FERMENTED FEEDS...anyone using them?

[Ms Jellybean]

Check to see- my chicks could fit right through the grate for the first week or so. Yours may have smaller gaps. I don't know if your cats have front claws, but they can stick their arms/pawsbin those, too. What kind of screen? {I'm on my phone and can't enlarge the pic to see.}

My only other thinking is if I'm not using a quail water base, I always put rocks/marbles in the base because chicks drop where they are and can drown.

The screen is window screen. There aren't any gaps that they can fit through (I hope). The screen goes up pretty high too, almost to the top. Kitties don't have claws. I'm using reamers for their dishes. The main waterer is the chick waterer with a nipple.

PS- don't forget to quarantine for 30 days min. any time you add new flock members.

Have fun!

These are my first chickens.

 

[jbher]

I'm getting my first chicks tomorrow! I'm getting silkies to start off with and hopefully next year I can get big girls to join them. My FF has been going just over a week now and is looking good. I fed it fresh food in Friday. I am so excited!

Here is my brooder. It's overkill, I know, but I have 3 cats that will make a quick snack out of a chick. The kennel is huge! A Great Dane (or 2 German Shepherds) can fit in there nicely. I can too for that matter. It's all screened in so it is hopefully escape proof. I have everything ready to go.


I love zip ties.

Hey we have that kennel too! Same size! I honestly never thought to use it as a brooder... hmmmm... my wheels are spinnin'... I wonder how easy it will be to clean once they're a little bigger... or if poo will hit the "sides" lol... You will have to update this on how you like using it!

 

[niqueie]

So exciting. Keep the pictures coming with the babies. The brooder looks great. Silkies are so cute!!!

 

[lollipopguild]

Hmmm...I did a bag of fermented feed and won't go back to it anytime soon. I didn't notice anything ''bad'' with it, but it was too messy and too time consuming for what I have going on right now. Plus, my birds were constantly dirty from it. They walk in it, lay in it, poop in it, etc...It never drained correctly and I couldn't figure out how much my birds actually needed of it. I may try it again later in the year when the temps aren't ranging between 6 to 55 degrees in the span of 12hrs, and I have a little more experience on how much my birds need to eat.

 

[Beekissed]

Some folks just can't do it, it seems, and it's not for everyone. That's the same with any method of feeding.

 

[pdirt]

There is a feed company that recommends starting layers at 1% to 2% alfalfa ... It didn't say by weight or by volume ... but meat birds can have up to 10%. Another source I read said no more than 3 lbs of alfalfa to 100 birds as a pasture substitute during confinement ... I presume layers. That source said to soak the alfalfa over night and feed it in a trough the next day, free choice. There are lots of benefits to alfalfa. Finishing meat birds on a diet with a high percentage of alfalfa can really improve the fat of the birds ... more omega 3s. Alfalfa can help reduce salmonella in the flock due to the way it ferments in the digestive tract. Alfalfa has a lot of minerals and can improve hatch rates. It can help eggs be more orange. But a diet restricte to alfalfa is one way to induce molt ... Some rations already contain alfalfa.

Thanks for these details. Our formulated feed doesn't contain any alfalfa. I keep diluting the FF/alfalfa mix with more water and dry feed. The more I dilute it, the more they tear into their FF in the morning. I might try fermenting by itself and feed it separately, free choice.

I think I screwed up my FF, lol.it was smelling really yeasty before I went to bed (the whole living room and kitchen smelled like a bakery) so I stuck my nose in it and could detect an alcohol smell. As per some directions online, I added a bit of ACV and stirred it. This morning, it smells VERY strongly of alcohol and its not really bubbling anymore. Do I give it a few days like the instructions said or toss and start over?

I know your post was from several days ago and sounds like you were able to rectify it. Unpasteurized ACV will convert alcohol into more acetic acid. I have made ACV from scratch a few times now and my experience is the ACV mother is tempermental. The active/live mother will sit on top of the fermenting apple cider...if you move the jar, the floating mother will "die", sink to the bottom and in a week or two a new one will start to form. It takes 2-3 months to go from fresh pressed apple cider to apple cider vinegar. My point being is even in an ideal setting for ACV mother to do it's job, it takes quite a while for it to convert alcohol to vinegar. A few days is not going to do it, especially with all that stirring. ANY VINEGAR (white, rice wine, pasteurized ACV, unpasteurized ACV, etc) will help give a new batch of FF a headstart on acidity. The acid environment (which the lactic acid bacteria will eventually create in a few days) is important for the battle of the bacteria...will it swing to the putrefying bacteria or the fermentive ones? In most/many cases, the fermenting bacteria (yeasts and LABs) will just naturally win if you block most of the oxygen (very wet feed in a bucket fits the bill). Adding a SMALL amount of vinegar to a brand-new batch will hedge your bets, if you like, but it's not necessary. In terms of your alcoholic smelling FF, personally, I would have composted it. Now that you mixed it with some other ingredients and the alcohol smell is gone, perhaps the alcohol was converted after all or simply just diluted to a point you can't smell it. I've read that chickens' livers are not well equipped to deal with alcohol, but surely they have encountered fermenting fruit in the wild and could tolerate it occasionally. BTW, I am one of those note of the popular vote here on this thread in using starters. I do use a starter. I want to complicate matters for my own very good reasons. You certainly don't need them and I do recommend trying to make FF at least once without anything...just water and feed, so you have experience that it can and does work so simply. I'm not here to argue with anyone about the use of starters or even discuss it any further on this thread as that's not why this thread was started. PM me if your interested in how/why what do to my FF.

