Fermenting Feed for Meat Birds

[Aprildeesunshin]

Thank you Beekissed and Chocolate Moose. The only thing I did different when processing the birds was let them sit over night on the table to dry before shrink wrapping them. I was told that the taste would be amasing if I let them age. So, I suppose they were sitting out from their last rinse about 24 hrs. I started in the AM for processing.They get defeathered and gutted right away....4 at a time. Then they get put in a tub of water to start cooling them down. After the 40 were processed, they went into a new bucket of clean cool water so that I could move themy closet to the house. Then they went up through house for limb removal and final rinse. Again, they were only out of cool water for the longest of 18-24 hrs. Some flies for get to a couple sticking up out but I made sure I rinsed thoroughly for any possible rmeaning "fly anything". The meat is not making us sick. I will try the brine and let you know how it goes. It is too late to try to "detox" them.

 

[Molpet]

Thank you Beekissed and Chocolate Moose. The only thing I did different when processing the birds was let them sit over night on the table to dry before shrink wrapping them. I was told that the taste would be amasing if I let them age. So, I suppose they were sitting out from their last rinse about 24 hrs. I started in the AM for processing.They get defeathered and gutted right away....4 at a time. Then they get put in a tub of water to start cooling them down. After the 40 were processed, they went into a new bucket of clean cool water so that I could move themy closet to the house. Then they went up through house for limb removal and final rinse. Again, they were only out of cool water for the longest of 18-24 hrs. Some flies for get to a couple sticking up out but I made sure I rinsed thoroughly for any possible rmeaning "fly anything". The meat is not making us sick. I will try the brine and let you know how it goes. It is too late to try to "detox" them.

resting takes place in frig or cool conditions(55f or under usually)

 

[Beekissed]

Thank you Beekissed and Chocolate Moose. The only thing I did different when processing the birds was let them sit over night on the table to dry before shrink wrapping them. I was told that the taste would be amasing if I let them age. So, I suppose they were sitting out from their last rinse about 24 hrs. I started in the AM for processing.They get defeathered and gutted right away....4 at a time. Then they get put in a tub of water to start cooling them down. After the 40 were processed, they went into a new bucket of clean cool water so that I could move themy closet to the house. Then they went up through house for limb removal and final rinse. Again, they were only out of cool water for the longest of 18-24 hrs. Some flies for get to a couple sticking up out but I made sure I rinsed thoroughly for any possible rmeaning "fly anything". The meat is not making us sick. I will try the brine and let you know how it goes. It is too late to try to "detox" them.

I think there may lie your problem. When folks age meat they generally do it under chilled conditions~a steady 36* F, never at room temps or even cool water~and it's done for 24-48 hrs for chicken, 2-3 wks for beef, pork, etc. That's what gives me a chuckle when people leave a deer hanging in a tree for days to "age it" ~in varying temps~and then complain of a gamey flavor in the meat....ya think???? It's because they are eating rotten meat!

It's likely that during your processing time and in the aging process, you've had some decomposition of the meat past where it actually tenderizes the meat fibers and more towards where they start to actively decompose...or rot. Bacterial growth starts there as well. Could be why the meat smells and tastes rotten.

When processing, a tub of cool water isn't really adequate, especially if doing this in hot weather....needs to be cooled in and under ice if not able to take them to the fridge for chilling.

Live and learn, huh? I hope the brine helps, as that's a lot of money, time and work in that meat. I hope you can save it. If the brining doesn't work, you could possibly debone it, grind it and jerk it.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

I agree that is likely your problem. Keep it cold when you are soaking/brining too, ice water, back of the fridge. Make 100% sure you cook it to a safe temperature. Use a meat thermometer.

 

[bullets]

Have never experienced that with feeding fermented feed, be it with meat birds or otherwise.  In fact, the FF usually takes the smell of the barnyard right out of home raised chickens, creating a wonderful aroma when they are cooked and a clarity of flavor when eaten. 

Could be the meat proteins in the pig feed?  Some report certain meat proteins giving the FF a rotten smell and maybe that transfers over to the taste of the meat?  If it was the pig feed, 2 wks off of it wouldn't be long enough to get it out of their system. 

I've tried to clean the systems of retired layers that I had gotten from someone who had been feeding regular feeds to them and it took a couple of months to get that nasty smell and taste out of their meat and to get their eggs to start tasting good enough to eat.  Until then, all their eggs had to be fed to the dogs. 

wait a minute.. a layers eggs start tasting bad after the hen is passed a certain age?

 

[ChocolateMouse]

Nah, she means they were older hens she picked up from someone else who had inferior husbandry (many egg farms retire hens at 18 months and they have years of laying left). It's all about the diet/care. A crummy diet/care results in crummy tasting eggs. The chemical composition of the egg is different. Some people can be pretty sensitive to that and know if a bird is fed well/poorly, or even if it's raised indoors/outdoors, just by taste. On the other end of the spectrum, some people cant tell if they're eating a duck egg, a chicken egg or a quails egg, even if you tell them.

 

[beckyworley78]

ok its my first day trying fermented chicken starter for 2 week old baby chicks medicated. They wouldn't touch it until I added dry feed on top of it and now they are literally tearing into it. So if anybody has had trouble feeding chicks they wouldn't take to it try it. I had a plastic icecream lid I put some on it speaded it out sprinkled some dry feed on it and they thought they were getting dry stuff only but they kept on eating it and eating it so ya thank the chicken gods on this one lol.

