Fermenting Feed for Meat Birds

[Triple Willow]

Well I am on a mission... I am going to try (again) to lose a chunk of weight. I am pretty determined to do it, so that is good. I'm sure nobody around here (my family) thinks I can or will do it so that motivates me even more. I'm 25 ibs down from my highest weight, somehow...? My first goal is 16 lbs. If I can do that pretty quick I think it will get me going pretty good. Ahhhh (sigh)...sure is more fun putting it on than taking it off.

 

[jajeanpierre]

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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.

When my Silkie cockerels started to make themselves known, I was hoping to find someplace else for them to go other than in my fridge. Silly, naive me. At the same time, I wasn't prepared to let my lovingly raised babies go to someone else to slaughter in a way that might not be very humane. I was selfish enough to want my family to benefit from all the good food and care that went into these cockerels. One woman actually told me that many backyard chicken keepers would solve their cockerel/rooster problem by just letting them free. Basically, letting them out so that predators would eventually kill them. I couldn't think of anything more unkind to do to an animal that you supposedly loved too much to kill.

 

[RoseMarie1]

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?

oh no Be......... I KNOW you have a tender heart because it would take one to do what you do to be sure your chickens and them not dying a horrible death and stuff. Oh dear not saying you don't have a tender heart. I guess I just don't look at it the right way but I REALLY am trying. I really am.
Oh Bee I sure hope we have not hurt your feelings because I sure did not mean to that's for sure! I wouldn't want to hurt you for anything!!!
Nope I sure don't think that of you being hard hearted or blood thirsty!

 

[jajeanpierre]

I heard someone say once that if you find a dying rabbit that's been crushed by a car it's better to take the rabbit that can't survive to the emergency vet and have it put down "humanely" than to step on it's skull HARD and put it out of it's misery... Even in the vet is 20+ minutes away. That's having your sensibilities out of line... That will clearly cause extreme pain, fear and suffering to the rabbit in the 20 minutes while you try to get it to a vet that is just going to put it out of it's misery anyhow.

When I was in my 20s, one of our dogs got hold of a ground hog and it was paralyzed. I called my (horse) vet. He told me to just whack it really hard with a shovel. I couldn't, I just couldn't. I put a garbage can over it and the vet came over hours later after his calls and whacked it with a shovel. Today I could have dispatched that ground hog, but at the time, I just couldn't even though I KNEW it was the right thing to do.

 

[RoseMarie1]

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.

oh wow that's neat to see how it looked. She still had eggs? Is that what that is I'm seeing that really tiny round and yellow?
LOL @ that last statement.

 

[Beekissed]

When my Silkie cockerels started to make themselves known, I was hoping to find someplace else for them to go other than in my fridge. Silly, naive me. At the same time, I wasn't prepared to let my lovingly raised babies go to someone else to slaughter in a way that might not be very humane. I was selfish enough to want my family to benefit from all the good food and care that went into these cockerels. One woman actually told me that many backyard chicken keepers would solve their cockerel/rooster problem by just letting them free. Basically, letting them out so that predators would eventually kill them. I couldn't think of anything more unkind to do to an animal that you supposedly loved too much to kill.

Oh, so much wisdom in all that, particularly in that last line! I've seen that over and over and I always wonder about it. That seems to be the way it is done out here in the country...if you can't bear to kill a chicken, just keep it until it dies "naturally" and let it free range so you won't have to feed much..the dying "naturally" part is the one that gets me...they don't seem to mind that at all. I even had a woman tell me she was doing this until the hawks and foxes could kill them all because she was too soft hearted to kill retired layers. My sisters are the same...let predators rip them apart, do nothing to keep them safe and call it "attrition" or keep them until they are too sick or too old to lay but keep them anyway until they have suffered a lot before they die. Dying of old age isn't a nice way to go in most cases...very rarely does the bird just drop off the roost in the middle of the night, suddenly dead.

