Fermenting Feed for Meat Birds

[Beekissed]

Bee.. You actually may have convinced my fiance and I to get CX in the spring...
Actually I don't know if we even have CX here.. Everyone calls them "Meat Kings".
Wait.. Looked it up. They are the same thing, we just call them stupid names.

They are really cute and quirky once you get to know them. If I hadn't been sharply held in check at that time by the Bat and had to kill them all prematurely before her yearly family reunion

(There's poop everywhere!!! Ewwwww! We have to kill them NOW!) , I'd have held over some of the better foraging hens for a layer flock and bred that meat into my flock.

They truly are the quickest way to fill a freezer and can taste and perform much like regular DPs if they are treated differently by the masses out there. Yeah, they are hungrier...but that really adds to their foraging skills if they are not overfed. I've truly never seen such foraging in all my 36 years with chickens than this last group....I was simply amazed and pleased.

 

[aoxa]

They are really cute and quirky once you get to know them.  If I hadn't been sharply held in check at that time by the Bat and had to kill them all prematurely before her yearly family reunion  (There's poop everywhere!!!  Ewwwww!  We have to kill them NOW!)  , I'd have held over some of the better foraging hens for a layer flock and bred that meat into my flock. 

They truly are the quickest way to fill a freezer and can taste and perform much like regular DPs if they are treated differently by the masses out there.  Yeah, they are hungrier...but that really adds to their foraging skills if they are not overfed.  I've truly never seen such foraging in all my 36 years with chickens than this last group....I was simply amazed and pleased. 

They definitely looked motivated to find food!

How long would you give them to clean their plate? Do they have a certain time frame?

How much of their diet should be foraged?

I have started to feed once a day for older birds, and twice for chicks - but allowing them to clear their plate before refilling. They seem starving when I get home and fill up the feeders, but those chicks aren't foraging yet. Still pretty young, and it is very cold. I'm weaning them off the heat lamp now.

Either I'm crazy and can't sex these six week old chicks, or I have 80% females. Feel like that can't be right...

 

[Beekissed]

Were the parent birds on the ACV? Could be that you are not dreaming. That was about my percentage as well with home hatching when the birds were on ACV in the water.

I treated them much like my regular birds and gave them enough for one good feeding and some picking. By the next morning, if the trough was not picked clean, they got a little less for the evenings feeding. Always a good idea to give the meaties their own feed trough and feed them first...the DPs know enough to stay out of their WAY.

Then you can feed the other, more normal chickens, but be aware that if you do not fill those meaties on that first wave, they may clean up the other bird's food for them. You'll get the hang of it.

I've figured they got at least 50% of their nutrition out on forage....the reason I say this is that they leave in the morning on an empty stomach, forage all day and come back to the coop with bulging crops. And they STILL gobble down their feed but at least they had a full gullet all day before they started eating their grain based feeds. I finished out these meaties on 1/3 of what other folks fed in the same time frame, to the same amount of birds. And these birds were burning off calories by foraging all over 3 acres, not sitting in a coop all day.

 

[colburg]

Some Results on the first mold problem. The one where my inside FF bucket was getting mold in the holes.

All I did was drill larger holes over the old ones. No cleaning, sanitizing, no new ACV, just backslop. I figured that I had already fed the bucket of feed as it was building mold and everyone survived so why not see what happened.

Refresher of the before pic.


The after pics


Hard to find them, but there are two holes in this pic.


So, after a few days of fermenting and a few days to feed till it was empty and almost all of the mold is gone. The holes now allow proper drainage into the outer bucket so that all of the holes were immersed in the FF and juices.

 

[aoxa]

Were the parent birds on the ACV?  Could be that you are not dreaming.  That was about my percentage as well with home hatching when the birds were on ACV in the water. 

I treated them much like my regular birds and gave them enough for one good feeding and some picking.  By the next morning, if the trough was not picked clean, they got a little less for the evenings feeding.  Always a good idea to give the meaties their own feed trough and feed them first...the DPs know enough to stay out of their WAY. 

Then you can feed the other, more normal chickens, but be aware that if you do not fill those meaties on that first wave, they may clean up the other bird's food for them.  You'll get the hang of it. 

