Fermenting Feed for Meat Birds

[tcmstalcup]

Fed ff for the first time this morning. They went to it and dove in like they have been eating it always! I was afraid I put out too much but it was pretty much gone in a few hours. It sure doesn't take very long to cook up a batch in this Texas heat!

 

[Triple Willow]

You know it is funny the way things change.  In Indiana I was surrounded by cornfields.  I LOVED it.  When living there I was chickenless (didn't know any better) and I would chase the crows away from my garden.  Living here in Texas, I welcome them.  It is just crazy the way your life goes sometimes.

Lisa

I agree! That's about like killing weeds. Now I look at them and wonder if it is edible. LOL I think there are a whole lot of cures for sickness in what we label as weeds. We just aren't smart enough to even try very hard to figure it out - just like marijuana, hedge apples, etc.

 

[Triple Willow]

I haven't had enough extras to start freezing.  When we do, they'll just go on a shelf under our stair well.  I cut out the wall to the coat closet so that we could use the rest as storage.  It's getting pretty full of food supplies.  We started everyone off small, as really small chicks, so a majority of the clan isn't laying yet.  Until recently, we only had three hens laying.  We just had another one, maybe two start recently, but those have been sporadic the last week or two.  Other than that, I have three that are very near laying and three that are several months away still.

What do we have?  A bunch...  I have three Broad Breasted Bronze turkeys, one Black Copper Marans cockerel and two hens (one is laying, one might be), one New Hampshire cockerel with two non-layering pullets, a useless Silkie cockerel and one non-laying nearly year old pullet, two laying Barred Rocks, a laying Birchen Marans, and three non-laying Ameraucanas.  We very recently acquired and bred two rabbits that will be producing feeder rabbits, and a "partridge in a pear tree..."

The Silkies bug the daylights out of me.  They are ugly as heck, and at 48 weeks old, she isn't even laying.  Neither of those would be around if they weren't my wife's little mutts.

You'll have the eggs rolling in when those all start laying! I don't know about silkies... they are a littlle freaky looking to me. They look like you ought to stab them with a stick and dust the floor with them! LOL

 

[Triple Willow]

Thank you for posting this link!  I love the video!  We have quite a few crows around here and I have watched them drive off hawks.  I may need to order one of these to play with!

You're welcome. I've got to learn to use mine - frustrating! lol

 

[Triple Willow]

They went out every day to collect and use the fresh eggs, milk the cows and allow the cream to separate overnight.  The next day they made fresh butter, yogurt and sour cream with it, or used the churned cream (aka buttermilk) to make fresh, hot biscuits for breakfast.  They picked the fresh fruit and vegetables from the gardens every afternoon for dinner.  And then they still had time to sit down for some good ol' fashioned family time in front of the dial radio...

Oh, to be able to go back to that lifestyle without working my life away just to own an average sized house...

Definitely the good old days! Makes me hungry to think about real food!

 

[Triple Willow]

Fed ff for the first time this morning. They went to it and dove in like they have been eating it always! I was afraid I put out too much but it was pretty much gone in a few hours. It sure doesn't take very long to cook up a batch in this Texas heat!

I'm glad they took to it so quick for you. Mine did that too. Now they will start attacking you! lol I have mine in my garage and that heat does make it cook!

 

[Triple Willow]

b 4 internet? I have NO CLUE! I think the one I had said freeze in ice trays to and then put in ziplocks after frozen. 

LOL I have had mine to fly into the walls. That poop hammock ALWAYS freaked them out when I took it down OR when I brought it back. LOL hey I'm sure my neighbors think I'm off my rocker with mine but I don't care. lol 

My pullets are acting crazy today! I had a couple little white, kind of round medicine bottles in the nests to get them to lay there. Yesterday I took those out and put in golf balls. Well one crazy pullet has decided that she is going to hatch out some golf balls! Ahhh! She just started laying three weeks ago! She's trying to sit on the golfballs and a couple of the other pullets are complaining loudly about it. I took her golf balls away!

 

[Demosthine]

I agree! That's about like killing weeds. Now I look at them and wonder if it is edible. LOL I think there are a whole lot of cures for sickness in what we label as weeds. We just aren't smart enough to even try very hard to figure it out - just like marijuana, hedge apples, etc.

I honestly don't know much about using marijuana for medicinal purposes, but I firmly believe it really is a gateway drug, despite what the marijuana advocates say. I've spent the last ten years working in the jails and it is a standard response for almost every hard drug user: they started on marijuana and worked their way up from there. In terms of the highly regulated, medicinal purposes if it really does work, we have to change federal law before we even consider allowing it. Once that's changed, set the same standards for all other narcotic medication and you'll have less of a problem. There will always be prescription drug abuse, no matter how well regulated it is. But when it is illegal at the federal level, no amount of state laws change that.

You'll have the eggs rolling in when those all start laying! I don't know about silkies... they are a littlle freaky looking to me. They look like you ought to stab them with a stick and dust the floor with them! LOL

Agreed, but I think I had something thrown at me when I tried calling the rooster "Swiffer." It probably did some damage, because I don't remember what happened after that...

In the meantime, I just figure they'll be the coyote bait. The rest of the clan is significantly larger or faster than the Silkies, so they'll become the main course...

 

[Triple Willow]

I honestly don't know much about using marijuana for medicinal purposes, but I firmly believe it really is a gateway drug, despite what the marijuana advocates say.  I've spent the last ten years working in the jails and it is a standard response for almost every hard drug user: they started on marijuana and worked their way up from there.  In terms of the highly regulated, medicinal purposes if it really does work, we have to change federal law before we even consider allowing it.  Once that's changed, set the same standards for all other narcotic medication and you'll have less of a problem.  There will always be prescription drug abuse, no matter how well regulated it is.  But when it is illegal at the federal level, no amount of state laws change that.

Agreed, but I think I had something thrown at me when I tried calling the rooster "Swiffer."  It probably did some damage, because I don't remember what happened after that...

In the meantime, I just figure they'll be the coyote bait.  The rest of the clan is significantly larger or faster than the Silkies, so they'll become the main course...

I believe some people just have an addiction problem. They start with marijuana because it is easy to get then they just move on up from there. Come to think of it, I don't know any drug addicts that didn't start with marijuana. But I don't think marijuana started the problem. It was just used along the way to where they were headed to start with. Like with alcohol, a group of teenagers can abuse alcohol for a period of time but not all of them will become alcoholics, but chances are somebody will. If I had my way alcohol would be outlawed because from all I have seen it is much worse than marijuana. I don't use either but it's funny to me, the government declaring war on a plant that God made. lol

It looks like trying to eat a silky would be like eating a furball. lol

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Anybody else ever have the problem of their Cornish X's injuring themselves while trying to fly in a chicken tractor?

My "tractor" is only 2' high because I initially made it for rabbits, and the chickens spent their first night in it last night (inside the tractor they have a box to hide in and the whole thing is behind a 6' wood fence) and in the morning they were fine. They got some FF on the ground (still trying to get them to eat their greens) and then I came back a few hours later to find that two of them had blood on 'em. One on the wing and shoulders and one on the tailfeathers. The one with the wing injury also had some blood on it's shoulder and a tiny (like toothpick diameter) hole in it's shoulder AND a crooked toe. I'm not really sure what's going on with them but the wing injury looks like it came from the bird trying to fly (which they are doing) and hitting it's wing too hard on the wood posts, maybe breaking some blood feathers. Not so sure about the rest.

I isolated the two with the injuries along with the smallest bird. They're eating, drinking, pooping and moving OK.