Fermenting Feed for Meat Birds

[RoseMarie1]

Whatever you use, be sure they are going to make a mess of it with this FF...at least mine did. I used a small plastic trough of my own making with a wire overlay that they could walk upon and eat out of...they still got their little feet in it now and again but since I only portion out what they can eat in a few hours, it wasn't a lasting problem. Then I'd just flip the trough and knock out any bedding or dirt in it before dishing out the next portion.

If they are regular chickens they grow out of that walking in the trough stage and graduate to standing beside it...if Cornish Cross they still want to get inside the feeder, the big hogs.....

LOL you have me chuckling with the big hogs statement and the blue face. lol That's how mine were acting today. This was their VERY FIRST day to eat the FF. IF I didn't know better I would have sworn they hadn't eaten in days! Man they went at the stuff like they were starved to death. I was laughing because I wound up having to put out more feeders for the little pigs AND go get more feed for them to eat since that wasn't enough.

 

[RedRidge]

Quote: I wouldn't bother... just store in the freezer and thaw and chop/grind.
I use feed grade limestone from any feed mill or co-op... I'd probably also add nutribalancer just to make sure they have all the supplements they need.
I'm not big on adding a lot of supplement, but I do add nutribalancer just to make sure I have any nutritional holes filled.
For instance... with the ingredients you described...

if you want a 16.0% protein, you would... (I am assuming you want 100 lb batches)...
69 lbs of oats and wheats (any ratio)
15 lbs of field peas
(ferment these and then add the following to make it 16% for layers)
5 lbs limestone
3 lb nutribalancer
8 lbs liver

To make a 20% ration for chicks change it to...
50 lbs of oats and wheat
35 lbs of field peas
(ferment top two ingredients and add the following for chicks to make it 20%)
3 lb nutribalancer
12 lbs liver

Now... a few things to keep in mind...
Liver is great if you have ready access... I have an excellent relationship with our slaughter house and can get all the beef hearts I want for free... (of course I provide him with a LOT of business each year since I have so much livestock). Even so, there is not a huge demand for beef hearts and if you can find a source it will not only be less expensive than liver, but I normally feel more comfortable feeding it than other people's livers. I feed my own livers (and I have several hundred a year), but never someone elses because it's the garbage filter for the body. I know what goes in my animals... not the others. But that's just me and another option for you.
I have a maremma who is nursing 3 week old pups right now... she is getting half a raw chicken or 1/4 a raw beef heart everyday along with her other food. Good protein!

Your digestible protein will actually be higher than mentioned above due to the fermentation process. So theoretically you "could" cut back on the protein a "little" - one study says as much as a 3% protein increase for some grains. But I have no seen any other studies or scientific evidence to support this, just suppositions, so I usually try to get pretty close to my target percentage. But... sometimes when balancing (especially when trying to use the same grain combinations for both management groups) I will fudge on this knowing it must increase it some...

Next... keep in mind that if you normally feed say... 10 lbs of dry chicken feed a day right now, you will be feeding approx. double that in wet. In other words... determine your ratio for "your" ration of wet to dry. The protein percentages given are for weights of dry grains... put exactly one lb in a bucket, soak it for a day and then take out all the grains as if you were going to feed them. What do they weigh? Mine weigh 2.25 times what the dry grains weighed. For you, that would mean your 84 lbs of fermented layer grains will now weigh 189 lbs. This is important because you want to make sure your remaining 16 lbs that is adding daily is divided properly among the wet grains. So... if you normally feed 10 lbs of dry a day with the above ration that would convert to... (8.4x2.25)=18.9 lbs of FF grains plus .5 lb limestone plus .3 lb nutribalancer plus .8 lb liver
You have to convert your dry to wet and then add the other ingredients as if the wet grains weighed what they did dry.

If I have confused you, pm me with your email and I will send you a spread sheet that makes this more obvious.... I've done this for quite a few other folks on here and just substituted the ingredients they want to use.

Last, but not least... something to consider to make your life easier...
I like to balance my rations for both chicks and layers so that my grains I'm fermenting are identical for both management groups.
It just makes my life easier if I can pull FF out of the same buckets for everyone... then the ingredients I add are what makes the ration different for layers vs chicks.
If this is a goal this is sometimes possible with "some" ingredient combinations.
Sometimes it's a little pricier for the layer part, but the convenient of only having one FF bucket going outways that for many people.

 

[hogster160]

Hi, I've been feeding ff for a couple of months now the chickens love it. i just got 2 turkeys, a pair,12-16 weeks old. They had been being fed cracked corn. It took 2 feedings before they would eat the ff. and they inhaled it! I can't wait to see how they look after a month or more of eating the ff.