I've figured they got at least 50% of their nutrition out on forage....the reason I say this is that they leave in the morning on an empty stomach, forage all day and come back to the coop with bulging crops.  And they STILL gobble down their feed but at least they had a full gullet all day before they started eating their grain based feeds.  I finished out these meaties on 1/3 of what other folks fed in the same time frame, to the same amount of birds.  And these birds were burning off calories by foraging all over 3 acres, not sitting in a coop all day. 

 

Possibly. They hatched end of September.. I didn't add ACV every-time I changed waters because I had help with chores, and they were lazy, and we changed water daily because we weren't doing FF at the time. That is the biggest benefit of FF. Less water consumed = less time spent filling all those waterers. I have a lot of them too!

I have two very large heavy waterers, 3 gallon waterers, and usually a few tiny chick waterers going at a time. That made for a lot of daily water changes. Now I may do it twice a week.. I make sure water is clear from debris daily, but don't really bother changing it otherwise.

Also - if anyone has waterfowl, ACV in their pools is a huge help!! No more green algae! I use regular pasteurized ACV for this. Too expensive to use the ACV with mother.

 

[colburg]

Someone has to do the experimenting....

Let's see what happens.

Results of fermenting moldy food.

Quick recap: I had some moldy crumbles and wanted to know what happened when they were fermented. Pulled out large chunks of mold. Everything else was normal. 3 parts crumbles, 1 part scratch, backslop, add water.

Results: After 3 or 4 days of fermenting, I poured the liquid off and started scooping out like normal. I couldn't find any smaller chunks of mold that I left in there. Probably soaked up ACV and water and broke up when I stirred it. Looked normal, smelt normal.

I figured I'd test the saying "If it's not good for them, they won't eat it." Fed a little bit of it like normal. They ate it like normal.

No sick chickens. No runny poop. No noted lethargy. Everyone ate their food just like normal.

The next day I just went to the normal schedule. They got 2 gallons of this FF in the evening. Yesterday everyone was still alive, out foraging just like normal.

I just re-read what I typed and I guess the result is "Everthing's NORMAL."

 

[Beekissed]

I was wondering about your experiment.

Thanks for the update....watch for longterm effects. Right now I'm thinking that, as long as a person wasn't continually feeding moldy feeds in this manner, the occasional moldy addition may just get cancelled out by the high number of beneficial yeasts in the backslop...but I wonder if they would still win out if one fed highly moldy feed in this manner as a primary feed ration.

I, too, found some clumps of feed in my feed barrel...not moldy yet but the only reason they could be clumping would be due to moisture in that area. I put them into the FF anyway and they integrated well and have not caused a disturbance in the force.

 

[flyinchicks]

Do you think its ok to feed this to them? I have it also and I also thought it would continue to grow. Mine looks like layer that fell through the holes but a little more pastey (double bucket method). Anyway about every 3 days I scoop a little up and mix it in the feed pan. Should I just leave it??

ETA: refering to the stuff in the bottom of the bucket. I meant to quote.

 

[DaniellePage]

Results of fermenting moldy food.

Quick recap: I had some moldy crumbles and wanted to know what happened when they were fermented. Pulled out large chunks of mold. Everything else was normal. 3 parts crumbles, 1 part scratch, backslop, add water.

Results: After 3 or 4 days of fermenting, I poured the liquid off and started scooping out like normal. I couldn't find any smaller chunks of mold that I left in there. Probably soaked up ACV and water and broke up when I stirred it. Looked normal, smelt normal.

I figured I'd test the saying "If it's not good for them, they won't eat it." Fed a little bit of it like normal. They ate it like normal.

No sick chickens. No runny poop. No noted lethargy. Everyone ate their food just like normal.

The next day I just went to the normal schedule. They got 2 gallons of this FF in the evening. Yesterday everyone was still alive, out foraging just like normal.

I just re-read what I typed and I guess the result is "Everthing's NORMAL."

EEek... I know it may be too late but... When experimenting, I would not do it to the whole flock - just in case (you don't want a mass exodus)! Many myotoxins can exhibit a "slower" effect (you may not see the symptoms of the toxicity until many days or weeks later) and some can be cumulative (build up over time). I am all for experimentation - that is how we learn! BUT, for the sake of your investment, and the sake of the experiment itself... please follow scientific procedures. Also, you may be able to send off a sample of your feed to a university lab for analysis at little to no cost (before you give it to the animals).

 

[DaniellePage]

Question...

Has anyone observed any changes in the shedding of intestinal lining in the feces in FF vs bagged feed?