Fermenting Feed for Meat Birds

[tjo804]

Oh no worries DH is not too terribly jealous,
His *Girlfriend* is a short hair domestic.
stray cat he let into the house she now gives me the ugly eye! Because I said I would no longer share my be with her.

 

[Beekissed]

Today the CX chicks are 2 wks old and have voluntarily abandoned their brooder so I broke it down and took out their heat source. They have been "foraging" all over the deep litter in the coop today and are having a ball. I left two hay bales in the coop as a wind block for them and they have a little apple bushel basket to huddle into if they should want to, it has fresh hay in it.

Will go up there after it quits raining so hard and check to see if all made it back to their sleeping quarters and are accounted for. Put some stored leaves into the coop for more deep litter and to give the chicks something new to dig through...these leaves have been stored next to the coop and are chock full of bug goodies and worms.

The new dog is quite interested in the chicks and follows them around, terrifying them..I think he wants them to stay in the coop. Yesterday he put one back in the coop with just a swipe of his big nose...rolled that chick towards the pop door and it got to it's feet and ran screaming for the safety of the brooder!

 

[Latestarter]

Hi I have been reading this thread for a few weeks,am still on page 331 but have been doing FF for near to a month.I love it. I do FF for chickens,ducks,turkeys and my goats! I do it a bit differently i have 5 8ltr house bucket and a large 20 ltr tub for goats. I have no holes I started a ferment with whole grains,ACV,and water and leave at least 36 hrs and pour off excess liquid to new bucket,top with water andstart again till have my permanent 5 buckets going,just backslop all daily and top with water,have only added new acv once and not because of any smell or problems but just thought i should.
My goats drink about 3 ltrs of ferment liquid daily,just slurp down and they h=look great,shiny coats,less lameness and creaking in older does.
My ducks love there food swimming in liquid.After tipping off excess ferment liquid before feeding i just retop bucket with water and that with the ferment still in feed (I don't drain just tip off excess) makes up the liquid i put in with grain into feeders.They are far better foragers with FF.
BTW I live in NZ and grains for FF are hard to find and can be very expensive!

Love your avatar! About says it all

 

[Beekissed]

Well...checked on the CX chicks and they are all snuggled into the bushel basket as I had figured...cute as can be. It's 60* here tonight...soft, spring rain going on and all the frogs singing down in the holler. Lovely!

 

[OHhappychicks]

Well...checked on the CX chicks and they are all snuggled into the bushel basket as I had figured...cute as can be. It's 60* here tonight...soft, spring rain going on and all the frogs singing down in the holler. Lovely!

Oh the sweet, simple pleasures!

 

[Beekissed]

Oh the sweet, simple pleasures!

I know!! It's on nights like this that I can remember most what it feels like to be a kid....spring nights brought hope of summer vacation from school and an endless summer. Back then summer seemed to last forever. Whistle brand orange pop, catching lightning bugs, listening to the whippoorwill, and sitting out on the porch swing in the dark while Dad told stories about when he was young. Mom making us come in the house and wash the fishing slime and other accumulated dirt off our bodies~ and "don't forget that ring around your ankles!"~ before going to bed.

Oh, to be a kid again back in the 70s.....

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Well ladies and gents. We just spent 48 hours putting in the new deep litter in my run and raised garden beds in my back yard. Back breaking work to say the least but the girls are on two feet of fresh woodchips now. Mostly pine this year. The old deep litter was SOOOO full of earthworms! They chickens feasted as I moved the old bedding about my lawn to start raising it above the local water table (which is quite high as all the lawns in the area flood and it used to be natural Wetlands).

After hours of backbreaking work hauling literal tons of dirt around, what better way to end the night but with my last FF roaster from last fall? 5.5 lbs of glorious, white, healthy chicken stuffed with potatoes and chorizo sausage!!! Yuuum!

Cant wait to post a couple quick photos of the new raised beds tomorrow. They look AMAZING!

Nuh-unh, TW...she's got to go through WV to get to your place, so she can visit here first!     I've got so many things to do this spring and I'm so far behind right now that I think I'm first!  Dibs on the Mighty Mouse. 

