FERMENTED FEEDS...anyone using them?

[TeaChick]

The way most of us do it and the way it benefits the birds most is by fermenting all the food the birds eat. We put it all in the bucket dry ( layer crumble, starter mash, veggys, corn, sunflower seeds, food scraps, ect.). Then we add water and at the first time (small amt) apple cider vinegar with mother. Then wait for a day. Stir a few times over that first 24hours. It will start to ferment. You will see bubbles as the fermenting beneficial bacteria give off gas from their feeding on the sugars of the food. There is only benefit to reusing the same water from previous ferments. There is no excess sugars. The fermenting actually is changing the sugars,as that is what the bacteria is feeding off of. It isn't complicated once you've done it for a few days. It should smell like a yeast/sour smell. Mine smelled like that until I changed bags of feed. My new feed has fish meal in it and now my fermented feed smells terrible because of the fish. It is still really nutritious and the birds eat it as well as the other good smelling stuff. Hope this was helpful.
Some benefits are: gaining more nutrition out of the feed you are already feeding. The fermentation makes the food more nutrient absorbent by the birds digestion.
Less poop and stink because of the nutrients staying in the bird, not getting pooped out as much.
Less waste because if the birds knocking it on the ground while eating.
Many others too.

Yes, that is helpful. Thank you.
I don't know what "mother" is; is that the first time you ferment or is it a special ingredient?
Sorry, I know I sound like an idiot.

 

[TeaChick]

I don't know where you are getting your information but I can sure take a guess....I'd give that information source a pass, if I were you. Stick to this thread or the one in the meat bird section if you want to know more accurate info on the FF.

You don't need the ACV at all. You don't need whey or yogurt or kefir or any such starter....the mix will pull yeasts from the air and they will feed on the sugars in the grains and populate your mix. In the process they will populate the whole mix with LABs and acetobacter bacillus(those found in mother vinegar) that feeds on the grains and the sugars produced by the fermentation of the grains.

There are two groups of yeasts that are drawn in...lactobacter(there are many different kinds but they all pretty much act the same and you can have several kinds living and thriving in the mix all at the same time and you'll never know which ones or how many are there unless you were to get your mix analyzed in a lab) and acetobacter. The lactobacter(LABs) will start the action of fermentation and their digestion of the sugar in the grains will yield a few byproducts...one of which is alcohol sugar. The acetobacter will feed on the alcohol sugar and thrive on that...meaning you are not feeding alcohol to your birds because the acetobacter are consuming it all. The byproduct of acetobacter metabolism is acetic acid, which is why the longer the ferment sits the more it smells like vinegar. It also means there isn't any "sugar level" to worry about..the acetobacter consumes it.

If in doubt about the whole fermentation process, I'd advise doing some serious reading on the subject from reliable sources...but blog sites are not going to be one of those sources.

It can be as simple as sourcing Wikipedia...has some good info and reliable links to sources with even more info.

There is no danger of "sugar buildup" or of not having the correct type of yeasts in your mix...if left open to the air to capture wild yeast spores, you will have all the appropriate yeasts/bacteria to keep a good fermentation going in your feeds. Even the commercial studies done on using FF are backslopping(inoculating new batches of feed with the feed/water from the previous batch) and I'm sure they would have discovered any harmful build up of supposed sugars in the feed mix from this practice.

That's the newest rumor from "out there" that I have heard.....

What will they think of next to try and complicate this oh, so simple process? Please avoid any information from sites that try to confuse and complicate the process...fermentation is as old as time and is not harmful or complicated to feed out to livestock. Truly.

Thank you for the info.
No, I haven't gotten to read the entire thread, but I'm working on it.

 

[TeaChick]

Okay. My head is spinning with information overload!

You're not alone!!!

 

[kpgoldstar]

Okay. My head is spinning with information overload! But I think I'm ready to take the plunge! Can someone recommend a simple, one-bucket recipe and instruction, using AVC, so I can get started? I kind of like the idea of feeding my flock of 20 a "breakfast" of fermented feed, then leave them to their feeders of dry feed the rest of the time.

They are mostly all in molt presently and range in age from six years down to five-month-old pullets. I especially find the prospect of less runny and smelly poops to be a fetching one!

I am just wondering why you would still leave them access to the dry feed? That sort of defeats the purpose of going through the fermenting process and will still lead to runny, stinky poops. I feed a full ration in the morning at breakfast then they get a small snack in the late afternoon of ff as well since I live in the desert and the pickin's when they are out of their run are few and far between. If you saw the pics of my girls, they are certainly not starving on the one meal + snack. They have no access to food the rest of the time.

