Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[ManueB]

Because it ferments more. I want to test this batch out at one day for a few days. Then test out a two day fermentation. Then maybe a three day and see if there is a preference difference which is apparently quite common with fermented grains.

This summer I had issue with the grains fermenting too fast, faster than it usually did probably because of the heat. So I tested rinsing the grains off, putting them in clean water and in the fridge for 48 hours. I changed the water when I scooped out the grains morning and evening. It didn't move in 48 hours.

I have had once issues with soaking lentils (for us, and we didn't cook them on time) in the fridge for five days. They went bad. But lentils don't react like grains.

Edit to add : the two times I found the fermented grains went off, there was no doubt. It smelled so foul I threw it away in the garbage instead of the compost and we took the dustbin to the village’s garbage the same day.

 

[Perris]

Do you know the fat content of what you feed your chickens?

This sort of question only makes sense if one is giving a homogenized feed.

If what's offered is diverse, and the chickens can select what they want to prioritize from it (given that they're competing with each other, and there will be more choice at the start and less at the end of the feeding session), then each chicken may be getting quite different 'content', each day. On the fat front a particular issue is the mealworms, which supply is very variable, because (a) I make a point of offering them to anyone who hangs round the back door alone (generally a sign of needing a bit of TLC and/or food boost), chicks, moulters, etc., (b) because some of them hog the bowl when mealworms are the top dressing, so they get more than others, and (c) some of them dash off with their prize to eat it quietly somewhere, so they get less. I also give pork fat sometimes, and the same variability applies. The pork fat is what melted during grilling or roasting of bacon or pork btw, scooped up from the pan and usually spread on some bread as a carrier. They love it.

And then there's the intrinsic variability of the feed. The figures cited are always averages, as if any variety of any crop X grown on any soil in any weather at any time anywhere in the world was the same as any other, which is rubbish of course. It's fairly well recognized that some soils are deficient in a, b or c (e.g. selenium) so anything grown in them will be too, but that variability actually applies to every nutrient in every crop. Less well known is that different varieties of 'the same' crop can vary hugely in their nutrient uptake and content, particularly of the micronutrients that matter. When I realised that, I stopped calculating.

I don't know where you got your figures for the amount of fat in earthworms, but the studies I've seen on the amount of fat in mealworms, black soldier fly larvae, crickets etc. are not consistent, and again, it depends some on what they ate, in the same way as a plant's nutrients depend on what is in the soil it grew in. To get consistency you have to grow them in/on a blank slate and control all the inputs: that's industrial farming, which is not where I want to go, and certainly not just to 'know' i.e. get some precise figures.

So I accept that there will be variability, in what I offer, in what each chicken needs at any given time, and in what each chicken actually gets, and I trust that if I offer a diverse range of real foods, they will each select what they instinctively know they need there and then. The proof of the pudding is the health and fecundity of the birds.

On fats specifically, and the see-sawing of scientific opinion about which fats are good, bad, or other, you might find this interesting
https://zoe.com/learn/carbohydrate-fat-protein-macronutrients
https://zoe.com/post/fat-quality
https://zoe.com/learn/how-many-grams-of-fat-per-day

I changed the water

I essentially do this at every feed; I drain off the liquor (which might or might not get used for something else) and refill the jar with fresh clean cold water. There's usually enough old liquor left in there and on the remaining grains to kick-start the next batch, and if not, I mix in a teaspoon of plain natural live yogurt (i.e. naturally containing lactobacilli plus or minus other good bacteria) or sourdough starter.

went off, there was no doubt. It smelled so foul

I had it happen once when I was starting out fermenting, and as you say it's obvious it's gone bad. Our senses are reliable guides - and even if ours aren't, the chickens' are, so a fail-safe policy is, if they turn their noses up at something, take it away and give them something else that they do want to eat, and no-one will come to any harm.

It really makes me cross when I see some people on BYC telling others to make their chickens eat something they obviously don't want to by stopping 'treats' and taking away any alternative until their poor chickens do eat it. Starving chickens, like people, will eat anything; bad food/feed, leather, and each other.

 

[Shadrach]

I think I've paid enough tax to offset this quick deviation.

 

[MaryJanet]

I think I've paid enough tax to offset this quick deviation.

View attachment 3677328View attachment 3677329View attachment 3677330

Pi looks so happy!

 

[Perris]

Skomer, 13 weeks old today, is finally growing a tail!

He's starting to look a lot like Fforest, who I think has been getting more action than one might expect of a subordinate roo

Meanwhile Fez, 23 weeks tomorrow, is growing some wattles. Eggs before Christmas? She's a pretty little thing, and has adopted Janeka and her kids as a surrogate family this last month.

I don't know how much longer Janeka will stay with them, as we're passing the 3-month mark now.

 

[Perris]

I think I've paid enough tax to offset this quick deviation.

View attachment 3677328View attachment 3677329View attachment 3677330

on the can't spell/type/think front, have you seen/heard this one?

 

[TropicalChickies]

I'll be making a batch and it will be more than I'll feed them daily to start with.

I usually put enough to soak/ferment for 2 to 3 days. I've found that it's fine to leave the grains and seeds in the fermented liquid for up to 3 days. After that, the liquid begins to convert to something something more akin to chicha (a creamy mildly alcoholic beverage popular in Ecuador and Peru). While the Honorary Lady Arthunbott in "The Henwife" remarks that "chickens are not abstainers" and even recommends ale for debilitated birds, I'm not really sure that the feed is good for their guts after it's begun to convert to alcohol, so I do a maximum 3 day soak. 2 days is really perfect.

