Fermenting Feed for Meat Birds

[Beekissed]

Meaty chicks at 2 wks....

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Darkangel; I sure wouldn't mind learning more either! I sure would like more practical experience hunting/trapping. I know around here it'd be **** hard to AVOID hitting a deer with an arrow, but where they are hunted regularly I have no idea what that's like.

So guys, I don't get it. I just had this big discussion elsewhere on flock management. I'm a firm believer in culling all the birds in a flock if you've got a really bad contagious disease, and the USDA, APHIS, and other groups back me up on this. I mean, the big Newcastle outbreak about 10 years ago started in a BACK YARD flock, you know? And I have no problem with treating for simple stuff like a minor respiratory illness or bumblefoot or something... In fact when I had my CXs I treated on of them for getting 1/4 of it's skin ripped off it's chest. That was a terminal bird and it had it's crop hanging out a huge hole in it's chest and everything but I gave it a chance. But when it comes to things that even look like a serious enough diseases to be one of the big contagions I suggest culling the bird, necropsy and if it's positive the whole flock because it is really unfair to other people to keep that around... And in some cases there is a government enforced cull.

It's pretty common to do this in goats with things like CAE I know. And then people just suck it up and don't have goats for 5 years and it sucks but CAE becomes less prominent every year.

People flipped their **** at me telling me that they didn't care they were gonna do what they wanted and nobody was gonna touch their birds and they were going to take them to shows and stuff... I don't really get it. I'm not sure where this mentality came from, but do they not realize that their birds got Marek's Newcatsle, whatever in the first place and are now sick and dying because someone ELSE decided to manage their flock that way? Because someone else decide to keep birds that tested positive for it? And I mean if we don't take responsibility for the illness our own birds get the gov't will do it for us... That's why we have these diseases and mandatory culls in the first place.
I mean, even rabbit people RIP PEOPLE APART for bringing sick rabbits to shows! Because of serious concern for diseases like Pasturella which have no cure. One sneeze and a hundred rabbitries are infected.... People waste hundreds of dollars on rabbits that were healthy at the shows and then come home sick and have to be culled... It makes people VERY mad, even the people who DON'T cull for illness and treat what they can.

Please tell me I'm not crazy for thinking it's super wrong to just keep your birds that have really bad contagious diseases and go on like nothing's changed and you're totally entitled to keep them? Especially when the disease can spread through wildlife? :\

 

[Beekissed]

Darkangel; I sure wouldn't mind learning more either! I sure would like more practical experience hunting/trapping. I know around here it'd be **** hard to AVOID hitting a deer with an arrow, but where they are hunted regularly I have no idea what that's like.

So guys, I don't get it. I just had this big discussion elsewhere on flock management. I'm a firm believer in culling all the birds in a flock if you've got a really bad contagious disease, and the USDA, APHIS, and other groups back me up on this. I mean, the big Newcastle outbreak about 10 years ago started in a BACK YARD flock, you know? And I have no problem with treating for simple stuff like a minor respiratory illness or bumblefoot or something... In fact when I had my CXs I treated on of them for getting 1/4 of it's skin ripped off it's chest. That was a terminal bird and it had it's crop hanging out a huge hole in it's chest and everything but I gave it a chance. But when it comes to things that even look like a serious enough diseases to be one of the big contagions I suggest culling the bird, necropsy and if it's positive the whole flock because it is really unfair to other people to keep that around... And in some cases there is a government enforced cull.

It's pretty common to do this in goats with things like CAE I know. And then people just suck it up and don't have goats for 5 years and it sucks but CAE becomes less prominent every year.

People flipped their **** at me telling me that they didn't care they were gonna do what they wanted and nobody was gonna touch their birds and they were going to take them to shows and stuff... I don't really get it. I'm not sure where this mentality came from, but do they not realize that their birds got Marek's Newcatsle, whatever in the first place and are now sick and dying because someone ELSE decided to manage their flock that way? Because someone else decide to keep birds that tested positive for it? And I mean if we don't take responsibility for the illness our own birds get the gov't will do it for us... That's why we have these diseases and mandatory culls in the first place.
I mean, even rabbit people RIP PEOPLE APART for bringing sick rabbits to shows! Because of serious concern for diseases like Pasturella which have no cure. One sneeze and a hundred rabbitries are infected.... People waste hundreds of dollars on rabbits that were healthy at the shows and then come home sick and have to be culled... It makes people VERY mad, even the people who DON'T cull for illness and treat what they can.

