High volume FF

[Island Roo]

How aout just fermenting intact grain - it drains easily.
Then, as you are feeding it, sprinkle a high protein / mineral / vitamin rich mix over top.

The IRGF (island roo grain fermenter. Patent pending)
Not sure how well this would work...
The air stone should make this a low maintenance system. It would keep everything aerated (no bad bacteria) and if placed under the valve, the mixture might flow with little assistance.

No scooping and only occasional stirring (in theory).

The container (bucket) under the 1.5 inch valve has holes in the bottom for the liquid to drain into the bottom container. Pour the liquid back into the barrel and feed the drained grains.

This only has a chance of working for intact grains, not mash etc.



p.s. Sorry to dominate your thread

 

[Stormy NY]

If you do not have the feed totally submerged are you really fermenting it ?

 

[Stormy NY]

How aout just fermenting intact grain - it drains easily.
Then, as you are feeding it, sprinkle a high protein / mineral / vitamin rich mix over top.

The IRGF (island roo grain fermenter. Patent pending)
Not sure how well this would work...
The air stone should make this a low maintenance system. It would keep everything aerated (no bad bacteria) and if placed under the valve, the mixture might flow with little assistance.

No scooping and only occasional stirring (in theory).

The container (bucket) under the 1.5 inch valve has holes in the bottom for the liquid to drain into the bottom container. Pour the liquid back into the barrel and feed the drained grains.

This only has a chance of working for intact grains, not mash etc.



p.s. Sorry to dominate your thread

Your not dominating the thread ... Exactly what I wanted .... When I use just scratch grains I too noticed it drains off much easier ... I am lucky I have a mill to buy from ... I buy their Broiler feed which is ground grains with roasted soy beans for the protein ...that ferments really well and they love it ... and that feed when fermented 24 hrs does have an oatmeal consistency ....

 

[jerryb]

Island Roo's sketch made me think of my brew house back when I used to home brew beer. In brewing you use a "mash tun" to do the conversion of the starches in the malted grains into sugars for the yeast. You could use the same type of tun for fermenting your feed.

A typical mash tun is a suitably sized kettle which has a false bottom about an inch off the bottom made of some kind of screen or perforated stainless. this keeps the grain above the drain valve so that you can drain off the liquid into the boil kettle.

for fermenting feed you could set up two mash tuns, one for today's feed and one for tomorrow's. when you drain today's let the liquid run off into tomorrows dry feed to ferment it. then take today's feed out to the birds. with a little ingenuity you could rig up a simple teeter totter arrangement so that you do not have to do any heavy lifting to get the full tun to the top for draining by gravity. a simple food grade pump could also be used to move the liquid.

there is also a device used by home brewers to make a mash tun out of any kettle that is called a bazooka screen, its a fitting for the bottom of the kettle with a built in screen and works great (i use them in my brew house).

I'll probably stick to bagged feed for my birds though,

good luck guys,
Jerry