Fermenting Feed for Meat Birds

[perchie.girl]

Quote: It depended on the school for sure but yep back then they Taught Reading Writing and Arithmetic in grade school And how to memorize..... a skill i was never able to acquire by the way.... Dad was born in the thirties dirt poor and his familiy moved from farm to farm making their way across the US farming everything from Pigs to cotton and eventually Oranges. School for him was usually those one room types where all grades listened to all other grades lessons. My Grandma was born in 1916... She didnt get her highschool diploma till I was about twelve years old. Yet she worked as a rosie the riveter and eventually became an efficiency expert for civil service.

Quote: Sketchit is not an easy program.... there are better more intuitive programs out there. I cant work with a number four. I press too hard and tear the paper or break the lead. Give me a lead holder and a stick of HB and a good sharpener and I can achieve any line thicknesses needed to do a good job.... um er used to be able to.... LOL. My favorite was working in Pen and Ink though. It was like doing art. We worked on Mylar for General Dynamics and the Atlas Centaur Commercial refit. Ink was easy to erase on that medium.

I once worked on a drawing that originated in the 1930's. It was an explosive bolt used for releasing stages. One direction it was cylindrical one direction it was conical and inside were shaped chambers designed to carry an explosive charge. They were shaped to send the force of the explosion to a very thin portion in the center of the bolt. That caused the partition to disintegrate and the recoil assisted in the pushing away of the component to be relased. The way I know how it worked ..... I asked the engineer who was making the change to the drawing.
That bolt started out life as a single chunk of aluminum machined. I was working on a double digit revision like Revision BC.... I followed the doumentation history on it and found out it had evolved from a block of aluminum alloy through a whole phase of sheet metal variations and I was to take it back to a block of aluminum alloy... The original drawings were done on Linen in pen and ink.... The kind you dip in an inkwell.

Yep all the skills work in so many other aspects of life.... Reading instructions and really understanding what the intent is.... And knowing when they are crap.... LOL. I love diesel engines. I have a Dodge Cummins with 300,000 miles on it. Its the big block Six Cylinder and still gets about twenty miles per gallon. My first.... and with all old age machines came with a list of "need to fix" items. To that effect I learned how to Get the truck started when the Fuel Cutoff solenoid goes bad.... And that Dodge sucks at building bodies for their vehicles. They put a 500,000 mile engine in a 100,000 mile body.... I am in search of a mechanic right now in preparation for the ""next"" thing that may go wrong with my baby.

deb

 

[Beekissed]

Beekissed do you have a video or somthing showing how to make the FF.

I don't...but I have one showing how to refresh the feed, which is basically the same process but you have to wait awhile for it to ferment. I use a two bucket system so I always have a rich SCOBY reservoir in the bottom bucket to inoculate my new feed and water. I'll post some pics to show you the holes I've drilled in the top bucket so you can get an idea of it, but a lot of folks don't use that system and they get by just fine.

Pictures of the holes in the top bucket...not for straining, but for allowing the water to flow through, to and from that bottom reservoir of scoby.





Here's a pic of the buckets stacked within one another, the holey bucket down within the regular bucket. And Fanny standing on top to guard the feed...

 

[Triple Willow]

Hello y'all i'm going to learn as much as i can about this Fermenting feed. I would like to try it on my Marans culls.

1.How do you think it would work on that Breed?
FF will work of any breed.

2. Can you do the with layer and do you feed it to them wet?
Yes it works great for layers. I bellieve all of the regulars on this thread use it for layers.

3. Crack corn or whole corn and do you feed it to them wet?
Corn is optional. It is really better as a winter feed because it is a high energy feed and helps the birds keep warm through body heat. Whole corn is fed by some but of course cracked or ground would be easier digested. Yes you can put corn or any grain in the fermentation mix. Several people mix their own rations and ferment it.

