FERMENTED FEEDS...anyone using them?

[Tikkijane]

I'm not Leslie but I'll chime in....your birds are fine on grit.  Free range birds don't need grit offered as they can glean their own.  You'd be surprised at what I find inside gizzards that has been used for grit~glass, quartz, cherry pits, stones, plastic BBs, etc.  You're type of free range even has more offered grit than most, so no worries. 

I know mine have gotten pain off the wellhouse that needs to be repainted, pieces of plastic that they've managed to find (the heavy kind of packing material), and probably some glass. Erg.

 

[Tikkijane]

  This just struck me as funny..  hahaha

:lol They make me laugh literally all the time. I have one silver lakenvelder who lays everywhere but the nesting box. I've found them buried (literally) in a wood pil, a feed bucket hanging in the barn, and yesterday, she dropped an egg from the rafters on the guinea side of the coop. If those were full size eggs, I'd ve more ticked. Lol.

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

Leslie you are the one that started me worrying about not offering grit. I have 4 chicks, about 13 wks old. Had them since 2 wks and started on ff the 2nd week I had them home. We've never had a crop problem with any of them. We live in the desert and they forage through the grass, weeds, rock, sand, dirt from overturned garden areas. Would they find the grit they need in my climate and landscape? If they weren't getting what they needed how would I know? I am concerned that I should be providing a commercial grit. My native dirt is beyond gritty and they constantly peck and scratch through the edges of my grass area that is all dirt. Please chime in if you think I am doing something wrong. I am new to chickens as an adult as of this past October.
As a kid raising chickens in 4H I never remember having grit available. We fed a mash and scratch, plus kitchen scraps. I don't remember having oyster shell or grit. We also fed eggshells with their kitchen treats.

I think Bee is right. If you have various sizes of "sharp" sand and gravel in your range area then you probably are okay without offering them "special" factory-made/store-bought grit. Some books say "always offer grit, even if your birds range" ... but it isn't like grit is a super special patented item only men can make ... it's small, sharp insoluble stones. It also isn't very expensive, so if you do offer them some "just in case" and they ignore it you won't feel too bad.

I offer grit because our soil is fine ... if it's well tilled and dry you can practically swim in it (I've taken more than a few dust baths between rows in the nursery, and it feels marvelous so I can understand why birds love dust baths) ... and we just don't have rocks unless we've installed them. If I do find a larger particle in the soil here, it is either some kind of garbage or it crumbles and dissolves. We used to find arrow heads, but it's been a while.

When I processed this year's turkeys their gizzards were full of turkey grit and bits of hard plastic ... the kind water pipes are made from. The turkeys seemed to really like picking up bits of white plastic ...

I'd rather have them pick up grit.

I do especially like having #1 grit around for chicks. They don't really need it if you're only feeding crumbles or mash, and even then that small size is only good for the first few weeks. And of course the big birds eat it, too, so it disappears fast. But I think chick grit helps the chicks' systems get functioning properly.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

Feeding fermented food to chickens is a very old strategy, going back centuries. The basic reason for feeding fermented food was to get the benefits of antibiotics before anyone had ever heard of penicillin.

 

[flockanuts]

I live on a dirt and gravel road so I don't give any grit. I figure they can find what they need. AND my chickens cross the road to get to the barnyard!!!

 

[pegm]

Well, my girls are finally eating all their ff, but not very enthusiastically at all. One seems to like it better than the others. They finish what I give them by 2-3 pm, then I open up the drop feeder with crumbles for them and give any scraps I have. Even tho it is sub freezing in the am, they will peck around at just about anything else and finally finish it off. I too am getting very runny poops that I have to wash off the coop door, and I'm with you azygous, NOT my favorite chore. We are leaving for a week in Hawaii in January, and I am not going to have my neighbor who will be taking care of the girls mess with the ff, so when we get back I will get a pretty good idea about whether or not the ff is making them runny to watery or not. My ff is the consistancy of maybe tile grout, not watery, not dry. First thing they do in the am is hit the grit feeder, then the water, then peck around as if they are trying to fill up. The water also has ACV in it, so they are getting enough of it I think.

 

[Beekissed]

I'm curious as to why you are offering the dry crumbles along with the FF? It could be why their bowels are not correcting...two different types of feeding that they are having to adapt to each day. One lets them absorb nutrients more fully, the other does not. It would be worth the experiment to stop all other feeds and only feed the FF. It's working for everyone else and I'm thinking your chickens are not too far different than the ordinary chicken, so it may be the mix of different types of feed being offered.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

I've kept dry feed on all the flocks since I have built such nice bulk feeders that last one to two weeks. Also in case it's too cold to feed FF.
I'll have to stop dry on one or two flocks to see what happens.
It will be easier come warmer weather. It is 60 today, dropping to 9 tomorrow and staying cold for a few weeks.

 

[22qZoo]

Any chance there's a little too much ACV going on? Don't get me wrong I'm a big fan, but if it's in the feed and the water? ( my son gets really loose and watery if I get a little heavy handed with the probiotics )

 

[pdirt]

Update on our FF experience...

Been using the simple recipe (feed, well water) for about 6 weeks now. The birds do seem to like it. I block access to their dry feed until after I feed them the FF in the morning. Only feeding the ff once a day. Will probably cut out the dry feed once the weather warms in spring, otherwise their ff will freeze solid before they can eat it all. Takes about 24 hrs for the ff to start to bubble, using just enough water to make a goopy sludge. I don't stir it. Our feed has fish meal and it smells a bit after about 6 days.Nothing horrible. PH is about 4.5 after 8 days, which is ideal (according to the research), and the birds seem fine and they like it. Poops are more solid. I haven't done the math yet, but eyeballing it, it seems we are using slightly less feed, probably actually quite a bit less since they haven't been foraging since we started the FF 6 weeks ago due to weather.

For about 6 months, I've also been making gallon batches of FF using a starter culture. I leave it to ferment, without oxygen (the starter works best without much air) for 2 weeks or more and the pH gets down to about 3.3. The lower pH signifies the presence of much greater quantities of those good lactic acid bacteria (probiotics) as well as creating a fairly shelf stable feed supplement, one that can be stored in a cool/dry/dark place for weeks or even months without loss of nutrients and should improve in nutritional qualities if anything. Combined with the extra effort/cost of making FF this way with the (unknown to me at present) likely TOO low pH of feeding 100% this type of FF over the long term, I will keep feeding this stuff as a daily or weekly treat. I know for humans it would probably not be ideal to eat a ton of pickles, kraut, kimchee, etc (assuming these were low salt versions) simply because the very low pH is usually best as a condiment and not the main meal. In other words, most folks can benefit from some form of lacto fermented food, but you can get too much of a good thing! Same thing I'm thinking for the birds.

So, long story short, the level of acidity in the simple water and feed method were mostly talking about here on this thread seems fine and appropriate for long term feeding. This was a question I had and like finding answers from two sources...from first hand observations from folks who have been doing it a while (like Bee) and also from scientific research. I'll admit that I tend to give more weight in value to first hand experience over the research, but I love combining different sources of info like that. Maybe someone else will appreciate it as well.

Here's one of the research links I found useful: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/19373724/