FERMENTED FEEDS...anyone using them?

[jerrey]

so bee you don't clean out your chicken house I always clean out every day should I not

 

[Beekissed]

so bee you don't clean out your chicken house I always clean out every day should I not

No, I never clean out the deep litter, I just add to it and it decomposes in place and just disappears into the soil of the coop floor. I can't really tell you how often to clean out your coop but I do recommend deep litter to folks.

 

[Bethel3330]

Just dirt...and that's covered with deep litter of leaves, pine needles, twigs, pine shavings, hay, and anything else I can throw in there of a carbonaceous nature that decomposes! 


I'm in the mid-western portion of the state.  I don't usually buy prebagged feeds if I can help it...try to get it fresh from the mill.  Have a local mill in this part of the state that puts out fresh feeds? 

i know there's Yaugers in Mason county. I think they do their own blend but I don't know much beyond that. Several out here buy in bulk from them so I need to find out more. They're definitely cheaper but I'm buying non-gmo on principal ;-) and will have a small flock so am able to. One girl I know is feeding 200 birds, me, no more than 12...for now. Dang chicken math!!

 

[triplepurpose]

I can't imagine cleaning out a henhouse every day... I never clean out ours, except to remove enough for mulching or making compost, but I never remove it all. Regularly we add more straw to it. The key is having a litter that's deep enough, and innoculating it with some kind of beneficial microbial culture, at least to start, can help a lot too. Just try a search of this site and the web for "deep litter." Some people say it needs to be at least a foot deep, but I've had great sucess with much less, and in the Korean Natural Farming system they don't use much at all, but they innoculate it thoroughly with indigenous humus microbes.

Bee, thanks for the duck insights. I have Muscovies. They actually tend to do better on more "wild type" foods than they do on poultry feed, and forage a lot. It's surprising actually how little they need to eat of the poultry chow to thrive, relatively speaking. In fact, they get the same problem with "Angel Wing" that wild waterfowl get when they eat too many rich foods (it seems it's debated whether excess protein or excess calories is the primary cause). So we give them as little as we can of the pellets and as much as we can of greens and bananas and encourage foraging, though foraging is a little limited by lack of natural water features.

It is very difficult to get them to eat anything new--they are truly creatures of habit when it comes to food. I spent several days once trying to teach them to eat some bread heels that I acquired before they finally decided they liked them.

We've always feed the ducks whatever feed mix we were giving the chickens, out of convenience. There's no feed mill around here--it's all bagged mixes or cracked corn, pretty much. I'm going to experiment with growing some sorghum soon, and if that does well I might try to make that a big part of the duck ration and see how they do on it.

I don't know much about duck digestion in regards to whole grain, but it seems to me their gizzards are every bit as effective at grinding as the chickens', judging by the size of the muscle and the amount rocks inside when I've dissected them. Our ducks make a routine of going over to the driveway regularly to ingest small rocks for their gizzards.

 

[Bethel3330]

I'm going to experiment with growing some sorghum soon, and if that does well I might try to make that a big part of the duck ration and see how they do on it.

Do you mean collect the seed for them? I have some I'm going to plant because I was intending to save seed for the wild birds I was feeding, before we planned to get chickens. Can the seed be given to chickens and ducks? As treats or part of their feed? Thanks!

 

[triplepurpose]

Do you mean collect the seed for them? I have some I'm going to plant because I was intending to save seed for the wild birds I was feeding, before we planned to get chickens. Can the seed be given to chickens and ducks? As treats or part of their feed? Thanks!

My understanding from what I've gathered is that the seeds could be used just like any other whole grain, so you could use it as a scratch or work it into a ration if you took it's nutritional levels into account. I haven't done much research yet on how it compares to other grains, I just know it's supposed to make great animal feed, and grow very well here since it's a hot climate grain. Herbivores can eat the stalks too, they're sweet like sweetcorn or sugarcane so a good source of energy, which I will exploit for by rabbits as well. I got seedlings at a local exchange from a gentleman who's been growing it near here and saving his seed. I'm also looking forward to making some breads and porridges and such, maybe even some sorghum beer, for when the animal chores are all finished up and it's time to kick back...

 

[pdirt]

Got a question. I get some different things from a place called Bulknaturalfoods.com. They do pickups of different types of food stuffs and have drop off places where you go pick it up. It will be things like, wheat and other grains, fruit in season and such. A while back they started getting organics animals feeds. So since I got my little chicks I orders some "Organic Layer Starter 17% protein" That was pretty much all I knew about it.It came yesterday and it looks pretty good but it has a lot of dried cultures in it such as; Dried yeast, Lactobacillus acidophilus fermentation product, Dried lactobacillus casei fermentation product, dried Pediococcus cerevisiae fermentation product, dried Bacillus licheniformis fermentation product, dried bacillus subtilis fermentation product, dried aspergillus niger fermentation extract, dried aspergillus oryzae fermentatio extract, and dried bacillus subtilis fermentation extract.. There may be a couple more but you get the idea. Am I supposed to still soak this? The company is called Big Sky Organic Feed out of Fort Benton, MT. My Manna -Pro chick starter doesn't have any of that stuff.

That sounds reasonable. I wasn't sure if I was trying to ferment something that was already fermented. Like trying to ferment yogurt which is an already fermented milk product. But I guess since it is dried bacteria in a dry food it is just an additive. It just really threw me off seeing all that on the ingredients.

Our feed has similar ingredients. It's the only feed I've ever fermented, so I can't compare. It's great there are fermented products already in the feed...more nutrient density feed to begin with. I don't believe those "dried fermented products" are live cultures, though. There might some live ones, but I wouldn't count on it. But no matter, because you will get plenty when you ferment the feed. My research for the last few years on probiotics, lactic acid bacteria in particular, is that they are VERY VERY helpful (essential, IMO) to not only digestion but overall health and immunity. I will never again eat a diet (nor feed one to my animals) that doesn't contain live fermented foods of some kind every day.

 

[jerrey]

so bee you don't clean out your chicken house I always clean out every day should I not

also bee I have 17playmouth rocks and I have 15 more chickens coming may the 5 my chicken house is 8x8 and we are building another house 8x8 I looked at chicken houses build and it seem people are putting in vinyl floors in ,but my husband say you just need dirt floors so how do you keep the coops clean, and how do you keep out bugs thank you

 

[Beekissed]

also bee I have 17playmouth rocks and I have 15 more chickens coming may the 5 my chicken house is 8x8 and we are building another house 8x8 I looked at chicken houses build and it seem people are putting in vinyl floors in ,but my husband say you just need dirt floors so how do you keep the coops clean, and how do you keep out bugs thank you

I'd say with those numbers you are pushing the comfortable and healthy limit of stocking your coops unless you are free ranging and don't live where snow gets too heavy or is on the ground for long. That being said, you'll want those bugs~they will help digest the feces in your coops~ and the soil floors are great but I'd add deep litter to those floors and tons of ventilation to your coops, particularly with those stocking rates.

 

[jerrey]

I'd say with those numbers you are pushing the comfortable and healthy limit of stocking your coops unless you are free ranging and don't live where snow gets too heavy or is on the ground for long. That being said, you'll want those bugs~they will help digest the feces in your coops~ and the soil floors are great but I'd add deep litter to those floors and tons of ventilation to your coops, particularly with those stocking rates.

thanks bee with 17 chickens how big should the chicken house be