Please tell me I'm not crazy for thinking it's super wrong to just keep your birds that have really bad contagious diseases and go on like nothing's changed and you're totally entitled to keep them? Especially when the disease can spread through wildlife? :\

You are not crazy, you are responsible, mature and intelligent. Bruce had just such a discussion and probably with the exact same people you did and got the same reaction. You really cannot change those kind of people, I have found....they will do what they want to do and will justify it to the end, in any way possible, in order to do so. In the end it's just colossal selfishness without a care for anyone but themselves. The world is rampant with that right now and it's only going to get worse.

All anyone can do is protect your flocks by keeping a closed flock, avoid taking birds to shows and common fairs, poultry swaps, etc. Only get birds from respected, reputable breeders and don't give or sell your birds to anyone who isn't respected and reputable also. This is the only way to keep a nucleus of good, healthy poultry in this world today as the disease of selfishness and willful ignorance spreads like a wildfire into the poultry world.

Whenever keeping poultry went mainstream this was the inevitable outcome because we now have people keeping chickens who are child-like and have no love for the practice of poultry keeping that has been a time-honored thing for hundreds of years. We now have pet owners, not flock masters, and they are here to stay~ until they get bored with this new toy called chicken. Until then, real poultry fanciers and farmers need to protect their land and flocks from this scourge.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Child like is precisely how I would describe these people... And I doubt it was the same people since it wasn't on this site. But they went on during the argument to scream against my calm argument, and fail to produce any factual evidence against my suggestion... (After I produces USDA protocol for maintaining backyard flocks through mass culls.) They proclaimed that since they're back yard flocks that they were'nt under USDA regulations (um no, actually you are). One even suggested if I felt like killing chickens solved diseases I clearly must feel like GMOs killing bees solved "the bug problem". Besides the number of things wrong with that statement (like how it's not really GMOs so much as monocultures in general and pesticides killing bees, but hey who looks at facts)... It's childish and irrelevant. This was after she shouted in all caps "**** THE LAW" and "I AM GOING TO KEEP MY GUNS AND THEY CANT DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT" when nobody even mentioned guns.

Of course they went on to quote a document that suggested CULLING THE BIRDS as management... And said they you couldn't carry the disease after quoting that it was spread through infected dust in the poultry....

Then went on to laugh and joke about how since they didn't know math clearly they should be culled, it's the honorable thing to do. : One of them who even HAS a mareks flocks actively said that she would take her birds to shows and if you got her disease that was the risk you took going to shows. Shameful. Truly shameful.

One person I know showed me a picture. It described how an anthropologist gave a bowl of fruit to some children and proposed a game. He put the bowl under a tree and said the first one to reach the fruit won all the fruit. So the kids all linked arms and ran to the fruit together. When asked why they did that they said "Unbutu", which is in short, how can we all benefit if only one person wins? The exact opposite of selfishness. That's the world I want to live in some day. It's a shame that some people really DON'T have any honor towards others and find honorability to be a joke. It's about offering RESPECT to other people, and hell if I have any respect for people who act like this.

It drives me nuts to be 22 and have more respect for life and the world than most 40 year olds! I mean, **** aren't I supposed to be the stupid selfish kid here? Gosh!

Okay... I think I am done freaking out and ranting. It just drives me crazy. It feels like I am the only sane person in a world full of coneheads and pod people....

 

[Beekissed]

You are not alone....