Ladies, please! ;D I am 5'10", there's enough to go around! Sincerely, if I had a way to get to you guys I would gladly help out. You cook/buy me dinner and hand me a cold glass of juice at the end of the day and I will do menial labor for anyone I call friend. How do you think I got things done here? I cooked dinner and and it took nine of us together. But we manger to double dig over 90 cubic feet of flooded clay dirt, move a yard of compost, five yards of clay mixed with chicken manure and wood chips, 2.5 yards of topsoil mix, 10 yards of wood chips, all to build three garden beds and get the new chicken bedding in the 800 sq ft pen and start regrading the lawn. Plus the regular animals chores for the day...
The key was to prep dinner the night before. I had everything ready to literally pull out and stick in the oven without even washing my hands because it was covered in tinfoil. Old school farm style. Modern first world society in the only one in all of history where the village, freinds, family, etc don't come out to help with monumental life tasks like barn raising, house building, or in this case hand building some 200 sqft of garden beds.

The rabbits are doing generally well, though not exceptional right now. Age has officially taken its toll on my senior buck and since he is more interested in food than ladies I will be culling him along with my one doe who is a bad mom. Jr Buck is still crazy but coming around (for me anyhow), and Rescue Bunny produced a litter of 7 live kits a couple weeks ago and feeds them insane amounts of milk. I have never seen such well fed kits before in my life and I have to keep her in alfalfa to keep her from loosing weight despite 18% protein pellets because she feeds so much! We have decided to keep a buck kit from this litter of hers. We are still waiting on 3 moms to produce their first really good litters too.... But I cant actually complain. I am selling $40 of meat tomorrow! And I taught two young ladies around my age how to butcher rabbits this month. So I am feeling pretty accomplished!

 

[Triple Willow]

I love spring and summer most of all!

Bee... would you tell me again your feeding schedule for CX? Mine are getting more demanding! They are biting when I feed them! LOL

 

[Triple Willow]

@CM...sounds like you have some great people around to help out. I bet you all had fun doing it too. Yeah, times just aren't like they use to be at all.

 

[Beekissed]

The rabbits are doing generally well, though not exceptional right now. Age has officially taken its toll on my senior buck and since he is more interested in food than ladies I will be culling him along with my one doe who is a bad mom. Jr Buck is still crazy but coming around (for me anyhow), and Rescue Bunny produced a litter of 7 live kits a couple weeks ago and feeds them insane amounts of milk. I have never seen such well fed kits before in my life and I have to keep her in alfalfa to keep her from loosing weight despite 18% protein pellets because she feeds so much! We have decided to keep a buck kit from this litter of hers. We are still waiting on 3 moms to produce their first really good litters too.... But I cant actually complain. I am selling $40 of meat tomorrow! And I taught two young ladies around my age how to butcher rabbits this month. So I am feeling pretty accomplished!

Sounds like you are really working those rabbits! That milky doe sounds like a keeper....I'd use her as a foster doe for when you have too large of litters on other does. I had a doe I used to do that with because she could just feed more than the other rabbits could and always turned out little butterballs.

I think you should feel quite proud! Passing on life skills is important and so many out there are lacking. Kudos, Mighty Mouse!

I love spring and summer most of all!

Bee... would you tell me again your feeding schedule for CX? Mine are getting more demanding! They are biting when I feed them! LOL

I don't have a schedule, really. I feed them in the morning when I feed the big gals...I just fill their feeder and let them at it. Later that evening when I gather eggs I'll check their feeder..if it's empty I fill it again. If there is still a good plenty in there, I stir it up with my finger and leave it. Right now it's always empty, so they are up to two full feeders a day...probably a little over 2 cups of FF per day for 9 chicks.

Now, of course, I'll not be able to keep track of the amounts because they will be eating and sharing with the bigger flock and both groups will be sampling out of each other's feeders since I took them out of their brooder. I'll still try to give them a morning and an evening meal until they are ranging out more and forage becomes more abundant. When they are foraging for most of the day I'll move their feeding to a once a day thing in the evening.

If yours are acting super starved, just feed them more and monitor the results...if they are starting to look like little round balls with splayed legs, back them off the feed. If they aren't that starved but are just food aggressive, I suggest you do a little training. I had to do that with my biggest chick the very first week for biting my hand when I reached for the feeder...just lofted him across the brooder and that was the end of that. Hasn't tried it again. Pecking order must be maintained.