Fermenting Feed for Meat Birds

[Kassaundra]

Something I learned from Bee about dealing w/ picky eaters, feed them in the evening, let them find their own food during the day, cures picky eating almost instantly!!!!! lol

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Rose; We have both crows and Bluejays living within two houses of us. Neither have stopped the hawks thus far.

 

[Beekissed]

beekissed you said you have two buckets how big are the holes in the first bucket i tried this earlier and the water never really drained into the lower bucket, but i was also using chick feed mesh not pellets.
i currently have 20 crosx about 3 weeks old and 4 laying hens. this is my second go around with the crossx and earlier in the summer i notice my layers loved to eat the fermented mash of the cross x rather than their dry crumbles.
do you ferment for layers as well.
what we did last time with the crossx is just spread the food out on the ground and let them have at it we can free range them all day also.

My drill holes are as big as the pupil in your eye...don't really know the bit size because I just used the easy LOK starter bit that you start screws with~it's a short bit that is great for this kind of work. I've used starter crumble, layer mash and whole grains in my bucket and none of the holes got clogged and the fluid has good flow back and forth to and from the reservoir below. The key is scraping the sides of the bucket when you stir your FF, much like you'd mix cake batter. If you are getting good absorption throughout the mix there is no way the water will not make it to the bottom reservoir...it simply has to once the feed is thoroughly saturated with fluid and cannot hold anymore and gravity lets the finer particles and water sift down and out of the top bucket. I only have to empty that reservoir of sludge a couple of times a year and that's depending on what feed mix I've had in it. It doesn't fill completely with the sludge but maybe to half the available space at the bottom before I dump it out.

I've got holes drilled in a spiral pattern on the bottom and in a couple of rows on the sides lower down and a couple in the sides further up. The next time I hit the bottom of the bucket, I'll separate the two, wash it down and take a few good pics of the amount and size of the holes, as this keeps popping up as a recurring problem for folks.

I do FF for my layers as well and find the most benefit showing there, even more so than in the meaties.

If you spread the feed on the ground and it has any finer ground grains in it, you are losing some feed to the soils, no matter how much they peck and scratch there you will still lose some grains and, more importantly, the fluids in the grains will be wasted on the ground. I'd suggest you get a nice, long trough and use that instead...I used a rain gutter up on 2x4 feet with some side bars for when they were too little to reach it and then took the sidebars off when they got older. Total gutter cost was around $7 and I had the wood scraps lying around.

 

[RoseMarie1]

Rosemarie1...I grew up in New Albany, northeast MS, 20 min. from Tupelo and 35 min. from Oxford. My daddy lives in Oxford,now.

cool yet ANOTHER Ms. girl.

 

[RoseMarie1]

MumsyII on the natural chicken keeping thread put up a bunch of tall poles and streamers and stuff. She lives near hawks and eagles and the "decorations" really seem to work. Leah' Mom, same thread, has a very tall PVC pipe with a flag or streamers on it and that discourages the hawks, too. Lots of people run fishing line or clothes line in a grid over their runs and the hawks won't try to fly through the lines.

Mine free range and I do have a Big Bertha scarecrow like thing out there that I love around a lot. Good idea on the tall pole with the streamers though. I have some orange ones I could put on one of those and try. So far so good on them not being around my chickens but they're a little TOO close for comfort sometimes!

 

[RoseMarie1]

What does CX mean? I have probably asked this question already but I can't remember what breed it is. Wondering IF I could get me some of those and raise them up in a different pen than I have knowing I will eat this, and IF I will be able to do that since I bought them for that purpose and I wont be thinking of them AS pets. ????? Just thinking on this one and wondering.

 

[RachaelS]

What does CX mean? I have probably asked this question already but I can't remember what breed it is. Wondering IF I could get me some of those and raise them up in a different pen than I have knowing I will eat this, and IF I will be able to do that since I bought them for that purpose and I wont be thinking of them AS pets. ????? Just thinking on this one and wondering.

Cornish cross, a lot of great meat birds are CX.

 

[Zootopia]

In my bucket, I ferment whole grains (barley, wheat, milo and oats) plus flock raiser. It makes it thick and harder to drain but I have a big colander I set into a dollar store dish pan. Until I can get a mineral supplement and some steady source of animal protein, I will continue this way. It is harder on me and takes a lot of time but I feel my birds need whatever is in the Flock Raiser. Generally, I use a yogurt cup to measure my feed with. This yogurt cup is a 1 quart size container. My ratios are 1 qt. barley and oats. 3/4 qt whole wheat and 1/2 qt milo plus 1 qt of the flock raiser.

Separately, I soak alfalfa cubes which have been broken down along with beet pulp pellets. I usually grate a few carrots into the mix and I also sprout things for them. Lentils are by far the easiest to sprout. So is fenugreek. I'll also sprout sunflower, safflower, wheat, barley, and dry beans of various sorts.

Why are you using Beet Pulp? Does it get frothy when you soak it?

What does CX mean? I have probably asked this question already but I can't remember what breed it is. Wondering IF I could get me some of those and raise them up in a different pen than I have knowing I will eat this, and IF I will be able to do that since I bought them for that purpose and I wont be thinking of them AS pets. ????? Just thinking on this one and wondering. 

CX are Cornish Cross, the basic white, meat chicken sold by hatcheries and feed stores. Fast growing, short lived and you need to make sure you restrict their access to food or they will be even shorter lived, prone to heart and leg problems. They really are not genetically suited to live very long so you need to make sure you can and will dispatch them, pretty much on schedule. They are bred from a cross of 2 different lines so wont breed true even if you could get them to live long enough to do so. That being said there are slower growers now available that are healthier, without most of the anomalies that tend to be present in the CX.

 

[RoseMarie1]

Why are you using Beet Pulp? Does it get frothy when you soak it?
CX are Cornish Cross, the basic white, meat chicken sold by hatcheries and feed stores. Fast growing, short lived and you need to make sure you restrict their access to food or they will be even shorter lived, prone to heart and leg problems. They really are not genetically suited to live very long so you need to make sure you can and will dispatch them, pretty much on schedule. They are bred from a cross of 2 different lines so wont breed true even if you could get them to live long enough to do so. That being said there are slower growers now available that are healthier, without most of the anomalies that tend to be present in the CX.

Thank you all for answering my question!
yeah that SHOULD help me be able to really do it then if they can't live very long. What about 10 weeks or so?

 

[Beekissed]

Yep...and even much longer, depending on how you manage them. You'll know when it's time to process..when they start laying down more in the day~not just during the hot parts of the day~and walking slower. This is when their chests are getting too heavy for good mobility and they get tuckered out quicker than normal.