Over in the Duck forum we had been talking about using re-hydrated grass pellets as a possible source for greens in winter a little bit back. I haven't gotten any yet but they are made with grass not alfalfa so perhaps more tasty to the birds. Anyway its something I plan on for some extra winter greens as a bag won't cost that much and it would be easy to mix into the ff. I already have been tossing in a handful of alfalfa pellets in the ff each day when I refreshed the ferment with dry feed, but have just ran out of the 3# bag of alfalfa I got so grass pellets are my plan now for more greens. The other thing I was thinking of is sprouting some greens but the grass pellets sound easier. So perhaps if your birds don't like alfalfa and you still want to do something like them check on the grass pellets. Can't hurt to check.
Awesome thread! Excellent info and pics. Thank You Beekissed and everyone else that has contributed their experiences and knowledge.
I have way too many birds and I'm really interested in cutting my feed costs so I've been reading thru this thread for days, absorbing as much of the helpful info as I can (I'm only on page 191 so far, lol). I'm not raising any meaties (yet), but I have been processing some of my extra Guineas this season and plan to process a lot more of them until my freezer is well stocked (and also to help get my flock numbers under control before the really wet weather kicks in). I wanted to get started with FF while the weather/temps would be able to help get the mix going well, so I started some 24% game bird mini pellets, scratch and sweet feed fermenting in a 2 bucket system on Tuesday afternoon... I didn't have any UP/ACV with Mother so I used some ancient bread machine yeast that has been stored in my bread machine for years (oops), but wasn't confident that it would do the trick for getting the FF going quickly or not. I dumped in a couple well rounded tablespoons to the mix, stirred it up, topped it off with a little more water and left it to do it's thing. I stirred it twice later on. Much to my surprise the mix was bubbling 8 hrs later and continues to bubble. Has a great smell too
I gave a small flock of my Guineas (that I plan to process) 2 feed pans of the FF last night after I cleaned out under their pen... they are in a grow-out pen with a wire floor, and I have to hose out underneath it AM and PM to keep the smell down or it gets pretty nasty/rankSome of the birds jumped into the rubber feed pans and started pecking away, but most of them weren't too thrilled with it. It did however get completely cleaned up over night (they had no choice... eat it or starve, lol). I noticed that it didn't stink this morning like it usually doesis that even possible after just one feeding? If so, wow. Usually being within 10 ft of that pen is too close any time of the day, not this morning tho. We'll see how it smells this evening before I hose it out again. I gave them more FF this AM and they were a little more enthusiastic about it, so I think they are submitting to the conversion, lol. I'm really looking forward to a taste test tho... of Guineas that weren't fed FF vs Guineas that were fed FF for 2+ wks.
I thought I would share the results of the trial run of offering FF to my 5 month old Turkeys this AM. The pics speak for themselves, lol, they were scarfing it down so fast my poor old camera couldn't keep up to focus on their heads
Eyes closed and chowin' down, lol
