No I haven't personally seen either grown indoors long term, but my son has grown both together in the same aquarium for a couple of years. I wild harvest duckweed from a marsh into 5 gallon buckets. I have a harvest right freeze dryer that I use to freeze dry, I freeze dry almost continuously 24/7 throughout summer/fall for all my winter feed. I don't provide feed to poultry at other times of the year as they free range forest, beach, and ocean on our island. The duckweed is treated similar to other vegetation that I harvest, freeze dried and packaged in mylar bags. I don't feed duckweed exclusively, I have a bit over 50 ingredients that go into my feed recipe. I couldn't tell you how much you would need or how much to feed a few hens. There should be ample sources of information online of where you can buy, how to grow it indoors, etc.
I’m so confused HELP!!!!
- Thread starter usaf1997
- Start date
Thank you.
How many chickens do you overwinter? (Range of numbers is fine, you probably don't have exactly the same number every year).
How many mylar bags of duckweed? again, ballpark is fine - are you talking ones, tens, hundreds??
I understand it is only one of many ingredients.
How many freeze dryers do you have? Household or commercial size? I tried out a friend's freeze dryer for the first time last summer. I've been using dehydrators for fruit and veggies and running them 24/7 through the summer and fall so you method might not be much different than that. Maybe easier - my friend doesn't touch the food until the machine is done while I flip the fruit and veggies every couple of hours so they don't stick to the grates and to move the partially dry pieces closer together to make room for more.
With respect, I do refer to you as the food guru, since you're always called up on a feed question. My poultry eat a LOT of seafood
, we're on an island so it's a mainstay here. When I first decided to make duck food I casually observed what they ate, some things I could find nutritional information on, but much of it I couldn't, I dried it, ground it, mixed it then added moisture back and rolled tiny kibble balls and dried them on a rack above the wood stove. It took hours to make only enough to feed them for one day...that process didn't last long. Live and learn.Agree with you on much, and have seen people making choices based on the desire to feed their animals better, but better is relative. You have to do research, you have to put time in, you have to understand nutrition, AAs and SAAs, anti nutrients, etc. and pay for testing if you're going to formulate your own feed with 'best guess' confidence. I saw a guy on YouTube feeding his chickens just rice and beans. I have 10 years worth of rice and beans stored for teotwawki if it ever comes to that, but it isn't something I would choose to feed my chickens just because someone did it.
That's good, cause I did a post or three on the "rice and beans" recipe. Its not cost effective either.
I learned from @saysfaa and a few others who gathered old recipes that many of the published, reliable, recipes that were in use 100 years ago, developed thru trial and error, actually provide outputs comparable to decent modern commercial feeds. Of course, those recipes relied on a lot of animal product - meat scrap, skim milk, whey, etc. I've not seen a recipe formulated from substantial amounts of fish/crab product, just recipes that work due to the inclusion of fishmeal to juice the CP numbers and AA profile.
Glad you've found something that works for you. Your "aquatic pasture". I'm still working on my land-based one. Likely will be till I die.
AGeese
Free Ranger
I'm down for aquatic pastures.
Fascinating discussion @U_Stormcrow and @Sic ! Thanks for making it public for learning purposes.
among those who have done the research, there really isn't huge disagreement in the goals, but we do sometimes quibble (LOUDLY) about the best ways to achieve them.
Was a fun discussion. Definitely worth giving up lunch for, and some time this evening mI might otherwise have been reading.
Chickens - 25 to 35
Mylar bags? I'm not sure if I understand the question you're asking, but will attempt to cover what I think may be relevant. I have one large harvest right home freeze dryer - I believe it can freeze dry 20-25 lbs of food per cycle. I also have one large dehydrator which is used occasionally. These are both at our shop in town on another island 20 minutes boat ride away. All my processing, measuring and feed mixing is done at our shop.
One five gallon bucket of duckweed: don't recall the wet weight off the top of my head, takes a minimum of two cycles, there is a high water weight here and the cycles can take 36 hours or more to complete. Going off of memory here, Nets about 1 kg of dry material, I think the mylar bag is a gallon size. 1 5 gallon bucket wet= 1kg dry=1 large(gallon?) mylar bag. My inclusion rate is 2kg to 50kg feed mix. My animal protein makes up most of my protein content: gammarus, herring, herring eggs, shrimp, crab, fish liver, venison liver.
My crude protein level ranges between 24 to 32, fat ranges between 11-15% which most may consider too high, but I essentially have wild fowl that free range with no boundaries on a rocky forested island which requires high energy. This is a hard life, to put into perspective, I have one dog that requires 8-10k calories per day to maintain body weight and 30-40% of those come from fat.
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Is that on a public thread? I'd really like to read about that further!
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