Fermenting Feed for Meat Birds

[deedles]

Okay, thanks for the input. I'll just give them some FF today. They are on the way home with DH as I type.

1 gal. water + 1 tbsp. honey, 1 tbsp cider vinegar, 2 floating mooshed cloves of garlic = homemade nutridrench type drink. Just a little boost and some nutrients.

 

[Hiltonizer]

My meat turkeys arrived today (a day early) and I started them on feed thats been soaking only since yesterday... I'm sure it won't really be fermented at this point but at least they'll be accustom to the wet texture.

One thing I don't recall seeing an answer to is, what has feed fermented too long or how do you know if its gone... unhealthy? Not sure exactly how much feed these buggers are going to take at various stages/weather, so I may make too much from time to time while I get the hang of it.

 

[Latestarter]

The ferment will continue to strengthen over time until the sugars run out. At that point all you have to do is add more feed/grains to add more sugars and the whole process backs up and starts over. Based on my experience living on the front range in Colorado, a 5 gallon bucket, 3/4s full will continue to ferment for the better part of 2 weeks or longer @ room temps between 70-75 degrees. However, you need to keep it moist/wet, you can't let it dry out, and the temp is the driving factor, the hotter it is, the faster it ferments. Another factor is what you are fermenting... a processed feed will ferment faster than whole grains. By the end of the 2 weeks, the ferment will be very strong and smell almost like vomit (to some) rather than a nice sourdough bread like after the first 3-4 days.

 

[Molpet]

My meat turkeys arrived today (a day early) and I started them on feed thats been soaking only since yesterday... I'm sure it won't really be fermented at this point but at least they'll be accustom to the wet texture.

One thing I don't recall seeing an answer to is, what has feed fermented too long or how do you know if its gone... unhealthy? Not sure exactly how much feed these buggers are going to take at various stages/weather, so I may make too much from time to time while I get the hang of it.

https://tikktok.wordpress.com/2014/04/13/fermented-feed-faq/

 

[ChocolateMouse]

lololol I am just laughing my butt off over the eggs and mad cow thing. The bald eagle picture, such drama! Such intense nationalism! The guberment is gonna give us a new mad-chickens disease! Oh my it's almost too much! XD


Muh...Muh ferdoms! (Psst, bald eagles eat eggs. From other bald eagle nests under rare circumstances. Shocking! Not mad bald eagle disease! The downfall of 'murica!)

An ACTUALLY comparable example to how mad cow spread might be feeding bacon to rabbits. Idk where this crazy, dumb, awful idea came from but some people try to feed bacon to their rabbits after they have a litter to give them back lost nutrients. I have no idea why they do this, and in the frenzy of trying to make the nest smell not like blood and placenta sometimes the rabbits eat it. Sometimes the rabbits die from it from GI stasis. I worry about what diseases could jump species this way. If they were feeding sheep, cow or deer products to rabbits a prion disease jumping species might be possible. It's bad juju. So such bad ideas certainly exist in animal husbandry.

But rabbits are strict herbivores... Much like cows and sheep which suffer from their own versions of diseases in the category of mad cow. (In sheep, it's scrapie if I recall correctly.)

Chickens on the other hand are omnivores. Their digestive systems and such work VERY differently than a rabbit or cows. They're DESIGNED to eat meat, eggs and even those things from other chickens. Try releasing a smaller, helpless chicken into your flock with no introduction... See what's left of it after a day or so. Maybe you'll find some bones or feathers. Chickens are one of the few animals where a small amount of being cannibalistic is wired into them.

Additionally, and this is the biggest thing I crack up over... You DO realize that all chickens are required to eat eggs at birth? When a chick hatches, what do you think is in it's stomach? Where do you think that yolk goes? How do you think chicks can sit on the nest for up to 48 hours with mom waiting for their nest mates to hatch out? An egg yolk is a giant nutrient sac that feeds nutrients to a chicks stomach. Egg aren't even made of meat. Saying that it's gonna cause mad cow is like saying a rabbit eating it's placenta is going to cause mad rabbit disease. Or more accurately, that a kid or adult drinking breast milk is gonna get mad human disease. It just doesn't work that way.

If you wanna make an argument that the government is lying to us and it's a bad idea, you should at least know what the disease even is and the natural processes of the animals involved.

In any case....

I also agree not to bother breaking down the eggs. Let me put it this way. When I regularly have extra eggs at home that are getting old, and the dogs have been given their allotment, I feed them back to the chickens. My pen has a deep litter bottom of about 1' of wood chips throughout. If I throw the eggs on the wood chips they don't crack. All the chickens run over, take 1-2 pecks at the egg then give up and look at me teed off that the egg wasn't broken. I have to throw them on some exposed tree roots art the base of a tree, a rock, a log, etc (something harder than the wood chips) or they don't break. If they don't break I may come back days later and find the egg STILL uneaten. I am now careful about where I crack my eggs for them or else they don't get eaten when I want them to eat them!

If a hen is eating eggs that are whole, which happens in response to some serious husbandry problem or occasionally hormone shifts with the seasons, you need to look at how the hens are being taken care of and what season it is. You might need to change your feed or supplement it.

This is my experiences even after having dealt with some serious egg eaters. It was spring and the pullets were devouring all of my eggs. It was a hormone shift. A month later they stopped and started laying properly again with no change in husbandry. Those hens are still part of my flock and ignore every single uncracked egg I throw at them.

 

[dtpauly]

I'm new to this whole chicken thing and I have 2 Amercauna's. My son brews beer and he brought me a bad of fermented mash which I fed to them and they really seemed to like it. They aren't laying yet - hopefully soon!

 

[Robert M]

I'm new to this whole chicken thing and I have 2 Amercauna's. My son brews beer and he brought me a bad of fermented mash which I fed to them and they really seemed to like it. They aren't laying yet - hopefully soon!

Maybe they'll get drunk and lay whole clutches at a time.

 

[dtpauly]

That's hilarious!!!

 

[chicken thief]

I'm new to fermenting & trying to figure out how to use your site.(dinosaur).I used scratch grains & goats milk.Ferment working great. Going to fatten 3 older roos with it.(30 days?).What% protein would feed be? What should be added for a general feed ration? (Bloodmeal?) Next batch scratch & turkey starter for juvenile heavy breed chicks. Feel free to set me straight on what l'm doing.(especially if l'm not doing forum right.)

 

[Latestarter]

Hey there chicken thief.... welcome to the BYC! You did the forum just fine. Couple of thoughts. Scratch grains are not a balanced diet for chickens and are more a treat. You might want to get a basic 16% protein feed and use that as your starting place, then add grains to it. I don't ferment in milk, just plain old water. The thing with protein is the chicken knows how much its body needs and once it's reached that point, it stops eating. So feeding a high protein diet could prove counter productive as the birds will be healthy but will "lean" out. Years ago what folks would do was to feed the birds oats soaked in milk for 2-4 weeks before butchering. The oats have a lower protein/higher fat content and it fills out/ finishes them nicely from what I understand.

You might want to be selective about putting animal protein/products (bloodmeal) in your FF... When animal products start to ferment, the smell will drive you out and bring every fly from miles around in. Whatever you decide to do, let us know what it was and how it worked out for you!