Fermenting Feed for Meat Birds

[Beekissed]

Nope....this is Toby...trying to sneak some meat. Had to run him off several times..between him and the cat I could not turn my back even once before they were up on the table wanting to steal my meat!

You can see the cat in the background, cleaning his face.

 

[RoseMarie1]

Bee you are one special lady!

Lisa

I have to second that but the detailed stuff just gets me.

Don't mind the pix but some of the details, ugh..... guess I'm just TOO tender hearted! She is a VERY VERY VERY SPECIAL lady in my book and I would LOVE to meet her one day but I KNOW we will get to meet when God calls us all home, but don't know if I will know who she is since I don't know her personally down here. I know the Bible tells us we will be known AS we are known. I sure HOPE we can know who each other are. Wondering if we will have chickens up there we can feed? lol sorry but I wonder all this kind of stuff. I know it will be a place of perfect peace and harmony so I see chickens as that to.

Anyway I just pray Bee sticks around here when she's gone and slaughtered all her chickens cuz I for one don't know WHAT I would do without her let alone my poor chickens. I may have one roo I might slaughter if the fighting gets any worse because this one wont be sold for no 5 bucks. He's number 1 and he's followed me around the yard and is still doing so. He seems to be attached to me. Anyway he tried mating one of the hens yesterday evening and Mr. Stud Muffin himself grabbed him by his comb with his beak and man he turned free of the hen mega fast. I bet THAT hurt! OUCH.............So don't know IF he will be able to do his thang with any of the hens or not with Mr. Stud standing guard.

I used my eggs in my ice cream and I did notice BOTH of them had circles in them like they were fertilized. I know one of the other RIR roos is a man because he's has some babies already and fixing to have some more shortly. Is it normal for them to be man at less than 5 months old Bee? Just wondering IF it's the ff helping them to mature fast or something?


I made ice cream today out of my two eggs my chickens laid.

Just got finished eating my bowl and man oh man it was so good!

 

[RoseMarie1]

Nope....this is Toby...trying to sneak some meat. Had to run him off several times..between him and the cat I could not turn my back even once before they were up on the table wanting to steal my meat!

You can see the cat in the background, cleaning his face.

LOL LOL LOL That Toby! I was fixing to start getting tears in my eyes IF that was Toby in the wheel barrow. Is Toby a RIR. He sort of looks like my Mr. Stud Muffin.

Toby likes him some protein. lol I have that SAME stainless steel bowl and I dearly LOVE that thing! My mother in law bought me that bowl many years ago for Christmas and I just pray it NEVER gets a hole in it because IF it does I will gladly pay for someone to fix it for me! I think of her every time I use it.She was more like a Momma to me than my own Momma was. LOVED LOVED LOVED that woman! She was in a wheelchair all her life except for 21 years. She could do more than folks that can walk! WONNNNDERFUL woman and such an awesome teacher she was! She taught most all of her daughter in laws I think to can foods. She always loved my coleslaw and every time we had a get togther and I asked what she wanted me to bring it was coleslaw. lol When she was dying with the cancer I was having a bible study in a little town close to us every Tues. and I would go by this little gas station down there that made the best fried chicken (other than my mother in laws, hers was BEST) that I have ever eaten....I would go by there and get us a box of chicken and some coleslaw and tator salad for our lunch. She would always tell me the coleslaw wasn't as good as mine.

She had gotten to where she wouldn't eat so she'd eat this. So I had to make her some of my coleslaw. I think the reason she liked mine so is because I shred mine really fine and she could eat it better. PLUS I always put just a bit of sugar in it although now I use Stevia in place of sugar.
OK enough of that.

LOoks like you did very well on your chickens. I bet you will prepare them in a special way to. I will HAVE to share the pix of Bertha because a lot of folks seems to think they have to feed their chickens loads of protein for them to be healthy and this shows that is just not true. I KNOW you didn't feed her high protein and look how much fat that precious girl had on her body. What did her heart look like Bee? I am curious because you were thinking she might be having heart troubles with her legs swelling like they were.

 

[RoseMarie1]

Not quite yet... I candled last night and found another dud (eight eggs left in the nest) and couldn't really see through most of the shells with my wimpy little LED hand cranked survival flashlight...

BUT THEN TODAY OMG! I was out there and broody Copper Chicken left the nest while I was out... I looked in on the eggs and some of them were shaking and peeping at me! I should be getting new chicks in just about a day!

For me this is really incredible and special. With the rabbits you NEVER see them give birth (they always do it when you're not looking, even if you just leave the room for five minutes and come back they will do it while you're gone) and I have never hatched out eggs before. It's kind of amazing to be going through the whole process. Keep in mind; I was born and raised in a suburb so all this is super new to me (even if I do take to it like a duck to water) and really incredible. :3

Definitely spent like twenty minutes straight outside doing nothing but watching the eggs wiggle and chirp.

MOUSE SOOOOOOO VERY special! I LOVVVVVVVVVVE watching them hatch and I really think I could do that for a living because I enjoy it sooooo much! I hatched out over 60 ducks and would have done more if hubby hadn't been fussing at me. ;-) My food bill 10 plus years ago was about 40 bucks a month from feeding them.

