Fermenting Feed for Meat Birds

[Robert M]

Hmmmmmm... do chickens have taste buds? I know they don't have lips.

 

[LindaB220]

Thanks for the welcome. I have very little experience with chickens (we got our first ones this spring) but I like doing research. 

Based on that research, I suppose my method is a little strange. We only have 14 hens. I just took a five gallon bucket, half filled it with starter crumbles, cracked corn, and anything else I had on hand (a little wild bird seed with lots of sunflower seeds, a big bag of oats the flour moths had invaded), put in enough water to cover it, plus a couple inches, and started feeding exclusively from that three days later. I stir it up, take out their days feed, and put back in as much as I took out... mostly crumbles. I've got a plastic garden trough I drilled some holes in, so I don't worry about straining the water out.

Really, I started doing this because they wouldn't eat ANY of the cracked corn I bought as scratch. They do eat it now, although they'll eat all the crumbles first. I add about a teaspoon of chili powder every few days, to make it less palatable to possible rodents. I've been thinking about adding some fresh crushed garlic to the mix every once in a while, but my Darling Bride might notice her garlic press missing...  

Thanks again,

Bill

That sounds great.!!!

 

[Tikkijane]

Hmmmmmm... do chickens have taste buds? I know they don't have lips.

Chickens have 20-30 taste buds. Compare that to the near 10,000 taste buds the average human has.....

 

[shortgrass]

Chickens have 20-30 taste buds. Compare that to the near 10,000 taste buds the average human has.....

Lol..so does that mean that if something tastes bad, it tastes 1000x WORSE to a chicken?
... Now I feel bad

 

[Tikkijane]

Lol..so does that mean that if something tastes bad, it tastes 1000x WORSE to a chicken?
... Now I feel bad

Nope. Means they hardly taste anything at all- which totally explains their interest in mice and anything else they can catch....

Makes me giggle when folks say their chickens "don't like" something, because I'm thinking, "noooo, they can't actually taste that!"

 

[birds4kids]

People can't live on sunlight and dirt. we grow plants and animals to turn sun and dirt into useable nutrition.

If nutrition is degraded in "old" feed the chemical components are still there and seems plausible mother nature might have something to reassemble it as was done the first time the feed was grown.
I don't hold any biochemical degrees or anything, but it seems to me those who are blindly dismissing this are ding so BLINDLY without considering the fact the original food was miraculously made from dirt water and sun. Seems perfectly plausible to me that microbes could potentially alter the chemistry for the better, and we know a lot of animals rely on microbes to digest food in their gut.

 

[Robert M]

People can't live on sunlight and dirt. we grow plants and animals to turn sun and dirt into useable nutrition.

If nutrition is degraded in "old" feed the chemical components are still there and seems plausible mother nature might have something to reassemble it as was done the first time the feed was grown.
I don't hold any biochemical degrees or anything, but it seems to me those who are blindly dismissing this are ding so BLINDLY without considering the fact the original food was miraculously made from dirt water and sun. Seems perfectly plausible to me that microbes could potentially alter the chemistry for the better, and we know a lot of animals rely on microbes to digest food in their gut.

... including humans.

 

[shortgrass]

People can't live on sunlight and dirt.  we grow plants and animals to turn sun and dirt into useable nutrition.

If nutrition is degraded in "old" feed the chemical components are still there and seems plausible mother nature might have something to reassemble it as was done the first time the feed was grown.
I don't hold any biochemical degrees or anything, but it seems to me those who are blindly dismissing this are ding so BLINDLY without considering the fact the original food was miraculously made from dirt water and sun.  Seems perfectly plausible to me that microbes could  potentially alter the chemistry for the better, and we know a lot of animals rely on microbes to digest food in their gut.

Well you already improve on the content of it by fermenting it.... But really I would think that after so long, it's feeding more bacteria and microbes than the chickens...but chickens eat microbes and bacteria too... So do we, essentially...one fine example are mushrooms....something that can GROW on something decaying and actually make a fruiting body that's of nutritional value.... Recycling..nothing is ever truly "lost", just recycled... I throw old feedstuffs to my vermicompost. Worms still eat it !)

 

[shortgrass]

Nope. Means they hardly taste anything at all- which totally explains their interest in mice and anything else they can catch....

Makes me giggle when folks say their chickens "don't like" something, because I'm thinking, "noooo, they can't actually taste that!"

Lol the way they swallow mice WHOLE....they must either be really gross or really delicious haha

 

[lazy gardener]

Ok I think that answered my question on the old dry feed. looking back *leach* was probably the wrong word to use.

So if you buy discounted broken down nutrient feed bags does fermenting somehow add them back?

Thanks for the welcome. I have very little experience with chickens (we got our first ones this spring) but I like doing research.

Based on that research, I suppose my method is a little strange. We only have 14 hens. I just took a five gallon bucket, half filled it with starter crumbles, cracked corn, and anything else I had on hand (a little wild bird seed with lots of sunflower seeds, a big bag of oats the flour moths had invaded), put in enough water to cover it, plus a couple inches, and started feeding exclusively from that three days later. I stir it up, take out their days feed, and put back in as much as I took out... mostly crumbles. I've got a plastic garden trough I drilled some holes in, so I don't worry about straining the water out.

Really, I started doing this because they wouldn't eat ANY of the cracked corn I bought as scratch. They do eat it now, although they'll eat all the crumbles first. I add about a teaspoon of chili powder every few days, to make it less palatable to possible rodents. I've been thinking about adding some fresh crushed garlic to the mix every once in a while, but my Darling Bride might notice her garlic press missing...

Thanks again,

Bill

Perhaps you could smash those garlic cloves with a hammer.

People can't live on sunlight and dirt. we grow plants and animals to turn sun and dirt into useable nutrition.

If nutrition is degraded in "old" feed the chemical components are still there and seems plausible mother nature might have something to reassemble it as was done the first time the feed was grown.
I don't hold any biochemical degrees or anything, but it seems to me those who are blindly dismissing this are ding so BLINDLY without considering the fact the original food was miraculously made from dirt water and sun. Seems perfectly plausible to me that microbes could potentially alter the chemistry for the better, and we know a lot of animals rely on microbes to digest food in their gut.

However, the plants can't be grown from seed that has lost all of it's nutritional value. You have to start out with a good viable seed.