Fermenting Feed for Meat Birds

[LadyIsadora]

Thanks peepers arrives pretty safe & sound. Getting settled in. Im so grateful for all the help on this forum!

 

[Aprildeesunshin]

I am SOOOO doing this. So glad I didn't to have to read all the pages. I got to like 3?? A month or so ago. I just skipped to the end to see if anyone was in the same boat I was in. THERE WAS! Thank you, thank you, thank you! Thank you for asking questions. Thank you for answering questions! So glad that all I need now is feed and water. This seems like a great way of doing things. I am receiving 30 meat birds in 1.5 weeks. I am also receiving turkeys that I plan to put on the same FF.

 

[Beekissed]

Im up to about post 375 of this thread. This question has not yet been answered.

There have been a lot of comments about the decreased feed consumption when birds have been switched to the FF.
I was wondering if anyone out there gives their birds ACV in their water and experienced the same type of decrease. Without using the FF.

This is my first experience with birds, I got two Pekin ducks and at two weeks I could not believe how much they were eating.
I was poking around on the forum, and stumbled upon some good reasons to put ACV in their water so I went & found the ancient Braggs bottle I just knew I had.

In addition to their 3 gal water jug, I put out a quart water bottle with a cap-full or two of Braggs in it. It is almost always empty at the end of the day.
I was filling their quart jar of food twice a day before I started putting out the additional water. It went down to once a day, and is holding there. They are now just over 4 weeks, not yet fully feathered. Free fed (always have access) constant water, grit free choice, & let out of their run to forage several times a day, (but usually head straight for the pond and play instead, I cant get them off there till I shoo them)

I guess the question disguised in this dissertation is thus: has anyone else noticed these benefits Just by the simple act of adding ACV to their water?

Yep...was using ACV for years before the FF and no decrease in the feed. Good, clean taste to the eggs, though..... but no decrease in feed consumption.

 

[LadyIsadora]

I am but an egg and aspire to fuller understanding. Since the FF makes all the elements of feed intake more bio-available, Why do they experience less aggressive growth so that they need a couple of extra weeks to bring them to process? Why don't they experience various maladies due to overdose of calcium or protein (or anything else) absorption. Isn't that what angle wing is? and other maladies( I cant remember right now-)
I read in other posts how they are only supposed to have so much of this thing or that thing at certain ages, then more of that later for egg production and what not.
I cannot reconcile the fact that they are able to absorb more nutrients but are growing slower. Healthier, yes but why isn't it too much absorption for them?
I am not in a hurry To process my ducks, I just want to grok.

 

[DesertChic]

I am but an egg and aspire to fuller understanding. Since the FF makes all the elements of feed intake more bio-available, Why do they experience less aggressive growth so that they need a couple of extra weeks to bring them to process? Why don't they experience various maladies due to overdose of calcium or protein (or anything else) absorption. Isn't that what angle wing is? and other maladies( I cant remember right now-)
I read in other posts how they are only supposed to have so much of this thing or that thing at certain ages, then more of that later for egg production and what not.
I cannot reconcile the fact that they are able to absorb more nutrients but are growing slower. Healthier, yes but why isn't it too much absorption for them?
I am not in a hurry To process my ducks, I just want to grok.

Well, if chicken biology is anything like human, the body absorbs from food only as much of any nutrient as it needs so long as it needs it. Nutrient imbalances typically occur when an essential nutrient is absent in the diet while others are present. (For example, phosphorous can seem to build up in the body when calcium is deficient.) Making all of the essential nutrients more available for absorption from natural foods will trigger the brain to say, "enough....I've got what I need to survive" and the organism, human, chicken or other, will essentially eat less.

Something to keep in mind....there are few creatures on this planet that naturally evolved to be "fat". Most evolved to be of optimum weight to thrive and survive in a difficult world. Human beings have worked to change the biological tendencies of certain animals through domestication of them for food consumption. Look at the Wild Jungle Fowl...the origin of the domestic chicken. They're not large birds and certainly not fat. We've worked to change the way our poultry develop for our benefit, not theirs. I guess that's the catch 22 of using fermented feed - it's much harder to fatten your birds or get them to grow bigger, faster, when you provide more balanced nutrition instead of just more calories.

Now, all of that said, I feed my flocks higher protein levels for the first 10 weeks of their lives than most people and I've seen some really impressive growth rates in that time frame. Type of feed can have as much of an impact on growth as fermentation of it. Nutrition is tricky. If something isn't working for you, maybe you should tweak their feed?

 

[enola]

Angel wing can also be caused by the genes ducks inherit.

