Why is fermented feed getting moldy?

[chicknmania]

I'm having a problem with this. The first time I made it, I researched it on line as to how to make it and followed the directions. THAT site said to keep the feed in a one gallon glass jar with a one inch of water to cover. And let it set four days in a COOL dark place.. I used Flock Raiser for my fermented feed that time, and it came out fine, the chickens liked it. I kept it in our cool dark basement. The next time, I tried corn. This did not work well. Both times I tried it, the corn got moldy. I was using just water, and the corn in a glass Tupperware container. Both times it got moldy after about three days, and I threw it out.


THIS time and went out and bought a fancy gallon glass jar with a lid sealable with a rubber ring, like a Ball jar. I added a splash of organic ACV to the water and filled it so that it is at least four inches of water over the feed. It's in the cool dark basement. Since I did that, I read another site on line and she said she makes hers in an old five gallon bucket with a dish towel waited down with a rock for a cover. AND keeps it in a WARM place, and it works out just fine. And people throw all kinds of stuff in it, including one site that said they use moldy feed! I'm not doing that, with the moldy feed, but which works best?

I bought the fancy jar, by the way, because I figured if it doesn't work out this time, I'll just use the jar for something else.

Also, I don't want to feed them the fermented feed all the time. I read it is better to just give once in a while, and that's what I'd rather do, as I don't want to mess with it all the time. So I wondered, how long can you leave it in there, before it DOES turn moldy?

I just like the idea of it, because of the benefits, rather than worrying about waste. If we're careful, our flock doesn't waste that much.

 

[pdirt]

Fermenting like we are doing with chicken feed is known as "wild fermentation". It's a battle of various yeasts, molds and bacteria, some beneficial and some not. If the "good" guys win, you have healthy fermented feed, one that is acidic. Sometimes it goes bad. Some possible reasons it can go bad:

- Poor water...contaminated or chlorinated
- More "bad" microorganisms than the "good" guys can beat
- Inferior fermenting media, aka cheap chicken feed

For the cheap chicken feed, I don't mean to imply that inexpensive feed is always going to produce poor results. But when the feed is not "as nature intended" aka full of pesticides and other chemicals from industrial farming practices or has been poorly stored or processed before it became feed, then you have better chance of having a wild fermentation going wrong. If you got mold on your feed while fermenting it, it could very well be that the feed was moldy to begin with. It may have been dry, but had gotten moldy at one point in the process from farm to silo to bagged feed and was full of dry mold spores, just waiting for some moisture to come alive again. I believe I have heard that corn is particularly prone to mold.

One thing I do, at a minor added expense/effort, is to add a bit of blackstrap molasses to the water before mixing it with the feed. The molasses provides an instant easy source of food for the yeasts. The yeasts in turn then become food for the lactic acid bacteria. Plus the resulting yeasts/bacteria are even stronger because they are getting highly digestible minerals from the molasses. It's not essential to fermenting feed, but I like doing it knowing it is invariably providing extra minerals to the chickens, besides making for a moderately better ferment, IMO.

If you get white fuzzy stuff (very thin fuzz, not thick fuzz 1/4"-1/2"), then most likely it is yeast. Like someone else said, the yeast doesn't cause an alcohol problem, because other microorganisms will keep it in check. I don't brew any alcohol, but I'm sure alcohol producers go to great lengths to promote alcohol production over lactic acid production. I have had some of my lactic acid human brews go alcoholic on me and I never did figure out why.

If you do get mold, you have two options: 1) stir it in and wait a few days to allow the beneficial microbes to consume/neutralize the mold, or 2) scrape the mold off the top and any feed that doesn't look or smell right. I've done this with sauerkraut many times, in which the top moldy layer was nasty and underneath that was delicious, healthy kraut. In fact, before we as a society became such germo-phobes, this is how people use to make all sorts of fermented foods...they got a moldy top layer and it was just scraped away and discarded.

The opposite of wild fermentation is a lab project. Commercial yogurt is made this way. The (pasteurized) milk is inoculated with a pure strain of bacteria known to produce yogurt. Then the yogurt is sometimes pasteurized again to kill all bacteria and yeasts. The sour flavor and thick texture is still there. Then in order to be able to list the yogurt as having "live cultures", more pure strain (lab derived) lactic acid bacteria is stirred back in. People used to make their own yogurt (and many still do), using raw milk and backslopping with a bit of previously made yogurt as the starter culture. This is known as a wild fermentation or heirloom. The heirloom yogurt starters (just a bit of yogurt from a wild fermentation) have a very wide range of different yeasts and bacteria, which tends to allow for more robust results under a wider range of conditions and milk quality that can make very good yogurt. Look up "Heirloom Bulgarian yogurt" for an example.

Probably more info that you wanted, but I am passionate about fermented foods!

