Why is fermented feed getting moldy?

[theophila]

Diet of red jungle fowl:
http://198.170.104.138/pjbs/2000/1024-1026.pdf

Diet of green jungle fowl:
http://www.feathersite.com/Poultry/NDG/BRKGreenJF.html

Diet of jungle fowl in SE Asia:
http://books.google.com/books?id=H7...pg=PA289#v=snippet&q=jungle fowl diet&f=false

Pp 370-373:

Bump and Bohl (1961) obtained 37 crops of this species from northern India, mostly from the six-month hunting season, September to February. These crops contained some 30 different kinds of seeds (e.g., of Shorea robusta, Zizyphus, Carissa, rice, and other grasses), insects of various orders, spiders, and snails. They state that jungle fowl in India also eat earthworms and lizards. Beebe (1926) mentions that in the crops of birds that he shot at considerable distances from cultivation he always found vegetable matter predominating, and that young shoots of bamboo and other grasses, leaves, petals, and wild seeds of all kinds are eaten.

Jungle fowl seem to eat a wide variety and a succession of fruits and seeds which become available at different seasons. We saw Red Jungle Fowl feeding on fruits of banyan (Ficus bengalensis) trees on the ground and on fruits up in the branches of mulberry (Morus) and chamro (Ehretia laevis) trees. Our shikari pointed out various other trees and shrubs that bore fruits and that he said jungle fowl feed on, including species of Carissa, Flacourtia, Ficus religiosa, Zizyphus, Grewia, Cordia, and Eugenia. According to Holdsworth (1958) Red Jungle Fowl congregate in large numbers at thickets of ber (Zizyphus jujuba) bushes when the berries are ripening about November. Similarly, he notes that jungle fowl aggregate about bhansa
(Adhatoda vasica) when the seeds ripen.

When we visited the Corbett National Park in May there was in the sal forest a heavy infestation of geometrid larvae. These caterpillars were so abundant that they were a continual nuisance to travelers in the forest, and the sound of their droppings on the dry leaves of the forest floor resembled the dripping sound of a constant and gentle rain. The Assistant Wildlife Warden of the Park, Shri N. S. Negi, informed us that these caterpillars appeared every year about the same time, and that they fed on the pollen of the sal tree and were in turn fed on by jungle fowl and other birds.

Termites are probably a general and an important seasonal food of jungle fowl. Bump and Bohl (1961) found termites in the crops of some of their jungle fowl, and a number a reliable observers told us they had observed jungle fowl eating such food during the termites' mating flights. The first termite flights appear during the premonsoon showers, and, according to P. H. Chatterji, entomologist of the Forest Research Institute at Dehra Dun, the main flights come in June and July. This is a time when there are many growing jungle fowl chicks in the forest, and termites must comprise an important part of their diet. We were informed by Chatterji that the commonest mound-building termite throughout northern India is Odontotermes obesus, and P. K. Sen-Sarma, also of the Forest Research Institute, identified the termites we collected near the Dholkhand Forest Rest House as belonging to this species (see also Mathur and Sen-Sarma, 1962). During the dry season these termites withdraw from the superficial portions of their mounds, and in April we found few termites in those mounds into which we broke. In contrast, during early June almost every pinnacle we broke was crowded with termites just beneath the outer shell of the nest. Where new colonies have been recently established, the fragile tunnels are easily broken.

We often observed jungle fowl scratching for food in the leaf litter, and the presence of spots cleared of leaves is one means that hunters use to locate jungle fowl. By sifting through and under the leaf litter in June, we observed that quite a few insects were available there.

During the dry season the forest floor is often burned in many places, and the immediate effect is some shortage of food. At this time elephant, buffalo, and cattle dung, which may contain seeds and various insects, probably provides some source of food to the jungle fowl.

A species of red bug (Pyrrhocoridae) was very common crawling about on the ground throughout the forest, and we were told it was a food item of jungle fowl. However, domestic chickens to which we gave some of these bugs generally ignored them, preferring instead to eat rice which we also scattered before them.

Although some insects may be distasteful to jungle fowl, the evidence suggests that, as in the case of fruits of trees, different species of insects are available to jungle fowl at different seasons of the year. Because of their increased availability during the period of early growth of young jungle fowl, termites may be particularly important.

I can use my research account to download the whole article in a PDF and send it to you in a private message if preferred (as long as it is not to be publicly shared or sold online). Other than the brief mention of rice among the various seeds mentioned, no grains were part of the jungle fowl diet, and also mentioned is that Beebe "always found vegetable matter predominating" the jungle fowl's diet, followed by several paragraphs listing the plant species, fruit, and seasonal insect diets as well as foraging in "elephant, buffalo, and cattle dung."

This article is also published in 1967, and in the references you see from my other links (which are more recent publications), you can see more recent research and more extensive analyses of their diet.