BUT I dearly loved messing with them and I do the chickens to. Just wish I had a closed in place close to my chicken pen so I could have a place to store my feeds and a place for hatching them out and for their brooder boxes. Would make it a little easier on this ole bad back of mine.
PLEASE do post us some pix of those chicks. Oh I hear ya, I could spend all day long watching the eggs! LOL LOVE IT!

 

[Beekissed]

Her heart was pretty much what I expected..the right ventricles were enlarged and she had some small clots in those chambers like she was having some regurgitation of blood there...that happens when the valves don't close all the way in an enlarged section, so the blood just swishes back and forth a bit before getting passed along the cardio system. Overall, her heart was a little flabby with less than normal muscle tone, so it was not saved but was given to the other chickens to eat, along with her liver which was also fatty and not a good texture. All signs of old age in a hen and nothing to be concerned over, particularly, but it didn't help that she was a super-sized gal in the first place. All that fat was doing her no favors and she just couldn't shed it, no matter how much the food was decreased. Probably pretty much what I look like on the inside...

Here's a pic of Bertha on the half shell..shows all her organs in their natural place:




In the pic below you can see her ovary and the oviduct...very small and unused for some time now. The whitish pink tube running from the center of the pic to the left of the pic is her oviduct. You can see her liver well in this pic and its coppery color is not a healthy color, but typical in older hens.

 

[Triple Willow]

@Bee... you'll have to let us know how they all taste especially Mr. Siilkie. I couldn't kill one that I really cared about - unless it was hurt or in pain and nobody was available to do it for me. Under normal circumstances I'd have to outsource that job. I've got a tender heart like RoseMarie, well almost that tender.

 

[Beekissed]

Girls...I have a tender heart too. It really has nothing to do with a tender heart or not having a tender heart. My hands have nursed more people and even animals with extreme tenderness for many, many years now. I'm a good nurse and I couldn't be that way without having a tender heart and compassion towards others. Having a tender heart doesn't mean you cannot kill an animal for food, it has more to do with the mind than the heart. I'm practical and I've got a full measure of common sense that bolsters my fortitude and keeps me from imagining things that simply are not there...like animal's feelings and personalities that are not like our own.

It is because of my tender heart that I kill my own birds instead of eating chickens that were raised in horrible conditions and sent to be killed, packed like sardines in a truck going 70 mph down the highway, their feathers flying off them as they go. Handled roughly and thrown, sometimes kicked as they are jammed into crates, jerked roughly about and hung by their feet to have their heads cut off...some don't hit the machine properly and so they are dunked into the boiling water alive, there to die horribly.

I've been listening for years on these forums as people tell me they just have too tender of a heart to kill their own and that always puzzles me. Do they think I am some hard-hearted, blood thirsty woman out here in the woods with a cleaver? I'm not. I cry at just about every movie I've ever watched..even those starring robots, for pete's sake. I cry over reading a book, I even boo-hoo watching a commercial! I cry when I sing to the Lord. I don't know of anyone with a bigger, more mushy heart than mine..truly. All my patients can tell you how tenderly I care for their bodies, their wounds and their minds.

It has nothing to do with how gentle and tender one's heart is. It has to do with how strong one's mind is when it comes to reasoning out which is more cruel...eating meats from the store or eating meats raised by someone with a tender heart?

 

[ChocolateMouse]

I cried the other day when my favorite hen vanished (four hours later she showed up in the middle of my garage miraculously unharmed and unfound by my killer husky who was in and out of the garage all morning). Doesn't change the fact that my hens are named Copper (the boring one), Karma (The one who will get what's coming to her and my favorite), Tender, Nugget and Crispy. And some day not too far off they will all be their namesake (except for Copper who is not exciting enough to have a namesake.)

 

[Beekissed]

You should have seen me squalling like a baby awhile back when I thought I was going to have to put Jake down...sobbed until I choked, begging God to heal him and take away his pain. And He did and the problem has not recurred and I thank God for his good health every single day. My heart has the full measure of tenderness and my sensibilities are all in the right place, I can assure all of that.

 

[AletaG]

Walt my starter was 22% and she told me to cut it with scratch grains which the chickens dearly LOVED! Now that they are on layer though I can't do that because it makes it much less in protein since it's only 16% now. Wondering IF there is some other kind of game bird something I could feed them and use the grains and not use layer but then I guess they wouldn't lay? I have no clue. Anyway she said cut it 1/2 and 1/2 with the grains to cut down on that mega high protein level.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but layer is layer 'cause of the added in calcium, right? Which is why you can substitute "flock raiser" if you have free access to calcium (eggshells oyster shells), right? Since mine range, I just Ferm. whatever grain I can afford (just rolled barley at the mo'), and if I feel they might need a protein boost, sprouting about 1/2C lentils for a few days every week or so seems to make them happy. The mealworms are on again off again, 'cause the beetles all appeared at the same time, so have nothing but ittybitty smaller than the word "meal" worms... right now.