 

[Beekissed]

wait a minute.. a layers eggs start tasting bad after the hen is passed a certain age?

Nope. If a hen is fed a certain way all their lives, though, they will often take on the flavor of that feed and also of the conditions in which they are kept...in other words, they will often taste strongly of corn and poop.

And that's pretty typical of chickens fed formulated feeds and kept in a coop and run situation...they even smell bad when wet, so when you dip them in hot water to pluck them you'll smell it then. Then their poop and guts smell pretty bad too. Then, when you cook them, you can smell that essence coming out of the meat too.....country folk just get used to that smell and taste if that's the way their folks always raised chickens, but others will call it a "gamey" flavor or smell. Their eggs will have that sort of flavor too....sort of an off flavor of excess sulfur(that "eggy" smell and flavor), corn, barnyard.

Usually a hen's eggs and meat will taste pretty much like how they are raised. Commercial eggs taste of stale, blandness and excess eggy/sulfur. Free range chicken's eggs will taste somewhat better, especially if foraged feeds is their primary nutrition and formulated feeds is only the supplement. Free range chickens supplemented with FF are a whole next level of purity and cleanness of flavor, as the FF changes the corn/grain base of the feed to something else entirely, the poop no longer has that strong, excessively foul odor, the eggs no longer taste of anything but a sweet, nutty flavor with no sulfur smell or flavors, the meat has no barnyard smell or flavor when cooked and even the guts don't have a bad smell when you are eviscerating the bird.

So...when I obtained retired hens from a cooped situation that had done nothing but walk on their own poop and eat formulated feed all their lives, that smell never really left their bodies, tainting their eggs and meat also. I kept them for a 2-3 wks, feeding them FF to see if I could clean up that flavor but it didn't happen. Even the two birds I kept that were still laying, after I had killed all the others, and fed on FF for weeks after that, were laying eggs that had that off flavor....those went to the dogs.

That's why I always sort of give a chuckle when people talk about their "farm fresh eggs" they produced in their backyard coop and run situations, as they fed the same feeds the commercial birds eat, gave the same medicated feeds to the chicks, gave the same dewormers and antibiotics the commercial chickens get. Basically, they paid a ton of money to produce the same thing they could have gotten for cheap at the store, only their eggs are a tad fresher.

 

[Molpet]

Nope. If a hen is fed a certain way all their lives, though, they will often take on the flavor of that feed and also of the conditions in which they are kept...in other words, they will often taste strongly of corn and poop.

And that's pretty typical of chickens fed formulated feeds and kept in a coop and run situation...they even smell bad when wet, so when you dip them in hot water to pluck them you'll smell it then. Then their poop and guts smell pretty bad too. Then, when you cook them, you can smell that essence coming out of the meat too.....country folk just get used to that smell and taste if that's the way their folks always raised chickens, but others will call it a "gamey" flavor or smell. Their eggs will have that sort of flavor too....sort of an off flavor of excess sulfur(that "eggy" smell and flavor), corn, barnyard.

Usually a hen's eggs and meat will taste pretty much like how they are raised. Commercial eggs taste of stale, blandness and excess eggy/sulfur. Free range chicken's eggs will taste somewhat better, especially if foraged feeds is their primary nutrition and formulated feeds is only the supplement. Free range chickens supplemented with FF are a whole next level of purity and cleanness of flavor, as the FF changes the corn/grain base of the feed to something else entirely, the poop no longer has that strong, excessively foul odor, the eggs no longer taste of anything but a sweet, nutty flavor with no sulfur smell or flavors, the meat has no barnyard smell or flavor when cooked and even the guts don't have a bad smell when you are eviscerating the bird.

So...when I obtained retired hens from a cooped situation that had done nothing but walk on their own poop and eat formulated feed all their lives, that smell never really left their bodies, tainting their eggs and meat also. I kept them for a 2-3 wks, feeding them FF to see if I could clean up that flavor but it didn't happen. Even the two birds I kept that were still laying, after I had killed all the others, and fed on FF for weeks after that, were laying eggs that had that off flavor....those went to the dogs.

That's why I always sort of give a chuckle when people talk about their "farm fresh eggs" they produced in their backyard coop and run situations, as they fed the same feeds the commercial birds eat, gave the same medicated feeds to the chicks, gave the same dewormers and antibiotics the commercial chickens get. Basically, they paid a ton of money to produce the same thing they could have gotten for cheap at the store, only their eggs are a tad fresher.

I was reading an article,last year, that said it takes a year for people to replace muscle cells..(it was about getting rid of toxins, pesticides)... I would think chickens would be a shorter time period, but how long.???

 

[Beekissed]

I was reading an article,last year, that said it takes a year for people to replace muscle cells..(it was about getting rid of toxins, pesticides)... I would think chickens would be a shorter time period, but how long.???

I don't know for sure. I'm thinking it would depend on the individual health and metabolic rate of the birds as to how quickly they regenerate new cells or flush toxins from their systems. Their livers, kidneys and lymphatic system would have to be relatively healthy and retired layers are generally not, especially the kind these were~red sex links. They usually have fatty liver syndrome and reproductive tumors by the second year of their lives and these hens did indeed suffer from both things.