 

[Beekissed]

I am but an egg and aspire to fuller understanding. Since the FF makes all the elements of feed intake more bio-available, Why do they experience less aggressive growth so that they need a couple of extra weeks to bring them to process? Why don't they experience various maladies due to overdose of calcium or protein (or anything else) absorption. Isn't that what angle wing is? and other maladies( I cant remember right now-)
I read in other posts how they are only supposed to have so much of this thing or that thing at certain ages, then more of that later for egg production and what not.
I cannot reconcile the fact that they are able to absorb more nutrients but are growing slower. Healthier, yes but why isn't it too much absorption for them?
I am not in a hurry To process my ducks, I just want to grok.

That has nothing to do with the FF at all. The FF is merely a way to improve overall feed performance but has nothing to do with slowing down their growth....that has to be done by feeding less feed~ period~ and making them get out and exercise to increase overall health. The FF helps improve their gut health, helps them better utilize the feed being fed and keeps them better hydrated by decreasing the amount of liquid stools.

If you want to keep them gaining weight quickly, then pour the feed to them as per normal~you can do continuous feeding with FF just like you can with dry rations. Feeding it fermented will decrease your cost in all of that because the feed you feed is more nutritious for having been fermented, but the whole issue of slower growth is a personal choice and is all about feed consumption control.

 

[LadyIsadora]

It's not that its not working for me. Actually I would not know if it is or isnt as far as weight gain goes. My ducks look HUGE to me right now. Everyone that has seen them are shocked by their growth rate. But like me, non are experts.
More importantly, my ducks look healthy, bright eyed and happy.

I have been reading this monster thread from the beginning. I have made it to post # 1410 out of 16920. This is going to take a while, but there is much info and hidden tidbits throughout.

One of the consistent comments- in fact the only real down-side of feeding FF that is of any consequence, is that the birds are slower to reach processing weight. This is overwhelmingly referring to meatie chickens and usually only listed as a problem when having to schedule a processing plant to finish out the birds. It seems to be at least two extra weeks before they are reaching acceptable processing weights.

I have 0 problems with my duckies at the moment, Im just confused why since the FF is so effective at making essential nutrients bio-available... they do not grow faster, getting to their natural, genetically predetermined, size earlier.

This makes sense:

Good nutrition + Better absorption (should ) = Superior growth

Too many vitamins, minerals & nutrients + Better absorption (should) = Overdose, liver damage & a plethora of undesirable stuff.

But this does not seem to be happening with the Fermented Feed, at least for the chickens (and a few ducks) in the first 1400 posts. It tweaks my understanding of cause & effect.

It seems intuitive that they would grow faster earlier. But according to everything I have read in the early parts of this thread,the opposite is true. I was just wondering if anyone could explain more fully the process here.

 

[Beekissed]

Just did that. Most who are trying this method are doing so because it's healthier for the meat bird, as is a slower growth pattern, so they are not feeding the FF like they would a dry feed ration, on a continuous basis. Most were hesitant to leave the FF out for 24 hrs consistently because they didn't know if it would keep it's good bacterial content or would start to dry out and breed other less beneficial bacterial growth.

Since the earlier parts of this thread we have since found out that one can leave the FF out in a feeder for several days without problems and, since it's always being renewed when you have a meat bird flock eating the way they do, it's not even an issue about the feed drying out or getting aged in the feeder.

The higher nutrient content should mean you don't have to feed AS MUCH feed to the meaties to get the same rapid weight gain than you would with a dry ration. There may be a factor with the feed being wet that the birds cannot consume as much per feeding and thus not able to consume as much as they normally would for faster weight gains, so not sure about that, but it has nothing to do with the available nutrition.

 

[lazy gardener]

I've been following this thread for a long time, but have not read every single post. Lady Isadora, when you said, " Since the FF makes all the elements of feed intake more bio-available, Why do they experience less aggressive growth so that they need a couple of extra weeks to bring them to process?" I wondered where that bit of information came from in this thread. B/C, no where have I ever heard that fermented feed SLOWS growth. (Could that impression be taken out of context when folks are talking about limiting feed in their meat birds to slow their growth?) If anything, from my experience it improves it. My personal testimony in the matter involves the experience with my flock, and the flocks of 3 neighbors/friends who got chicks at the same time over the past 2 years. In these other 3 flocks, all of the owners got chicks from my hatch last year. And the previous year, one of the owners got chicks of the same breed on the same day from the same source as I did. The only difference between my flock and theirs, is the fact that my birds get fermented food. Both years, my pullets started laying at least 2 weeks before the birds in the other 3 flocks did. My birds are also more consistent layers than the birds in the other flocks.

It's great that you're taking the time to read this thread. Is your flock on fermented feed now?