Again, as was stated the first sentence of my first post on this thread, I'm not saying the diets of jungle fowl and domestic chickens translate. In fact, I said that comparing wild chickens (or "jungle fowl," as @Chris09 so adamantly insists) to backyard chickens to battery hens is unfair, and if you were to transition them to a more "natural" or "wild" diet from commercial (pelleted or crumble) feed, some adjusting and easing in would be necessary.

 

[Chris09]

Uh, nope. Most of their diet is bugs, some fruit, vegetation, and they foraged for seeds, which aren't in as great abundance, and anything they can scratch from a jungle floor. Tell me where they're supposed to find GRAINS in a jungle? Cultivation of grain is a human practice, and they certainly don't like people.

You'll also notice I said you can't really compare wild chickens to battery hens to backyard chickens.

You might want to do more studying of the fowl's, sound like your using information from sites like Wikpedia and or feathersite.

There are a number of ways for jungle fowl to get grains since some do have a wide range and can be found in or near fields.

Again there are no "wild chickens".

Also the Red Jungle Fowl is only one of the jungle fowl used in creating to days modern chicken..

 

[theophila]

Although, if you do want to compare the diets of jungle fowl and domesticated chickens directly (as well as the effects of selective breeding for size, laying ability, energy, etc.), this is a fascinating article. I am assuming that commercial diets have similarly been adapted for better digestive efficiency for domestic breeds and that domestic breeds are probably less able to process the chitin of insect larvae than jungle fowl.

Title: Metabolic and Digestive Responses to Artificial Selection in Chickens
Author(s): Sue Jackson and Jared Diamond
Source: Evolution, Vol. 50, No. 4 (Aug., 1996), pp. 1638-1650
Published by: Society for the Study of Evolution
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2410900

Quote:

 

[theophila]

You might want to do more studying of the fowl, sound like your using information from sites like Wikpedia and or feathersite.

There are a number of ways for jungle fowl to get grains since some do have a wide range and can be found in or near fields.

Again there are no "wild chickens".

Also the Red Jungle Fowl is only one of the jungle fowl used in creating to days modern chicken..

Read above articles.

And, yes, there are jungle fowl from the seaside, who also ate various shellfish, and jungle fowl from deep evergreen forests. None of them subsist on a diet of 75% readily-available cereal crops.

There is also disagreement on whether the domestic chicken was bred from multiple subspecies or only the red jungle fowl (and for the purposes of this discussion on diets, it doesn't matter).

Their genes, and those of other isolated populations, are now being sequenced (see sidebar, p. 1022) as part of a larger effort to understand the world's most common bird and biggest source of animal protein.

[...]

Researchers agree that the red jungle fowl gave rise to the barnyard chicken somewhere in South Asia. But they agree on little else. Some contend that domestication took place 8000 years ago; others suggest that tame chickens are only 4000 years old. Some say the bird was domesticated only once; others look to several independent centers of domestication. And since Darwin's day, scholars have disputed whether the three other jungle fowl subspecies contributed to the modern bird. There isn't even accord over whether the truly wild red jungle fowl remains numerous or has long gone extinct, leaving only mixtures of wild and domesticated birds. “There has been more noise than signal,” says Greger Larson, an archaeologist at Durham University in the United Kingdom.

"Wild chicken" is also a term used in much of the research on jungle fowl up until the 1970s, though less common since except in publications outside of North America and Europe. In Pakistan, Malaysia, and Thailand (possibly others, but these are the ones I'm familiar with), "wild chicken" and jungle fowl are usually synonymous, with domesticated varieties usually called [region name] game fowl in English-language writing. In native tongues, they have whatever colloquial name is given, often named "[region or colour] chicken," with the word "wild" to distinguish from domesticated breeds.

 

[Chris09]

Read above articles.

I'v read them before, well at least the pdf and the article that you quoted. (feathersite is a joke)
One there only dealing with the Red Jungle Fowl, two they both state that plant matter, seeds and grains made up the vast amount of there diet.

Note that the pdf did state that 80.88% of there diet was plant matter, mostly of oil palm fruit but that would be expected since the study was taken place in agriculture areas which one of the areas was a oil palm plantation.
Going to a oil palm plantation to study Red Jungle Fowl and stating that the Red Jungle Fowls diet consisted mainly of oil palm is like going to a corn field to study White Tail Deer and stating that the White Tail Deers diet consisted mainly of corn...

 

[theophila]

I'v read them before, well at least the pdf and the article that you quoted. (feathersite is a joke)
One there only dealing with the Red Jungle Fowl, two they both state that plant matter, seeds and grains made up the vast amount of there diet.

Note that the pdf did state that 80.88% of there diet was plant matter, mostly of oil palm fruit but that would be expected since the study was taken place in agriculture areas which one of the areas was a oil palm plantation.
Going to a oil palm plantation to study Red Jungle Fowl and stating that the Red Jungle Fowls diet consisted mainly of oil palm is like going to a corn field to study White Tail Deer and stating that the White Tail Deers diet consisted mainly of corn...