I think Bruce met some of these people on a FB page or another forum also..it wasn't here.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Well, thanks for the pick-me-up Bee. Gotta say, you're my chicken hero! I can always rely on you for a little common sense... Heck, even my egg eating stopped because I just gave it a couple weeks. Now we're getting 6-8 eggs a day from 8 birds.... I think something just went wonky with them since it was 20* out, they were laying full time, and they were ignoring their feed. I guess their body was screaming for some really intense nutrition and the eggs provided. But whew! I sure do wanna live the way my mom always said she wanted to sometimes... Hide in the woods where nobody can find me living totally off grid in a little cabin... Nary another soul in miles... These days it sounds like paradise!

 

[Beekissed]

I've lived like that...they always find you!

Then they sit around saying how nice it all is and how quiet....but before the afternoon is out they are missing their cell phones, indoor plumbing, electric and the constant sounds of the TV they have at their house. I STILL live like that except I have indoors utilities now but folks still can't stand the peace and quiet out here....and I can't stand the noise out there.

I love being a hermit.

Yep...learned long ago on that "egg eating" that it's temporary, it's seasonal and it's normal, so I don't try to stop it or try to amp up on nutrition....been there, done that, didn't make a difference. It takes as long as it takes.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Now if only I could convince the beau that being a hermit is amazing and you don't ever have to deal with people who stink... XD

 

[wolfpup]

As yet I am still reading page 303 so if anyone has suggested this after that page please ignore this

I know this wont be of any help to any of you experienced guys, but I had a bit of a problem working out the percentages of protein in my birds feeds mentally with pen and paper, so I created an Excel spreadsheet to do this automatically for me - depending on what sources of protein I wanted to put in for a bit of variety in different batches.

I.e. as you enter an amount of say dried mealworms the spreadsheet automatically calculates the new percentage so I could then, say, take out the fish meal and it would automatically recalculate the final protein percentage. The only column to be altered is the AMOUNT column and the spreadsheet does the rest.

If anyone thinks this would be of help particularly to any newbies (or anyone mathematically challenged like myself) I will happily either send them a copy of this spreadsheet via email - or maybe someone more experienced on this forum could put it up somewhere so it can be automatically downloaded by anyone who wants it.

The list below is what I have listed as items I will on differing occasions be putting into my feeds - depending on what I have available or just to mix it up a bit for variety, I could easily add more items if anyone wanted providing they just give me the protein percentage of that item.

FOOD
LENTILS
FISH FOOD
LAYERS PELLETS
WHEAT
OATS
BARLEY
SUNFLOWER SEEDS
DRIED PEAS
DRIED EARTHWORMS
ALFALFA SEED
LIVE MEALWORMS
DRIED MEALWORMS

I am always looking for an easier way of doing anything - and if I can get something to do something for me - I will.

 

[tjo804]

As yet I am still reading page 303 so if anyone has suggested this after that page please ignore this

I know this wont be of any help to any of you experienced guys, but I had a bit of a problem working out the percentages of protein in my birds feeds mentally with pen and paper, so I created an Excel spreadsheet to do this automatically for me - depending on what sources of protein I wanted to put in for a bit of variety in different batches.

I.e. as you enter an amount of say dried mealworms the spreadsheet automatically calculates the new percentage so I could then, say, take out the fish meal and it would automatically recalculate the final protein percentage. The only column to be altered is the AMOUNT column and the spreadsheet does the rest.

If anyone thinks this would be of help particularly to any newbies (or anyone mathematically challenged like myself) I will happily either send them a copy of this spreadsheet via email - or maybe someone more experienced on this forum could put it up somewhere so it can be automatically downloaded by anyone who wants it.

The list below is what I have listed as items I will on differing occasions be putting into my feeds - depending on what I have available or just to mix it up a bit for variety, I could easily add more items if anyone wanted providing they just give me the protein percentage of that item.

FOOD
LENTILS
FISH FOOD
LAYERS PELLETS
WHEAT
OATS
BARLEY
SUNFLOWER SEEDS
DRIED PEAS
DRIED EARTHWORMS
ALFALFA SEED
LIVE MEALWORMS
DRIED MEALWORMS

I am always looking for an easier way of doing anything - and if I can get something to do something for me - I will.

sounds great I will have one of my off spring show me how this spread sheet program works.


Great Idea! will make an easy check list for Grocery / Feed store Day.