Okay, so here's what happened! I totally screwed up that last batch of fermented feed. However,! Ii had heard there was a way to save it by adding ACV. I persevered with it, trying to see if whatever I did would give me different or the same results as my new batch with slightly different rules than the first batch. First of all, my container was way too small! I would nd up with such liquidy stuff,I don't know how I thought that was right! I was afraid to overflow my container. I knew people had said the consistency of oatmeal, but I had filled my container so full with water, I was afraid that adding water would make it overfill. It did. Because of the bubbles that were happening, qwerent coming through the liquid for some reason, they were just all stuck down below,it really looked like some gas was trapped inside the feed at the bottom. Anyway, I added the ACV as instructed and waited a couple of days. Boy I tell ya! If it didn't smell like alcohol before,it certainly smelled like it after! So I told my husband that had made beer and asked him to smell it.yep,beer. Sorry for all who drink it,but seriously...yuck for me...I decided to put it in a bigger bucket, and see if following THOSE instructions! It would solve my problems, because there was no other reason I could think of logically that would throw it off that bad! So....I dumped a bunch of oatmeal into it. Just as much as I thought would soak up a lot of that alcohol. So now it smells sweet, instead of like alcohol. I love the smell of oats. I'll keep everyone posted how it turns out! ETA: Oh!! My theory behind this, hypothesis (kinda/sorta/probably not) really is - I was starving my bacteria of carbs? Protein? Fats? Anyone know? I guess we'll see how it turns out, and then I'll know..lol

Like I said above, ACV after only a few days will not turn large amounts of alcohol into vinegar and it certainly won't turn it into alcohol. Sounds like you had some sort of yeast imbalance. It could have been from the probiotic supplement, but I doubt it. Your feed (and your local air) could just naturally be rich in yeasts ready to make alcohol. It's hard to tell. Start a (small) new batch with just water and feed and see what you get.

My FF has been coming along nicely. It was looking good until today. I stir it every morning and this morning I found it looking like this. Is this bad? It smells pretty much the same.... I added more feed and a bit more ACV to it. The pitcher it is in is not tightly covered and has good air exchange.

That looks like harmless Kahm yeast. Sometimes it stays thin like that and other times it gets thick and ripple-like. I get it all the time especially on my lacto-fermented pickles. No need to remove it, but you can simply stir it in if you wish. Some people get it more often than others and with different ferments. For example, our sauerkraut never grows Kahm yeast but our pickles do. I usually remove it in the pickles because it can change the flavor slightly. It's not required for lacto-fermentation, but I've never seen it anywhere but in a mature lacto-fermented product.

 

[Ms Jellybean]

Thanks for the info on my FF. Since I don't have chicks yet and it looks like they won't be coming for a week now, I dumped some of the food and added fresh. It was starting to smell funny. Not bad, just funny.

I was planning on getting the silkie chicks today, but that isn't going to happen. They aren't ready to sell yet.

I had originally planned on getting full sized birds but a big car repair pushed those plans back. I was able to get the car repaired for less, but was still going to hold off on getting chickens. Then I was given the idea of getting silkies since they don't need as large a coop and I could buy something to use for them rather than build. I liked that idea, it wouldn't cost too much and I could still get chickens. But....I am thinking it makes more sense to put my money into the coop I want and get the bigger chickens. Just not as many. Same output money wise and I will get better layers.

The only issue is I can't build the big run I wanted to build for them. They would have to be out in my yard all day. Not a bad thing, but I don't have a lot of cover and we have some red shouldered hawks nesting very close by (3 houses away). I could run fishing line all over the yard though, somehow.

What are your thoughts on this?


I am working on landscaping the yard. I bought a 47 year old house that no one had done anything to the yard except let scrub and trash/volunteer trees grow. It's all cleaned up and coming along now. Just need to work on getting more bushes.

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

BTW, I am one of those note of the popular vote here on this thread in using starters. I do use a starter. I want to complicate matters for my own very good reasons. You certainly don't need them and I do recommend trying to make FF at least once without anything...just water and feed, so you have experience that it can and does work so simply. I'm not here to argue with anyone about the use of starters or even discuss it any further on this thread as that's not why this thread was started. PM me if your interested in how/why what do to my FF.

Well ... I for one am curious about what starter you are using, and wonder if you have information about how using the starter compares to not using it. I've only done a little bit of research about starters, and the off-the-shelf products I've found seem kinda vague, and don't seem to match up with the research I've read about how specific starters could be helpful when fermenting grains ... and so on ... so I felt as though I kinda hit a wall with that research.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Well ... I for one am curious about what starter you are using, and wonder if you have information about how using the starter compares to not using it. I've only done a little bit of research about starters, and the off-the-shelf products I've found seem kinda vague, and don't seem to match up with the research I've read about how specific starters could be helpful when fermenting grains ... and so on ... so I felt as though I kinda hit a wall with that research.

I want to do some research too. I don't seem to have enough time to make the feed, much less 2 batches each day. I have a microscope I need to send to the manufacturer for refurbishing. When I get it back, I'll do comparisons. For starters, I use a little kefir with 11 varieties of bacteria and a bit of gro-2-max formulated specifically for chickens. The second day, there's a good layer of scoby and it starts to have a good aroma. By the third day it smells sour.

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

I want to do some research too. I don't seem to have enough time to make the feed, much less 2 batches each day. I have a microscope I need to send to the manufacturer for refurbishing. When I get it back, I'll do comparisons. For starters, I use a little kefir with 11 varieties of bacteria and a bit of gro-2-max formulated specifically for chickens. The second day, there's a good layer of scoby and it starts to have a good aroma. By the third day it smells sour.

Cool. Thanks for the info. I was thinking grain kefir would be better than other choices ... if I wanted to use a starter.

Please report back if you get some microscope info ...

I have a big feed storage bin in my kitchen now ... so I can mess with the FF when I'm doing other stuff in there. It's a good temperature for fermentation, too. I have a huge kitchen.