Fermenting Feed for Meat Birds

[Triple Willow]

Just had a late breakfast I guess you could call lunch and I love these home grown ff eggs! If I eat store bought eggs with a runny yolk I burp half the day and taste nasty eggs. Yuck! Not with these eggs. Good stuff! I make a fried egg omlet sorta kinda. lol

 

[Regin]

We have two hawks that circle around here, and none have gotten my chickens......but my Great Pyrenees barks at hawks and crows when  they fly over.  It is so funny to watch him run and bark while looking up at the sky.  We laugh that he enforces a "no-fly" zone.

That's too funny!!!

 

[BCMaraniac]

I didn't realize there was such a clamor for classical music

 

[Triple Willow]

I didn't realize there was such a clamor for classical music:/

Now that is punny! LOL

 

[Shellz]

Hilarious! I'd love to send that to my BIL who's a music teacher. Where'd you find that?

I've moved my ff up to the kitchen area from the cold basement. Nice & warm now. Hope my hubby doesn't pitch a fit now.

 

[MEMama3]

I may get scolded for this, but here goes: I have much more experience making wine than fermenting feed, but wine making is a process of fermentation. Whenever you ferment something, you are wanting a particular organism to grow in the container. Sometimes the wrong organism gets in there and takes over. When fermenting wine, it has to be carefully protected from contamination or it could be taken over by bacteria. When fermenting feed we want it to be taken over by bacteria, but not just any old bacteria, that's one of the reasons that folks use vinegar, buttermilk, etc. to get the fermentation started. With the billions of different bacteria out there, I don't think it would be crazy to suggest that maybe your FF has been taken over by a bad bug. If I were in your position, I would keep the current batch going, but start another new batch from scratch and be careful not to cross-contaminate the two. Let the new batch ferment for a few days and see if your chickens react differently to it.

Sage advice. I will give that a try. To the ladies that recommended taking away the dry, I took it from their outdoor feed stations, but I did leave a dry feeder in the coop. Their light turns on four hours before I let them out so I feel they need something and I've learned that wet feed in the coop is a seriously messy no no. I suppose they could eat that instead of the FF, but now it takes more effort.

 

[Shellz]

Just had a late breakfast I guess you could call lunch and I love these home grown ff eggs! If I eat store bought eggs with a runny yolk I burp half the day and taste nasty eggs. Yuck! Not with these eggs. Good stuff! I make a fried egg omlet sorta kinda. lol

Great observation. I suck at omelet making too.

 

[Triple Willow]

Great observation. I suck at omelet making too.

I like my own creations better.

 

[Beekissed]

I may get scolded for this, but here goes: I have much more experience making wine than fermenting feed, but wine making is a process of fermentation. Whenever you ferment something, you are wanting a particular organism to grow in the container. Sometimes the wrong organism gets in there and takes over. When fermenting wine, it has to be carefully protected from contamination or it could be taken over by bacteria. When fermenting feed we want it to be taken over by bacteria, but not just any old bacteria, that's one of the reasons that folks use vinegar, buttermilk, etc. to get the fermentation started. With the billions of different bacteria out there, I don't think it would be crazy to suggest that maybe your FF has been taken over by a bad bug. If I were in your position, I would keep the current batch going, but start another new batch from scratch and be careful not to cross-contaminate the two. Let the new batch ferment for a few days and see if your chickens react differently to it.

Yep...you're going to get scolded. You cannot control the bacteria that enter into the mix...but this is not like making wine, where you have to keep out wild vinegar yeasts or you will just make vinegar. The LABs in good fermentation colonize the mix, then the acetobacter colonize the mix and both of these colonies inhibit the over growth of harmful bacteria in the mix. All our fermentation is being exposed to whatever bacteria is out there and most harmful bacteria/molds are pretty weak and fragile compared to the strong LABs and acetobacters in these mixes. The only way the harmful pathogens could grow to numbers enough to affect the feed and thereby poison the flock is if the good microorganisms had been killed off to sufficient numbers that they could no longer inhibit the over growth of the harmful pathogens.

There's really only a few ways to kill off those good bacteria/yeasts....an antibacterial, antifungal agent or to starve the good guys. If the feed is being tended by fresh feed now and again and she isn't dumping bleach or something similar in her bucket, it's highly.....and I do mean highly...unlikely that it could be a spoiled bucket of feed.

Please, please, don't turn this method of feeding into a hysteria laden mystery for folks like a few of the blog sites out there, currently feeding the masses with incorrect propaganda on it. It's simple, it's not dangerous, it's not fussy and it doesn't require glass beakers to produce and it doesn't need water over the feed, a lid down tight, using the water from the last batch will not store up or build up harmful sugar amounts, it doesn't need to be started with LABs to produce LABs for fermentation, etc. ad nauseum.

It's just grain, water and a bucket...add air and wait. If you keep to that formula, this method of feeding is as safe as any other.

 

[BCMaraniac]

Hilarious! I'd love to send that to my BIL who's a music teacher. Where'd you find that?

I've moved my ff up to the kitchen area from the cold basement. Nice & warm now.

Hope my hubby doesn't pitch a fit now.

My 22 year old daughter sent it to me on FB. Here is the link:

http://24.media.tumblr.com/f3bc6836a77cf873f3e073576800a87a/tumblr_mwgz5meRDl1rfiyczo1_500.png

She came home while I was out and found our very first hatchling this year and adopted him....she named him Gil-bird. I asked her what she was going to call it if it is a girl and she said Gil-birda. Well, he turned out to be a Gil-bird. He is a capon now, so he dodged the first bullet. She loves that bird, but doesn't have a problem with him being on the table....as long as she doesn't have to do the deed. So she sends me stuff like this all the time. I hope you BIL gets a kick out of it.