Fermenting Feed for Meat Birds

[Arielle]

Quote: Going to second choice--use a different bucket. THanks everyone for the input.

 

[DuckBoy]

I have a question can you use left over use grains from a brewery. It is suppose to have 21% protein but it is moist is that a problem?

 

[DuckBoy]

Can you use brewery brains

 

[tjbeckman]

ok, question. Has anyone figured out what they use as a ratio of chicken:feed over the life of the meaties?

 

[Costa Rica Art]

I wouldn't trust the glue in a fermented environment not to break down, also your screen won't last long before the ferment eats through it. Maybe a nut/bolt and large metal washer would work.

Hummm, don't you think your metal bolt and washer would react if the screen would? I would use plastic screen and crazy glue, heck if they are using crazy glue to close wounds then I would think it would work in the bucket. Last but not least you can just take a piece of plastic and crazy glue it inside the bucket. HTH

 

[my sunwolf]

ok, question. Has anyone figured out what they use as a ratio of chicken:feed over the life of the meaties?

I would really like to know this as well! I can't seem to find the same info anywhere, which I guess is part of the perils of chicken rearing ("your mileage may vary").

Do you mean how many pounds per feed they eat per pounds of weight over time?? If so, I think I estimated about 15lbs of feed per bird total (to 8 weeks for standard Cornish X broilers), but I've heard others say 12lbs, others say 20lbs.

Meyer has a chart on their page where they estimate it:




Hope this is what you were talking about...

 

[Arielle]

Quote: With any acetic environment I would not use metal anything. I have my reservations about plastics too, but we have to pick our poisons!

I can just use a 5 gal pail and drill holes. Lots of holes. I consider feed grade plastics as my best bet.

Thanks for your input!

 

[Arielle]

Quote: THis is a great starting point. Understand these numbers are on a dry matter basis =As you would buy pellets or shell corn or feed oats. Once you add water, the dry matter doesn't change but the weight does. My point is wet feed is not equal to dry feed by weight.

 

[my sunwolf]

THis is a great starting point. Understand these numbers are on a dry matter basis =As you would buy pellets or shell corn or feed oats. Once you add water, the dry matter doesn't change but the weight does. My point is wet feed is not equal to dry feed by weight.

Ah, right... and I'm not sure I would be able to come up with a consistent conversion for dry matter to fermented matter weight, since different grains and mashes soak up different amounts of moisture depending on a huge host of variables. So I could take the dry bag weight of feed and base my numbers on that, not after fermenting. I'm interested to try the FF for Cornish X and keep track of weekly weights of the birds as well as much feed I'm using per bird per week--using dry weight numbers, but still feeding the fermented.

 

[Suzierd]

Question a couple of my Silkies are sitting on eggs could hatch any day. I can't find a small bag of chick starter anywhere with out it being medicated and I don't want to buy a big bag will the flock raiser (purina) work as well?