FFA Project

[FeatheredFriends&Horses2]

Hi, I'm working on an FFA project in which I am going to document the differences I see in egg production between fermented feed and non-fermented feed. My question is, does anybody know how long it takes to see a change in egg production based on feed? Thanks in advance!

 

[Folly's place]

Interesting project!
How many laying hens, the same age and genetics, and housed the same? It's hard to separate factors out to make valid comparisons.
How long can you run this?
Will all the birds get fed free choice? How to manage fermented feed that way, and will you keep records of feed consumed by dry weight in each group?
Mary

 

[FeatheredFriends&Horses2]

Thanks! I have all different ages and breeds of hens. They're kept in an outdoor run with ducks and heir rooster. I feed them about half a quart of scratch grains and 2 1/2 quarts of fermented laying pellets which equals about 4 1/2 quarts dry pellets. My idea is to feed them dry feed for a period of time and record the eggs I receive, then switch them to fermented. I plan to do this several times so that it can't be argued that weather, light, or hormones affected my experiment. I know that ideally I'd have 2 groups, but I don't have the resources for that. So my question is, what should my rotation intervals be?

 

[Folly's place]

IMO, for what it's worth, doing the whole group for different times over the year blows the experiment to smithereens. Lighting, molting, so many factors influence laying rates over time, I don't think you can make a case for the feed being the only factor that changes, because it won't be.
Mary

 

[aart]

Agrees with Mary.
They should be done simultaneously instead of rotating.
You need the exact same age and breed of bird.
The more birds in both groups, the better the data range will be.

 

[FeatheredFriends&Horses2]

Thank you for your replies! Unfortunately, as I mentioned earlier, I currently don't have the resources to implement this, so I guess I'll have to wait until I do

 

[Folly's place]

This is one big reason why experiments that mean anything are expensive to run!
Mary

 

[Red-Stars-in-RI]

Agree with others, but all things considered (and that we’re talking an FFA kid and not a scientist) I’d say run the experiment in summer time (prime laying, steady sunlight, less chance of molt) for maybe 30 days each.

Won’t be perfect (and I think calling this out in your presentation is a good idea) but should be interesting.

Good luck and let us know how it goes!

 

[jolenesdad]

Hi, I'm working on an FFA project in which I am going to document the differences I see in egg production between fermented feed and non-fermented feed. My question is, does anybody know how long it takes to see a change in egg production based on feed? Thanks in advance!

To see a change in egg yolk color, takes about 10 days. So I would say that you could start to see certain aspects fairly quickly.

when does the project need to be finished by?

do you have birds that you can tell who lays what egg, or is it a guess once you collect eggs?

my suggestion would be to do 30 days of a strict feeding ration with every bird and then take 5-10 eggs from each bird over the next two weeks. Evaluate them for weight, size, shell color, yolk color, and yolk weight. (To me yolk weight is the most interesting here, lots of folks say fermented feed gives bigger yolks).

switch for 30 days to fermented feed, and then repeat.

I would do this during peak production months. To be honest, with any small sample size and not hundreds of birds, I would think this has more of a chance to be effective, analyzing the change in specific birds rather than comparing two different birds with different feeding. Especially if you can do the whole thing over 8-10 weeks, there won’t be an incredible amount of outside factors affecting production. In fact, if you remove the “production/how many eggs” aspect from the equation and you just study the actual attributes of the eggs, I really don’t think it matters, especially since you do not free range.

 

[Acre4Me]

I would think this has more of a chance to be effective, analyzing the change in specific birds rather than comparing two different birds with different feeding.

@FeatheredFriends&Horses2, the above suggestion could be a workable/meaningful solution. However, you would need a way to KNOW what each bird is doing (laying an egg or not each day) and the specifics of each egg (size/weight, any defects, number of yolks in the egg, fertile, etc). This is also a possible option for you because you have a mixed flock (and possible mixed ages). So, could you have some way to KNOW which egg from which hen to document this?