FERMENTED FEEDS...anyone using them?

[Magilla]

New to site and chickens in general so my apologies if this has been asked and answered already, I did search but nothing came up.

From the reading I have done one of the major benefits of fermented feed is the lacto bascillus. I already make a LAB serum for my plants, dog and myself. Could I just add this to the chick(en)s water?

Here is the Youtube vid that got me started on it, really easy to make.

 

[neopolitancrazy]

I apologize for seeming dense, but what is the reason for feeding beet pulp to chickens? I thought it was a source of cheap but somewhat digestible fiber that one gives to your ruminants when one is forced to find creative ways to keep the rumen flora alive while waiting for your pasture to recover from a drought. How is it an improvement over a professionally balanced chicken feed?

 

[azygous]

I'm only feeding beet pulp to the voracious hoards so they don't eat me out of house and home. They've been hitting the regular FF, made with their normal chicken feed, much too heavily. This way, I serve the amount of FF they need, and then fermented beet pulp along side for when they finish off the FF. That way I know they aren't starving if there's still beet pulp in the trough.

They do eat it, but aren't as crazy about it, and don't tend to overeat it like they do the FF.

 

[LindaB220]

New to site and chickens in general so my apologies if this has been asked and answered already, I did search but nothing came up.

From the reading I have done one of the major benefits of fermented feed is the lacto bascillus. I already make a LAB serum for my plants, dog and myself. Could I just add this to the chick(en)s water?

Here is the Youtube vid that got me started on it, really easy to make.

Yes, you can. I'm going to be using EM-1 rather than making it. $35 shipped from Amazon but it will last me over a year by using a small amount of the made up gallon to make up new stuff. Good luck.

Edited to clarify: I bought this rather than AVC to make my FF because I will use it for composting and in the garden. And spraying down the coop for cleanliness

 

[kpgoldstar]

To all my FF friends on this thread I thought I would give you an update on my small flock. As you can see they are all fat and sassy on FF with nobody missing a meal! I plan to cut back on the feed as the days get warmer.
My girls will be 20 weeks on Tuesday. Standard hatchery RIR's. If they were production reds I would expect some egg laying behavior by now. No squatting, no gap in the pelvic bone and no interest in the nesting boxes yet. Here are a few pics of them showing off their newly developed combs and wattles. Snoop in the first pic, Lemon in the second and Leticia in the third. Dottie got photographed last night and she has the smallest, most pale comb of all 4 with almost no wattles so she let her sisters have the stage today. You can see Dot in the background of the second pic.




Oh, and I can't resist one more! Snoop and Leticia posing for their Mama for the last pic of the free range time tonight.

 

[Beekissed]

Very healthy looking birds!

Very pretty!

 

[MandalaMaMa]

Very happy looking girls kp ! Thanks for sharing.

 

[neopolitancrazy]

I'm only feeding beet pulp to the voracious hoards so they don't eat me out of house and home. They've been hitting the regular FF, made with their normal chicken feed, much too heavily. This way, I serve the amount of FF they need, and then fermented beet pulp along side for when they finish off the FF. That way I know they aren't starving if there's still beet pulp in the trough.

They do eat it, but aren't as crazy about it, and don't tend to overeat it like they do the FF.

Is it possible that you are feeding other animals along with your chickens? When I first turned last summer's chicks out to free-range, my other animals wouldn't touch the fermented feed. By autumn, the yard rabbits and barn cats would not eat FF, but the kittens, puppies, dogs, and the neighbors' free-ranging turkeys were chasing my chicks away from the pans and gobbling every bite.

Another possibility is that they are able to stand in their feed pans and scratch a good deal of feed out onto the ground, wasting it. (Been there, done that, too.)

A third possibility is that your birds actually need more feed. My birds don't get to free range like Bee's, and they consume ~1.5 to 2 cups of fermented feed per bird, per day. When my husband takes charge of the birds for a week or two, he swears he feeds them daily, but the feed level in the storage bin says he fed about one-third as much as instructed. The birds also lose a visible lot of weight, their chest feathers develop a pleat and their keel bones feel like they could come through the skin with little additional pressure. And egg production slows down. After I feed them for a week or two, egg production has rebounded, and their chests are filling out again.

Just my thoughts, I hate to see anyone feed truly hungry birds the nutritional equivalent of fermented potato chips.

Best wishes,
Angela

 

[Beekissed]

Mine haven't had much ranging opportunities this winter either but they are still only eating 1/2 c. per bird and maintaining good condition. I think it has a lot to do with breed also....my breeds were chosen for feed thrift and then culled for the same, so they can maintain good conditioning on less feed than other breeds and birds. That's one aspect of saving on feeds that many just don't understand....there are breeds that over eat and store fat and then there are breeds that can't seem to hold condition without larger portions of feed.

The key is to get breeds known for maintaining good condition and laying on minimal feed input. If you really want to save money on feed and also have a healthier flock that you don't constantly have to tweak with feed ration supplements, try getting breeds and birds that have a slower metabolism, that forage actively for their feed and that produce well on forage and normal feed rations of protein/carbs.

Flock management is a broad spectrum of things that people need to wrap their minds around...it's more than adding feed to birds to get eggs. So much more.

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

A third possibility is that your birds actually need more feed. My birds don't get to free range like Bee's, and they consume ~1.5 to 2 cups of fermented feed per bird, per day. When my husband takes charge of the birds for a week or two, he swears he feeds them daily, but the feed level in the storage bin says he fed about one-third as much as instructed. The birds also lose a visible lot of weight, their chest feathers develop a pleat and their keel bones feel like they could come through the skin with little additional pressure. And egg production slows down. After I feed them for a week or two, egg production has rebounded, and their chests are filling out again.

As someone who has BTDTGTTS on poultry partners not properly feeding/watering the birds ... I hate it when people lie about taking care of animals. Lying at all is such an obvious thing ... you can always tell when you're being lied to ... but the animals don't deserve it and they can't do anything about it. Properly caring for animals is responsibility enough without having to solve the puzzle of what the saboteurs have been up to ...