 

[RoseMarie1]

Oh, so much wisdom in all that, particularly in that last line! I've seen that over and over and I always wonder about it. That seems to be the way it is done out here in the country...if you can't bear to kill a chicken, just keep it until it dies "naturally" and let it free range so you won't have to feed much..the dying "naturally" part is the one that gets me...they don't seem to mind that at all. I even had a woman tell me she was doing this until the hawks and foxes could kill them all because she was too soft hearted to kill retired layers. My sisters are the same...let predators rip them apart, do nothing to keep them safe and call it "attrition" or keep them until they are too sick or too old to lay but keep them anyway until they have suffered a lot before they die. Dying of old age isn't a nice way to go in most cases...very rarely does the bird just drop off the roost in the middle of the night, suddenly dead.

yes so much better to slaughter them like you did and not let them die and go to waste!

It's not natural for them just to allow something to get them OR to let the hawks get them that is HORRIBLE way to have to go. No way would they do it the quick way in killing them and not making them suffer.

 

[Beekissed]

oh wow that's neat to see how it looked. She still had eggs? Is that what that is I'm seeing that really tiny round and yellow?
LOL @ that last statement.

Yes, that's her ovary and the remaining eggs she still had in her. Sort of like us old gals who will never have another baby but are still putting out eggs, Bertha had eggs but would have only laid rarely if at all in her life. What made me nervous was all her fat and her trying to lay an egg around the fat and her dropped abdomen. I didn't want her to get egg bound or have internal laying issues from it all.

Ginny was a couple of years younger than Bertha but she too had no active laying activity going on inside, as did the other old hen that came with the pen of roosters. All retired layers and all fat as ticks, though Bertha beat all of them for fat.

I gave those little eggs forming in there to the chickens, along with any good organ meat or fat they could easily eat. Recycling at its best!

 

[maryhysong]

Let's just put it this way...you could go lower on protein..much lower..and it would still be a healthy, balanced ration. Even more so. This saves you money as you can cut that layer ration with a cheaper whole grain by 50% and still have good nutrition. Especially when you ferment...that kicks the actual protein used and it's usability up to the nth degree.

I've noticed more and more people reporting the only layer rations they can get are 20% or higher and I'm wondering why the feed businesses are upping that protein all the sudden...possibly to justify a higher price? To satisfy an urban market of inexperienced flock owners who are thinking that more protein equals better nutrition?

The whole idea of this fermented feed is to increase usability of proteins so you can feed less total feed and also cut your ration with cheaper grains and still get the right amount of protein. But what I'm seeing is folks fermenting their feed and then throwing more and higher protein supplements in on top of the fermentation. That's not saving money, not feeding less feed nor is it keeping the nutrients at a balanced and safe level. It's just throwing a bunch of money in a bucket and fermenting it, then shortening the life of the chickens...which also hurts the pocketbook.

I'm having trouble understanding the rationale behind these methods.

That's odd, I"m seeing more and more layer feeds hitting 16% and vegan besides; so they are basically corn and soy and some other junk.

 

[RoseMarie1]

Yes, that's her ovary and the remaining eggs she still had in her. Sort of like us old gals who will never have another baby but are still putting out eggs, Bertha had eggs but would have only laid rarely if at all in her life. What made me nervous was all her fat and her trying to lay an egg around the fat and her dropped abdomen. I didn't want her to get egg bound or have internal laying issues from it all.

Ginny was a couple of years younger than Bertha but she too had no active laying activity going on inside, as did the other old hen that came with the pen of roosters. All retired layers and all fat as ticks, though Bertha beat all of them for fat.

I gave those little eggs forming in there to the chickens, along with any good organ meat or fat they could easily eat. Recycling at its best!

lol recycling at it's best. I just can't get over the fat Old Bertha had on her AND in her. That is something and she must have been finding some good bugs at your place along with that good ff food. So do you have any hens left that are laying? How did the roos do this evening being put all together or did you put the news ones back in their pen?