FERMENTED FEEDS...anyone using them?

[ShanandGem]

That white stuff is just a yeast growth that has formed overnight. Sometimes it's the fine sediments that will float on the water AND yeast growth. It's nothing bad and most who don't cover the feed with water will see it on the top of their feed the next day after mixing a fresh bucket.

I'm certainly not the queen bee

....Kassaundra was fermenting her feed way before I was, but I've been at it long enough to know that water over the feed means nothing at all except soppy feed and messy poops.

I find once you've been doing it for a while you can eyeball how much water to use so it is mostly absorbed but the feed is still wet by feeding time. I don't always get it right but when I do it's MAGIC! lol

 

[dcba flock]

Why so sloppy wet? You don't need to keep the water over the feed to get LAB growth in the feed. No matter what anyone says, that's a fallacy. Most who are doing this are not keeping water over the feed at all.

[COLOR=A52A2A]" In the vocabulary of microbiology, lactic acid bacteria are “facultative” in that they that do not require oxygen, but are not inhibited by its presence; in contrast, certain other bacteria (for example Clostridium botulinum) are “obligate” anaerobes that require a perfectly anaerobic environment."[/COLOR]

Please don't tell people their chickens will get sick if they don't cover the food with water as it's just not so. That's an untruth and it scares people away from FF rather than encouraging them to use it. The feed containers will not grow mold overnight and make the birds sick and mold will not contaminate the feed bucket, nor will it cause the feed to go sour or rotten....a highly fermented feed will smell sour or almost rotten in the summer months, but that is not caused by bacteria or mold growth at all, it's due to increased acetic acid which is the by product of fermentation.

Please, please get the fact straight before instructing others?

I was just making a batch I don't let it ferment as long as I should usually just overnight as I'm adjusting to growing babies but in the past I have never used that much water or had mold issues.... I wasn't impressed w/ her method nor the article that was published in the hobby farms mag that said you are wasting your time fermenting processed feed as in unless you get straight grains from a feed mill or 5 separate bags of grains don't bother... That's just my opinion and everyone can they see fit but I'm not making a sloppy mess that I have to strain add more feed to etc etc etc my chickens love it I have literally no waste unless they dump the dish lol. Thanks for commenting I completely agree!!!!

 

[lazy gardener]

After hearing the negative comment on the video, of course, I had to go check it out. OH my! What a lot of extra work she is doing, and to be presenting her method as a how to is "totally laughable" on many counts. You must wash your containers and scoops after use before using them again for the next batch? Seriously? And what's up with washing them in scummy water??? I've been using the same bucket for almost 4 years, without washing it, ever. The only time I replace a bucket is if the handle gets destroyed, or the lip of the bucket cracks b/c of the excess weight.

 

[ShanandGem]

After hearing the negative comment on the video, of course, I had to go check it out. OH my! What a lot of extra work she is doing, and to be presenting her method as a how to is "totally laughable" on many counts. You must wash your containers and scoops after use before using them again for the next batch? Seriously? And what's up with washing them in scummy water??? I've been using the same bucket for almost 4 years, without washing it, ever. The only time I replace a bucket is if the handle gets destroyed, or the lip of the bucket cracks b/c of the excess weight.

And don't you find it ferments much quicker if you don't even rinse the bucket?

 

[lazy gardener]

What would the purpose be for rinsing the bucket??? If you rinse it, you are removing all of the SCOBY. In order to rinse my bucket, I would need to remove the bit of feed (with all of the nice culture that is in the ferment) from the bucket, rinse the bucket, and then add the stuff I just took out of the bucket back in to the bucket to seed my next batch? Duh... that's exactly what the lady was doing in the video. She completely misses the concept of maintaining an active viable culture. Her culture was staying nice and strong, in spite of all the foolishness she was going through.

 

[Beekissed]

Yep...haven't washed a feeder in 5 yrs of FF. Cleaned out my buckets and washed the scoop now and again when so crusted with FF that they looked grody, but mostly I don't wash implements for FF. They'll look pretty much the same a few days later anyway.

I don't mean to get down on this lady...she seems very nice and sincere... but I really get frustrated with the misinformation being told as if it's truth, without a thought for researching it to find out if it's truth or not.

A lot of this misinformation is coming from one particular blog that insists on telling folks this stuff even when they've been informed of the fallacy of their information. They just keep pumping those lies out there and it's a mystery to me as to why.

 

[lazy gardener]

Yesterday I couldn't spell Eckspurt. Today I are one.

 

[aart]

After hearing the negative comment on the video, of course, I had to go check it out. OH my! What a lot of extra work she is doing, and to be presenting her method as a how to is "totally laughable" on many counts. You must wash your containers and scoops after use before using them again for the next batch? Seriously? And what's up with washing them in scummy water??? I've been using the same bucket for almost 4 years, without washing it, ever. The only time I replace a bucket is if the handle gets destroyed, or the lip of the bucket cracks b/c of the excess weight.

All those videos are.

 

[Leigti]

I remember seeing videos that gave all kinds of interesting information. But when I finally found The "TickTock" site then I knew I had found the easy and best way to do fermented feed.

 

[Beekissed]

Was looking through old vids of mine and found this one on some meat chicks I had....thought I'd post it so folks could see how I keep chicks out of the FF. This is a little wooden trough I built for chicks and the wire on top is just 1x1 zip tied to the top of the feeder and the wire to create a hinge. Easy to load with feed and keeps the chicks reasonably clean while they eat their FF.