POLL: Ferment or Not Ferment...what do you do?

[Gammas Bearded Babies]

I don't, as its seems just too much work, and my chickens seem very heathy just having it dry.
I do make a mash for chicks sometimes, but don't let it sit around, so thats not fermented.
If I did, I would not use ACV, as in the past when I put it in the drinking water one of my hens started laying very thin shelled eggs and almost got quite unwell from it, and as soon as I stopped adding ACV, they went back to normal Possibly a coincidence, but enough for me to stop using it.

This is good to know! I've only ever done ACV in their water during summer time.
Thank you for sharing!

 

[Gammas Bearded Babies]

Wet mash. If I make it in advance because I'm travelling and my wife is taking care of the flock and it ferments? Fine.

Mostly not.

Oh, questions. Mix of local milled crumbles.
I use sourdough starter discard or well water.
48 hours is plenty, often less.
Nope, one feeding daily. Free range, birds, free range!

So to better understand, you don't always use the sourdough discard...or do you use it or the well water with their feed every day?

 

[Gammas Bearded Babies]

I feed my ladies wet mash in the morning with enough for the day in the bowl and sometimes I give them a couple tbs of fermented feed on top. I give them an afternoon snack of some veg in a suet feeder (makes it fun) and toss a little of their dry food in the run as scratch.

I'm sure they enjoy that!
I hadn't thought bout tossing their dry food as like a scratch!
Thank you!

 

[Gammas Bearded Babies]

Do you ferment your chicken feed?
If YES...what feed do you use? Whatever we have - right now Nutrena Naturewise layer pellets, or chick crumble when we have young ones
Do you use ACV to ferment? No
Do you use sourdough discard to ferment? No
How many days do you allow it to ferment? 2-3, whenever it starts to get the bubbles and just look/smell "done"
Do you also offer dry feed during day? Yes, because right now I only offer a small amount of fermented feed each morning to save money. They really do eat less of the dry feed during the day, even with them only getting a small amount of fermented most days.

We use the same feed!
When you say look/smell done...is it a damp like crumble or is it fairly wet when you feed it to them?

 

[Gammas Bearded Babies]

I ferment, and what I do is I have several large covered buckets and use one per day. I put in the amount of required food (pellets/crumble/grain/etc) and cover with water, then put aside to ferment for a day or tow. I rotate the buckets, like that the feed is always ready when I need it.

I leave a handful of the fermented feed in the bucket as a starter for the next batch. I find this to be practically no extra work, and very handy to have the food all ready at feeding time. The buckets are kept in the mud room of the house.

I don't add ACV or anything like that, apart from the 'starter' from the previous batch, which is equal to sourdough when it comes down to it.

My ducks and chickens prefer the wet food. It's also a way of making sure they get water in the winter since water can freeze so quickly here.

They do get an additional feeding of grain later in the day, to tide them over until morning.

I wasn't aware that it would be rqual to sourdough...definitely good to know! Makes me feel better bout trying this out with sourdough discard.
Thank you so much!

 

[U_Stormcrow]

So to better understand, you don't always use the sourdough discard...or do you use it or the well water with their feed every day?

I routinely use wet mash - meaning well water. Almost every day. But on those rare occasions we have too much sourdough starter, I'll ferment a 5 gallon bucket worth (1 day of feed).

 

[JacinLarkwell]

I used to when I only had 15 or so. But I stopped because of high numbers and I was always terrified of doing it wrong and poisoning them if I did and didn't realize it wasn't right

 

[Gammas Bearded Babies]

I used to when I only had 15 or so. But I stopped because of high numbers and I was always terrified of doing it wrong and poisoning them if I did and didn't realize it wasn't right

See this is what I'm worried about!
I've only done it 2 days but they gobbled it up after they got over their initial fear of it LOL.
I want them to be as healthy as possible (PETS) and I have so much discard all the time cuz I'm not able to work the bread like I should due to life.
So I thought this might be a win win!
But then got concerned and wanted more experienced input!!!

 

[HenriettaPizzaNolan]

We use the same feed!
When you say look/smell done...is it a damp like crumble or is it fairly wet when you feed it to them?

It's very wet. You have to keep at least an inch or two of water above the feed level, or else mold will grow. If the water level gets too low at any point during the process, I just add more and it does no harm.

I strain my fermented feed before giving it to the chickens. Some people save and reuse this liquid because it speeds up the next fermentation, but I've found that if I do that I start to notice a smell. Regular fermentation smell, but I do the fermenting in my kitchen and just don't want a yucky smell. So I do fresh water each time.

 

[Gammas Bearded Babies]

It's very wet. You have to keep at least an inch or two of water above the feed level, or else mold will grow. If the water level gets too low at any point during the process, I just add more and it does no harm.

I strain my fermented feed before giving it to the chickens. Some people save and reuse this liquid because it speeds up the next fermentation, but I've found that if I do that I start to notice a smell. Regular fermentation smell, but I do the fermenting in my kitchen and just don't want a yucky smell. So I do fresh water each time.

Yeah my chick starter one was wet but my all flock one was more crumbly even though I added more water.