I’m so confused HELP!!!!

[Sic]

I'm interested.

Have you actually seen either grown long term in an aquarium or a bucket at home?

Since I haven't found anyone who has actually done it in a way I could possibly do - I tried to find a way harvesting algea/duckweed from my pond would work for me. Perhaps I did the math wrong but I found the protein content on dry matter basis, determined how much I would need to feed 3 -5 hens through the winter, and the moisture content, and concluded there is no way I can physically move that much weight from the pond (with rakes and buckets or tarps and a stone boat on the back of the tractor) to a sunny place (assuming the weather cooperated and I had a sunny place, not a given around here), rake it enough for it to dry before it rotted, load it, and unload it. Even if I did harvests several times through the summer.

Please advice. I would very much like to find a way it would work for me.

Could you describe where you get the duckweed, how you harvest it, store it, how you feed it, how much to how many chickens, anything g else that might help me figure out how to do it?

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.

 

[saysfaa]

N...

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.

 

[Sic]

I'm not hostile to Make at Home feed. I've helped people in unique circumstances craft them. I've recommended a couple recipes. I stongly suspect there is more variation in your products than you think there is - but accept that "a good guess" is still a good guess. The average assays found in my feed calculator are just that - a good guess based on average values.

I am hostile to people doing "make at home" "all natural" feed or feed management from a state of utter ignorance, as is overwhelmingly commonly the case, because they saw something on Facebook or Youtube or a slick website, and simply didn't know any better. I am similarly hostile to the idea of toddlers touching hot stoves in hopes they learn from the experience.

I find the "all natural" movement to have largely divorced itself from the underlying science. All Natural isn't better if its formulated wrong - and again, it is my overwhelming experience that it is, in fact, formulated wrong. It seems to have been overtaken by some of the same popular trends that work thru other subjects (including human health, and human nutrition) - buzz words, super foods, and foods to be avoided at all costs - as if reality was a democracy to be altered by the loudest camp, the most re-tweeted claim.

Finally, I was actually quite interested in what you were able to put together yourself from Alaskan local ingredients. A bit saddened you could not find the results. My understanding, from some of your other posts, is that you rely on a significant amount of non-plant protein. Sincerely wish more feeds would do so - but "Vegan" is one of those words getting a lot of traction in the "All Natural" movement right now...

/edit "Hostile" here meaning "opposed to". At the end of the day, they are other people's birds, they can feed them however they want. If they want to spend more money than they need to in order to produce an inferior (and less certain) feed for reasons of their own satisfaction, the only thing that suffers for it is their birds. But if they choose to do so - like the toddler touching the hot stove after being told not to - they do not do so in ignorance.

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.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

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]

I'm down for aquatic pastures.

 

[WingItRanch]

Fascinating discussion @U_Stormcrow and @Sic ! Thanks for making it public for learning purposes.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

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.

 

[Sic]

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.

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.

 

[Vulpes vulpes]

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.

Is that on a public thread? I'd really like to read about that further!

 

[saysfaa]

Is that on a public thread? I'd really like to read about that further!

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/making-feed-at-home.1495914/

https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...-it-was-done-before-commercial-feeds.1555278/

You may find this thread interesting also

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/feeding-your-flock-amidst-of-feed-shortages.1496915/