 

[RoseMarie1]

Well, it has been 4 days for our new batch of meaties and they are all doing great, not ONE pasty butt yet!!! That is a record! They love the FF, but my one problem right now is with the type of feeders we are currently using (the red 20inch without tops), they all hop up and walk in the food, and end up tracking a good amount of wood shavings into the food. At first I tried to scrape off the shavings every so often, but lately I have just started leaving it and they seem to be able to pick around the shavings and clean it up pretty well! But I wish I could figure out something where they couldn't walk in the food - maybe when they are a little bigger. Since they are not eating much at one time yet, if I put the tops with holes on the red feeders, they would have trouble reaching to the bottom of the feeder since they are still so small. Anyway, I am VERY pleased with how they are doing so far! Thank you to everyone on here for all the suggestions and advice! Here are some pictures of our setup...




Here is an overview of one side of the brooder boxes. Two water bottles, one red feeder, and one plastic gallon bucket top.



Here you can see the chicks climbing all over the feeder, and the bedding in the FF...



Here is one of the Top feeders - almost picked clean!

Thanks to burnyourmoney for their post on pg 86 with all the great pictures! I got some good ideas from you, including giving the chicks some dirt to play in and eat...
I gave each side a bucket top piled with nice dirt yesterday, and this morning it looked like this...



I have been putting ACV in their water as well since day one, and I have mixed some old goat milk kefir (like yogurt) into their food for several feedings.
I still don't like all the bedding in their food though, any other suggestions on keeping it, and the chicks out of the feeders?

I am really excited to see how these guys grow compared to our last two batches!

You could do something like this on a smaller scale for the little red feeder. This is a vinyl gutter I just fixed today so they could feed from both sides and not be able to get into it. Mine are much older than yours. I actually screwed the gutter to the boards but you wouldn't have to do that with yours being so small. Mine would have carried off the gutter. lol Anyway I put a 1x4 on each end of the boards on the end so I could put poultry wire over it. I left just enough room for their heads between the wire and the gutter. Forgot to say your chicks are precious!

 

[Triple Willow]

Do any of you feed flax/linseed? Can anyone fill me in on it such as how much should be fed to layers, meaties, young birds? I read somewhere not to feed more than 10%. It is around 30% protein.

Thanks!

 

[RedRidge]

Thank you!

Deserthomestead... your spreadsheet has been sent...
Keep in mind that too much wheat can create several problems, so lean heavier towards the oats than the wheat and you should be ok...
Have fun!

 

[AinaWGSD]

JoyfulPromise, when our chicks were that age we took a couple of cheap shallow plastic food storage containers and cut holes in the top for them. It worked ok but wasn't ideal. When they were a little bigger what worked beautifully was using a glass pie plate and hanging an empty plastic 7lb hanging feeder right over it. They still got into it to eat the stuff in the middle, but they ate all the stuff around the edges first and only a few would get in at a time. It really cut down on the shavings in the food. By the time they got big enough that the pie plate wasn't really big enough to hold the amount of food I needed for them they were big enough to eat out of the large black rubber bowls that I use for all the adult birds. I'm not sure how many you have, we only did a batch of 25.

 

[armorfirelady]

I took one of those plastic chic feeders & cut it so the holes were larger for my tots to eat from it. I set it on top of 2 bricks so it was high enough to keep shavings out

 

[RoseMarie1]

Well I fed mine their first fermented food today and it was a BIG hit! I had to go get my camera and let them have some more since they wiped out the first batch in no time. Didn't know HOW much they would need so I just brought them some more along with my camera. They were still peaking away at their bowls 30 minutes later so I just went and got them some more. I noticed tonight they didn't go hog wild over the dry chick starter that was left in their bowl from last night. lol Wanting them to finish that so I can take the gutter out to use out in the run for their FF. That way I wont have those nasty cock roaches in there anymore I hope. I just hate those things!

I video'd it but have NO CLUE how to get it on here. I put it on my facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=548807978511429&saved


I sure hope Bee sees this. I noticed 2 cockerals going at it today so I think time is close to get rid of some rir cockerals.

can any of you guys see this video? I was wondering if it worked for you? OK I made it public on there so maybe you can see it now. I don't know how to do a you tube one.

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=548807978511429

 

[RoseMarie1]

Got our first ff egg today!!!!! My girls have been on ff since 8 weeks old and they're 19 weeks old now. I give then 50/50 crumbles/grains. It was 52 grams and perfect! The thing I thought was strange is our cockerel the same age followed her into the coop and settled into the nestbox one slot over and chatted with her the whole time. She is his favorite pullet lol.

LOL that's too sweet! I just love it!