However, my circumstances are probably unique in that the temperature and climate here (average temperature 23-30C and humidity of 85% with abundant vegetation, mosses, and fungi everywhere) is highly conducive to collecting all sorts of cultures out of the air simply by letting a substance sit out with a towel to keep the flies off. I've managed to distinguish which substrates are better for collecting different cultures: with a mix of any flour and water, I get a sourdough starter. Fermenting cacao always leaves a SCOBY sitting on top, and a ripe banana mash will convert to a delicious vinegar with no help with its own mother.

At any rate, my group of free ranging anarchist chickens is enough to handle without them being drunk.

 

[TropicalChickies]

Something that has been bothering me is the astoundingly low crude fat of the commercial feeds Usaully below 5%.

Why is this?

An average earth worm is very roughly 15% fat. They are high in protein at 60% to 70%.
Nuts, which chickens depend on for their protein in Senegal, for example, and which the tribes would eat bucket fulls of with no ill effects are also high in fat, often two or more times the amount of protein.
Even grass has a higher fat content than the feeds.
As one works ones way through the various foodstuffs a chicken may eat, it becomes apparent that a ranging chicken is very unlikely to meet the low fat percentages found in commercial feed.

I know the science keeps changing but currently some scientist are saying some fats are good and some fats are bad. Yes I know they said this before, but now they've changed their mind about which fats are good or bad.

@Perris Do you know the fat content of what you feed your chickens?
I know for example by what the alloment chickens eat they are way past 5% fat.

The current grain/seed mix I've settled on for awhile now is roughly(per 100g)
17% protein
11% fat
72% carbohydrate

I mix it myself from maize, wheat berries, cracked rice, oats, quinoa, flax seeds, and sunflower seeds. Soak to ferment. To serve, I scoop out enough for the 12 chickens I'm feeding now (roughly 600g per meal drained). I did weigh initially, now I just eyeball it. I stir in a scoop (about 80g) of yellow split pea flour to each meal batch right before serving. I feed them this 2x per day. The macronutrient counts above include the split pea flour which ups the protein content. The flax and sunflower seeds up the fat content. I agree that 5% is low -- but the feed industry probably isn't focused on chickens that get ample exercise. Perhaps a higher fat diet leads to (or is believed to lead to) more disease in sedentary/confined chickens. Like people.

The feed mix described above is what the chickens know they will get every day in some amount. However, I mix it up for them based on whatever I've cooked during the week. They also eat boiled plantains and yuca, sweet potato, rice, and well-cooked legumes. Twice a week, they get beef boiled off the bones and rice cooked in the marrow broth. My chickens scoff at raw vegetables (they prefer grass and wild plants), but they like cooked carrots, squash, and especially beets.

I have to admit that as I've seen everyone thriving since the transition to homemade feed six months ago, I've become less obsessive about measuring everything I give them to eat. I see them catching and eating grasshoppers, frogs, small lizards, even snakes. They dig out reptile eggs and scarf down frog eggs like caviar. I've come to see the food I provide for them as a good foundation of daily calories and with the added benefit of stability for their mental well-being, but the food itself will likely never be as essential as what they forage.

 

[BDutch]

A week or two ago I filled the bird silo for my chickens with a grain mixture / scratch. It has all kind of whole grans and a little cracked corns.
Because they had from eat it a lot,I didn’t refill immediately. The weather was quite nasty here last week and some grains at the bottom the chickens couldn’t get out, got wet.
Yesterday I refilled, the whole grains had sprouted. Emptying the silo I made my chickens very happy .

They loved the grain sprouts. Maybe I should soak some scratch to sprout (inside the house) as a healthy treat for the chickens if they stop going out completely.

They hardly come outside nowadays for fresh vitamins. It seems as if ree ranging is not in their vocabulary anymore.
This photo was taken in the minute they are outside after opening the coop and run door. They choose to go back inside again after a few - max 10 minutes.
.

 

[TropicalChickies]

Less well known is that different varieties of 'the same' crop can vary hugely in their nutrient uptake and content, particularly of the micronutrients that matter. When I realised that, I stopped calculating.

I don't know where you got your figures for the amount of fat in earthworms, but the studies I've seen on the amount of fat in mealworms, black soldier fly larvae, crickets etc. are not consistent, and again, it depends some on what they ate, in the same way as a plant's nutrients depend on what is in the soil it grew in. To get consistency you have to grow them in/on a blank slate and control all the inputs: that's industrial farming, which is not where I want to go, and certainly not just to 'know' i.e. get some precise figures.

So I accept that there will be variability, in what I offer, in what each chicken needs at any given time, and in what each chicken actually gets, and I trust that if I offer a diverse range of real foods, they will each select what they instinctively know they need there and then. The proof of the pudding is the health and fecundity of the birds.

All good points. The figures I came up with for the macronutrients of my homemade feed mix are just approximates based on average nutritional information I looked up. I didn't have it analyzed in a lab.

It really makes me cross when I see some people on BYC telling others to make their chickens eat something they obviously don't want to by stopping 'treats' and taking away any alternative until their poor chickens do eat it.

Yup, and yet somehow my chickens are a healthy, active, noisy, productive, well-feathered, fighting, mating, brooding, and hatching lot despite only eating "treats" for six whole months! Go figure!