 

[perchie.girl]

.....
I don't know what "mother" is; is that the first time you ferment or is it a special ingredient?
Sorry, I know I sound like an idiot.

Not an idiot by a l long shot.... Mother is a colloquial term for the live bacteria/yeast culture that is part of the fermentation process. But In the bottle of Apple Cider Vinegar ACV that still has the live active culture in it you will see a milky substance in the bottom of the container. Thats the part of the ACV that you want to jump start the fermentation process.

Wine will also have it if its a good aged wine. In wine its called Mother or Bees Wings.... Just a bit of trivia. So will beer but Beer has such an active critter combo its all filtereed out before bottleing or it explosions WILL occure.... LOL.

There are other things that have it as well .... Live culture Kiefer, Yogurt, Buttermilk, Same stuff is in Sour Dough starter. Ooh and Kimchee and Sourcrout as well.

Yes you can do it without. All those things that start a culture do exist in the air that we breathe. But with one caviat. If you are making cheese or bread or wine or anything that should have a certain taste profile you should start those from a culture that has the correct bacteria/yeast types in it.

For what its worth Vinegar starts out as Wine or Some sort of alcahol.... LOL. And in the FF process Yes it does create a bit of alcahol. Nothing you could taste if you were so inclined.... LOL.

deb "whos still lurking"

 

[kpgoldstar]

Okay. My head is spinning with information overload! But I think I'm ready to take the plunge! Can someone recommend a simple, one-bucket recipe and instruction, using AVC, so I can get started? I kind of like the idea of feeding my flock of 20 a "breakfast" of fermented feed, then leave them to their feeders of dry feed the rest of the time.

They are mostly all in molt presently and range in age from six years down to five-month-old pullets. I especially find the prospect of less runny and smelly poops to be a fetching one!

Here is a statement from our resident expert "Bee" on still feeding the dry:
Feeding both dry and fermented feeds, though better than just feeding dry, will not yield the maximum benefit of feeding FF...if you are going through the trouble of fermenting some of the feed, why not simplify by fermenting all of it. That way, your chickens can actually digest your current dry ration better and won't be pooping out that money on the floor of the coop, there to lie smelling badly until it attracts flies.

 

[kpgoldstar]

Yes, that is helpful. Thank you.
I don't know what "mother" is; is that the first time you ferment or is it a special ingredient?
Sorry, I know I sound like an idiot.

Perchi explained the "mother". It is not easy to find ACV with mother, basically unpasteurized. Bragg's is the most popular brand but is not found everywhere, usually health food stores or online. It is also quite expensive compared to just plain old ACV. I don't use it at all and my feed ferments just fine without it.

 

[Beekissed]

Perchi explained the "mother". It is not easy to find ACV with mother, basically unpasteurized. Bragg's is the most popular brand but is not found everywhere, usually health food stores or online. It is also quite expensive compared to just plain old ACV. I don't use it at all and my feed ferments just fine without it.

It's real easy now if you have a Walmart or Kroger near you....Heinz has a brand out now, less than $3 for a qt. size bottle and you can use that one to inoculate a larger, regular ACV to make more if you need it. But you really don't need ACV if you just capture wild yeasts from the air it will all work out fine.

 

[fosterson]

The feed store where I bought them didn't sell bands. I thought I would need them at first and up until the past few days I was OK. It just seems like they are all looking the same! My friend who has offered to babysit wanted bands too so she could tell them apart. I asked at my local feed store and she doesn't carry them either but offered to order them. She's a small biz though and I didn't want to put her out. Wonder if they have them at PetSmart? Or I thought about coloring a toenail with a sharpie??

Oh geeze, those things are dirt cheap. You want me to mail you 4? I have a bunch of them!

 

[azygous]

I am just wondering why you would still leave them access to the dry feed? That sort of defeats the purpose of going through the fermenting process and will still lead to runny, stinky poops. I feed a full ration in the morning at breakfast then they get a small snack in the late afternoon of ff as well since I live in the desert and the pickin's when they are out of their run are few and far between. If you saw the pics of my girls, they are certainly not starving on the one meal + snack. They have no access to food the rest of the time.

That sure makes a heap of sense. It would certainly solve my bear problems in spring and summer whereby I have to haul all the feeders inside at night or risk a bear attack on the coops and run when a hungry bear smells them and can't resist tearing everything apart to get at the food.

I guess, as the say goes, in for a penny, in for a pound. May as well go whole hog.

I appreciate all the experience and advice on this thread, which I know I need to go back and give a careful read all the way through.