Fermenting Feed for Meat Birds

[JesNflock]

Jes and TW, Try the lazy lady's way. I save all pickle and olive leftover vinegar and put boiled eggs in the jars. Also eat the jarred or canned pickled beets and put eggs in that leftover juice as well. Not enough liquid? Add water and vinegar and taste. Add salt and sugar to taste. The manufacturers put cloves in theirs so add some too if you like. Just what I do and the longer you leave them the better they taste! : )

OOOh...Good idea! We LOVE pickles in my house(olives too) so it won't be hard to save some juice for eggs! I can do a little experimenting with flavors! YUM!!! Can't wait to try it!

 

[hellbender]

These are just too poor to post any more until I get my cam figured out..but I made a good faith effort!

Sorry for the quality of this pic. Couldn't get the ****** camera to work right so my friend used her phone cam.
I have more but this gives a cross section of these youngsters. Will post more later. Everything here is just at 6.5
months...except the RIR.

 

[Beekissed]

Quote:
Nope...I don't eliminate roosters for the reason of human aggression, though I do just change their minds for them so they no longer feel like humans are fair game. I've never had one that didn't respond to the proper training. Even poor BUD learned his lesson, albeit the hard way....

 

[BCMaraniac]

OOOh...Good idea! We LOVE pickles in my house(olives too) so it won't be hard to save some juice for eggs! I can do a little experimenting with flavors! YUM!!! Can't wait to try it!

Jes,

If you want a little heat, use the juice from jalapeno peppers to spice them up.....

 

[JesNflock]

Jes,

If you want a little heat, use the juice from jalapeno peppers to spice them up.....

Me not so much, but my DH LOVES spicy! Maybe I can just make a batch of each then we'll both be happy.

 

[Lacy Blues]

I've had the same issues (55 layers, half 1.25 yrs old and half 8 months old, getting at most 13 eggs/day, mostly 7-8) and checked for several issues Bee mentioned a while back.

Rats - Nope
Lice/Mites - found some bugs around a few vents, not all, dusted them with charcoal/wood ash. We'll see how it goes. Need to check them again soon.
Moult - They had a bad molt in late August, it appears another one October that lasted till early Novemeber. Hopefully they're done with that now.
Feed - still FF. changed ratio from 1/3 wheat, 1/3 corn, 1/3 layer mash to 1/4 corn, 1/4 wheat, 1/2 layer mash. Poured the Cayanne to them for 3-4 weeks with no change.

Now, I have a question about 1 recommendation
Palpating to find layers vs non-layers. I palpated most of them when I ashed them, and couldn't tell anything. I even pulled one that was trying to lay out of a nest box and palpated and never felt an egg. I thought it would be pretty straight forward, but maybe it's not....I found that when dusting for bugs, just looking at the vent is a better tell-tale than palpating. My .02.

I put a light on them about a week ago. I had originally never wanted to use lights, but these are production hatchery birds that I plan on replacing once my H White Rocks start laying, so why not go ahead and push them to lay.

colburg

That hen that you pulled out of the nest box... I have found (on my birds) that even at that point it is difficult to find an egg unless you can palpate really high just in front of her pelvic bones. You put one finger above the vent and one past each point of the pelvis and gently push upward, if the egg is that far along in the tract this is the only way I've been able to find it.

Otherwise, I'm sure you've butchered birds before and know that there is a "v" shaped space at the end of the ribs. You can palpate this area. The gizzard will generally be found in the space on their right side. Another hard shape on the left side somewhere will be the egg passing through the area. But as with all things, I think that timing is critical to finding it. You have to do it at the right time in her cycle to find it. Can't help you with that part though.

 

[BCMaraniac]

Me not so much, but my DH LOVES spicy! Maybe I can just make a batch of each then we'll both be happy.

If he loves spicy, then put jalapeno peppers in them too. I balance the heat with a little sweet though. If you make them, leave them on the counter in the jar for a couple of days before you refrigerate them to start the pickling process. The longer they stay in the jar, the more spicy and pickled they become.

 

[Beekissed]

That hen that you pulled out of the nest box... I have found (on my birds) that even at that point it is difficult to find an egg unless you can palpate really high just in front of her pelvic bones. You put one finger above the vent and one past each point of the pelvis and gently push upward, if the egg is that far along in the tract this is the only way I've been able to find it.

Otherwise, I'm sure you've butchered birds before and know that there is a "v" shaped space at the end of the ribs. You can palpate this area. The gizzard will generally be found in the space on their right side. Another hard shape on the left side somewhere will be the egg passing through the area. But as with all things, I think that timing is critical to finding it. You have to do it at the right time in her cycle to find it. Can't help you with that part though.

I've never had any difficulty palpating the next day's egg when doing it from within the bird. One doesn't even have to insert the fingertip very far at all before feeling the egg through the intestinal wall. That's the only way I've ever found that is 100% fail proof on detecting an egg layer or a nonlayer.

 

[hellbender]

Nope...I don't eliminate roosters for the reason of human aggression, though I do just change their minds for them so they no longer feel like humans are fair game. I've never had one that didn't respond to the proper training. Even poor BUD learned his lesson, albeit the hard way....

There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that any cock you have ever owned or came up against has succumbed to you ball-busting training methods. My hat is off to you Bee!

 

[Beekissed]

Now, now...BUD was the only one that got a little harder tap than I usually give. Usually they just get a lot of sound and surprises so that they get pretty jumpy around humans and look over their shoulder for the rest of their natural chickeny lives.