff. Even if they wouldn't eat the ff, I would have kept it in there and not give them anything else so they would eat it because it's just so much better for them than the dry food was.

 

[wlhtx]

Instead of the hanging feeders, I would recommend you get a trough-shaped something. For example, I use the longer plastic containers that you can buy for chicks, but I take off the top that has the holes in it and just use the bottom.

Others use gutters or PVC pipe cut in half or drywall trays, etc. Just something long and somewhat shallow will do the trick. And like Rose mentioned, no metal.

A trough will be easier for you to fill up and for them to eat out of. I actually feel sometimes like I am scooping them out an ice cream sundae (albeit using some pretty funky ice cream)...

 

[RoseMarie1]

Instead of the hanging feeders, I would recommend you get a trough-shaped something. For example, I use the longer plastic containers that you can buy for chicks, but I take off the top that has the holes in it and just use the bottom.

Others use gutters or PVC pipe cut in half or drywall trays, etc. Just something long and somewhat shallow will do the trick. And like Rose mentioned, no metal.

A trough will be easier for you to fill up and for them to eat out of. I actually feel sometimes like I am scooping them out an ice cream sundae (albeit using some pretty funky ice cream)...

yep I use a vinyl gutter for my chickens and it's much easier to scoop the food into.

 

[Beekissed]

This is super interesting. Do i just feed it once a day? I currently have hanging feeders with feed always available. How should I transition? Keep the hanging feeders? what do you put it into for them to eat? Does this replace the ACV in the water?

Can you tell I'm a rookie at this?

Some feed once, some twice a day. I feed once a day. Don't keep the continuous feeder and transition by feeding only the FF...they will get used to it and soon you will see some very addicted birds who love the stuff. You no longer have to use ACV in the water unless you want to just to keep the water more fresh in the summer and to discourage bacterial/fungal growth in the waterer.

Instead of the hanging feeders, I would recommend you get a trough-shaped something. For example, I use the longer plastic containers that you can buy for chicks, but I take off the top that has the holes in it and just use the bottom.

Others use gutters or PVC pipe cut in half or drywall trays, etc. Just something long and somewhat shallow will do the trick. And like Rose mentioned, no metal.

A trough will be easier for you to fill up and for them to eat out of. I actually feel sometimes like I am scooping them out an ice cream sundae (albeit using some pretty funky ice cream)...

I agree...though I use a metal rain gutter because my feed doesn't stay in it long enough for corrosion or leaching to occur. I'll be switching to PVC once I find some that I can recycle instead of buy. The rain guttering is definitely the cheapest option for troughs and are easy to attach to pedestal type feet with just a few screws. This was my first rain gutter trough...cost $8 to buy the materials and about 10 min. to make.




After using it for these meat birds, I cut it down to fit my smaller layer flock.....

 

[naadarien]

I had a bunch of extra glass pie plates. I have about 5 of them in our coop. The chickens eat from those.

Easy to clean, light weight, nothing much sticks to them, and they were free (my mom left them behind when she moved to Oregon). Best part.

My avatar shows one bunch of girls eating from a pie plate.

 

[rawheid]

Thank you so much. I think I'll try it one of these days. How do you do it when you go away for an evening? or away for holidays? I always get my neighbors to feed the chickens. I guess hungry chickens will eat dry food if that's all there is right? I don't want to make it complicated for the help.

 

[Beekissed]

I feed it just like I always fed dry...I feed once a day. If I am going away for several days, I just dish out what I would feed each day x how many days I'm going to be gone. That's what I always did with dry feed and I've found it works the same with the FF. I mix my FF in a 5 gal. bucket, so there is always plenty of feed to dispense in large amounts if I need to go away for some days.

 

[naadarien]

Thank you so much. I think I'll try it one of these days. How do you do it when you go away for an evening? or away for holidays? I always get my neighbors to feed the chickens. I guess hungry chickens will eat dry food if that's all there is right? I don't want to make it complicated for the help.

If it is just one night, I just give enough FF to take them through the next day. My birds don't eat much in the overnight. Once they roost, they like to stay there. They will eat like crazy in the AM so as long as there is food there, they are good.

If I am gone for a long period, I'd make a bigger batch and leave that for my help with instructions to use dry when the FF ran out.

Now that I only add kefir to my feed (i don't ferment the feed itself), I just tell them how much milk to add to the feed and that works fine.

 

[Beekissed]

I'm curious...why add kefir but not ferment the feed? If you are not actually fermenting the grains so as to convert the proteins and sugars there, there is little benefit to adding the kefir to the grains other than to provide probiotics, which is better than none, but the lack of fermentation in the actual grains isn't utilizing the benefit of making the grains more useable to the bird, so you are still having undigested proteins coming out and rotting on your coop floor. You could feed dry at that point and just provide them kefir to drink and still get the same results.

 

[naadarien]

I'm curious...why add kefir but not ferment the feed? If you are not actually fermenting the grains so as to convert the proteins and sugars there, there is little benefit to adding the kefir to the grains other than to provide probiotics, which is better than none, but the lack of fermentation in the actual grains isn't utilizing the benefit of making the grains more useable to the bird, so you are still having undigested proteins coming out and rotting on your coop floor. You could feed dry at that point and just provide them kefir to drink and still get the same results.

There is not a good place here in the house to keep the feed fermenting permanently, the chicken coop is a few hundred yards from the house so the hauling is problematic and onerous, and the coop isn't warm enough (for 6 months out of the year minimally) to leave the ferment there. The probiotics in the kefir will help with the digestion of the proteins and sugars. I have no qualms about that.

The birds also go back and forth. Some days they liked the FF. Other days they wouldn't touch it. I'd have to refuse other food, just to get them to eat it. By comparison, I have not had that issue at all with adding the kefir. Not sure why, but I don't care really. As long as they happily eat it, I'm good. BTW...they won't drink the kefir straight if it is just left for them. Tried that one already. It just gets covered with the litter and never gets eaten. This way, they get the kefir, it doesn't go wasted, and I don't have a mess in my coop.