My last bit is that some folks feed their chickens exclusively fermented feed. I don't. *I* don't eat a diet of 100% fermented feed and why should my chickens? And they would never eat such a diet in the wild, but would likely come across all sorts of rotting, fermenting, molding foods along the way. My chickens love to sift through our various compost piles, which are full of mold, among other things and they are as healthy as can be.

 

[CrazyTalk]

You maybe right-but sense chickens have no stomach-and yeast makes gas and with sugar- alcohol which-- may make happy chickens -- I don't think I want my chickens on ferm. feed people have good and bad bacteria they say to help digest food must have both one works with other keeps them in check.-----looks like both are good sense have to have both. chickens have gizzards and crawls as main parts of digestion --I guess I don't understand what is / could be the benefit ? other than happy drunk chickens passing gas ? please reply or explane I'm missing something never was in to fads though. checking for worms is pretty quick and easy to do for someone knowing what they are doing -vet might have been right -did you worm them? just trying to help best wishes to you and your birds----happy birds with gas ha. laugh when you can.

Couple of things here:

1. Chickens have stomachs. The gizzard IS a stomach - it's just a specialized on that's extremely muscular and also holds small stones for grinding things.

2. Most of what is going on in fermented feed isn't yeast converting sugar to alchohol - its things like pediococcus and lactobacillus converting sugar into lactic acid. What alchohol is produced by yeast is converted to acetic acid by things like brettanomyces, and acetobacter.

3. As to what benefit? Some of the bacterium are benficial to the stomach. Others are much more digestible than the things they eat - IE, it's a lot easier for a chicken to digest a bacterium that just at some cellulose than it is to digest the cellulose itself. Others produce vitamins/protiens/etc that aren't found in the food itself, some of which the chickens either would have to synthesize, or find in forage.

 

[theophila]

A wild chicken is very different from a backyard or commercial chicken. And comparing battery hens with free-ranging backyard chickens is also unfair. As with everything, returning to "natural" has to be eased in if an animal is used to very little exercise, eating mostly pre-processed commercial feed, etc.

Just like a human being transitioning from frozen dinners and fast food to whole, unprocessed foods. You might be gassy for a bit!

Your body wouldn't be used to having to work to digest its food. But then you can have yoghurt and other (hey! fermented!) foods with live cultures to help build up healthy gut flora. Or like transitioning dogs from kibble to raw meat - and, of course, the quality of the food is important too.

Fermenting is just one way to help them better absorb nutrients that their systems might not as easily break down and help them out when they're not getting a full balanced diet from eating the insects, mangoes, the fruit of oil palms, small snakes, rats, and the other things jungle fowl would have eaten. I have noticed that my girls don't poop out undigested whole grains any more since I've started fermenting their feed.

A friend who grew up on a family farm in rural France explained to me that chickens ate the insects and green out of horse and cow manure, which is fermented from their digestion, and this led to better absorption and a healthy gut. Might be one explanation.

 

[Ol Grey Mare]

Can you describe the mold you saw? I only ask as having read through a lot of FF information it seems to be a common thing for folks to reach a certain point and see "mold" - post about it and discover it is not actually mold.

 

[Chris09]

It could a wild yeast, just like the yeast that can grow on kraut, I get it on my kraut even with all the salt that I use.

 

[bustedchicks]

@pdirt thanks for clarification.

@chicknmania sounds like you started it off ok, just dont cover it with an airtight lid. Use something like cheesecloth or a towel to cover to allow for air exchange.

 

[bustedchicks]

Wow way off topic, lengthy and some misinformation. The original question was about mold in the fermentation.
With any type of fermentation process you do not want a sealed lid. Fermentation is a chemical process, elements are being rearranged creating the sought after product and a byproduct.

 

[LindaB220]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/19373724/
It's disappointing that it can cause later egg production and makes their feathers not quite as pretty in the study, but I haven't found them to have bad quality colors or feathers at all. My flock is almost to the egg laying age, so I can't attest to it causing late egg production, but I also started them on it younger than the study did with their flock. I have to say all the benefits outweigh the downsides to me. I've found a lot on the internet just googling fermented feed for chickens.

(For some reason it keeps putting the link to one of the articles at the top of this post!)

Thanks Dragonfly, I have been wanting a good proof by the government to give to folks that are naysayers. It's been proven over and over that it's the best thing since sliced bread.

 

[LindaB220]

Wow way off topic, lengthy and some misinformation. The original question was about mold in the fermentation.
With any type of fermentation process you do not want a sealed lid. Fermentation is a chemical process, elements are being rearranged creating the sought after product and a byproduct.

Bahahahahaha You are so correct. Cracked lid is best. Any other questions about fermented feed may be answered in the quick fact sheet put out by Tikktoc. She took the best ways to do it and compiled it into an easy to read post without having to read all the threads on BYC. It's my favorite because it's the easiest and less time consuming.

http://tikktok.wordpress.com/2014/04/13/fermented-feed-faq/