4. Do you free range your birds along with this food?
Yes you can, would be great if you could.

5. What other advice do you have for a newbee?

Just don't try to make it harder than it is. All you need is feed, a non-metal container (5 gallon bucket) and add water and stir. At the start you should cover the feed with water and stir it up real well getting all the feed wet. Then just wait a few hours and the feed will soak up a lot of the water and expand. Be careful not to fill your container too full or it will run over when it expands, believe me! lol You might have to add more water, maybe not. You don't have to keep the food covered by water. I like mind about like cookie dough or oatmeal. Be sure to stir it every day, a couple times if you can. As you take feed out, add some back in OR just be sure you don't use it all or you will have to start all over. Leave some in the bucket and just add more feed and water to it and stir well. The old feed will cause the new feed to ferment.
I also add buttermilk so that it will start fermenting faster, but that is optional. You can also add UP/ACV (un-pasteurized apple cider vinegar), also optional. But I do put the UP/ACV in their drinking water (1 tablespoon/gallon of water). Good luck to you!

 

[perchie.girl]

So when you say grain based feed .... What kind do you use?

deb

 

[Beekissed]

So when you say grain based feed .... What kind do you use?

deb

Grain based.

Sorry...sometimes I cannot contain myself.

I use layer mash and then I tweak it down a tad with the seasons, or feed it straight according to the season. My mash comes from the local mill where it's milled fresh and bagged right there. Smells like breakfast cereal...good enough to eat!

 

[Chad Cool]

What is in the water on bottom? How long does it take to make the first batch? What size are the holes in the buckets?

 

[Triple Willow]

Hey Master Bee... Since roosters have a much lower protein requirement... what would you feed a bachelor pad for roos only? Do you think fermented scratch would meet their needs?

 

[tcmstalcup]

Well, my meaties have very nearly run their course! They're mostly weighing in at 6.5-7.5lbs right now but one or two are still like 4.5lbs. I am getting right sick of the poop and the smell (no matter HOW good it is for my lawn..!) and the cleaning of water and feed bowls... So it's a good thing they're almost gone.... But right after they go I will have a new batch of chickies... My black and copper Maran eggs are due to hatch in a week! I will be raising out the roosters from that batch until crowing age for some skinny but tasty birds if I can't sell any. I candled the dozen last night and confirmed 3 duds and 3 for-sure chicks and the rest are still up in the air. It's so hard to tell with those dark sells... Hope I get at least six the way I wanted!

We eat our extra marans roosters. I don't have a scale so I don't know how much they weigh processed. I "freezer camp" them when they are crowing and being a nusance combined with I have the time to do it. They taste sooo good. My son can tell at first bite if I am feeding him grocery store chicken or our own even if I shred it. They are supposed to be dual purpose!

 

[Triple Willow]

We eat our extra marans roosters. I don't have a scale so I don't know how much they weigh processed. I "freezer camp" them when they are crowing and being a nusance combined with I have the time to do it. They taste sooo good. My son can tell at first bite if I am feeding him grocery store chicken or our own even if I shred it. They are supposed to be dual purpose!

All you people with these Marans! I want some too... hear me whining? LOL

 

[Beekissed]

What is in the water on bottom? How long does it take to make the first batch? What size are the holes in the buckets?

Did you listen to that video or did my southern accent throw you off?

That water is the fermented water created at the very beginning that is used each and every time I add fresh feed and water...as I add feed and water,it mixes with that fermented water and absorbs into my feed. This means it doesn't have to grow a fermentation culture each and every time I make a batch...it's already there and can get busy in the grains right away.

I can't tell you the size of the holes...it's just a starter drill bit and I'm not sure what the size actually is,but the pics should help. They should, shouldn't they? They don't have to be exact.

The time it takes to ferment is directly related to what feeds you are using and the ambient temps. In other words, everyone's going to get a different time on their fermentation but the studies say 8-15 hours to get a ferment started in ambient temps of >70*.