Wasn't commenting on the palm (only the first one talked about palm) but the fact that their diet doesn't consist mostly of grains, as you keep stating. Much of it is plant matter and different types of insects seasonally. Even ignoring Feathersite, which states the harmfulness of most grains on the G. varius, the other links do not mention grains at all. And, really, you've read all the journal articles I've linked before?

Quote: Nutritionally, jungle fowl are food generalists but nutrient specialists. That is, they select between many potential food items in order to obtain a relatively narrow range of intake of the various nutrients. Most avian species are food specialists, eating within a very narrow range of foods (for example, insectivores, frugivores, nectarivores) and compensating for nutritional problems of these foods by various metabolic mechanisms. But jungle fowl, and therefore chickens, are omnivores and do not have food preferences or metabolic specialisations that would classify them as a food specialist like a granivore (Klasing, 2005b). In undisturbed habitats of Southeast Asia, the Red Jungle Fowl prefers to live in bamboo forests and they are usually found in areas with abundant termite populations. Foods of plant origin that are frequently consumed include: fruits and berries from trees and herbaceous shrubs, seeds from a variety of plants especially bamboo seeds when available, nuts, young shoots of bamboo and other grasses, leaves, petals and tubers. Termite adults, eggs and pupae are preferred animal foods consumed by adults. Foods of animal origin are dominant in the diet of chicks and the breeding season is matched to the annual cycle of termite availability. The predicted nutrient make-up of the natural diets of jungle fowl differ from a conventional grain—soy diet fed to chickens by being higher in protein, carotenoids and n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA).

The digestive tract that jungle fowl evolved reflects their varied diet and is not specialised for any specific food type (Klasing, 1998a). Jungle fowl lack the large caeca of herbivores, large lumen diameter and fast processing ability of frugivores, the short and efficient intestines of granivores and the robust proventriculus of insectivores and carnivores. Being generalists, they have guts that incorporate characteristics of each of these specialists without exaggerating any.
Again, variety, not grain-based. And special emphasis on insect availability.

And if you want to read up on your own on development and genetics:

http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1740-0929.2006.00336.x
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2052.2009.01974.x

This one operates on the traditional assumption of the red JF being the ancestor of all domesticated breeds without testing other JF, though being that the red JF is the only one that can successfully breed with all domesticated breeds, it might not be untrue:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2164-13-59

A different way of measuring genetic variation, DNA copy number variants. All CNVs compared to a red JF reference genome:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2164-14-398

This one uses the more traditional way of studying variations by SNPs. Counters the suggestion that S. American breeds were of Polynesian origins and instead shows research is consistent with the idea of European introduction:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/25463150

These two summarise the main body of research cited by other sources suggesting the red JF as the ancestor of all modern breeds:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2366370
http://www.jstor.org/stable/39389

 

[Chris09]

Again, variety, not grain-based. And special emphasis on insect availability.

One reread my posts;
What I said was, "The Jungle Fowl's diet consisted mostly of seeds, grains, meats and on occasion fruits/vegetables. These bird very seldom at vegetation like grasses"

Then I stated;
"Seeds and Grains made up the vast amount of there diet and I don't believe you said a thing about them, followed by small vertebrate, invertebrate and carrion. Fruits, vegetable and vegetation made up very little of there diet."

Now since I am referring to jungle fowl in general and not one type (red jungle fowl) my statements does still hold true, also when referring to a diet of a animal we go by weigh not volume of the item/s eaten.

Quote: These three links you post all mention seed and grains,

http://www.jstor.org/stable/1366199
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00071660701671336
http://198.170.104.138/pjbs/2000/1024-1026.pdf

And yes I have read the links your referring to before.
Now since we are way off track from the original topic, moldy fermented feed or fermented feed in general I will agree to disagree.

 

[LindaB220]

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.

Glad to have you. They quality of life is better.

 

[Dragonfly216]

 
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.

   Glad to have you.  They quality of life is better. 

I agree with Linda, their quality of life is better since the fermented feed makes the food more bioavailable to their gut, not mention making it more inhospitable to bad germs and cocci, plus making better quality eggs!

Welcome Theophila! Good to have a scientific mind to join in! I love seeing someone use research to prove points instead of just hearsay. Once someone has their mind made up, it's hard to make them see differently. I agree with the agree to disagree statement!

 

[chicknmania]

Well, I finally figured out how to get it right, and we've been giving them fermented feed, not all the time, but just a couple times a month. Most of them love it, though a few prefer regular feed. I have noticed that in addition to those benefits already mentioned, that it stimulates their appetite. they gobble up the fermented feed and then they're ready to start on regular feed or anything else that's around. I plan to try it the next time we have a sick chicken..hopefully there won't be any more sick ones, but jic. I also noticed that what seems to work best for fermenting for us is Purina Flock Raiser, especially fresh right out of the bag. It puffs up like a loaf of bread!