Beekissed
Herd Master
I put mine in my mud room porch for the winter....it stays pretty cool in there but it still manages to ferment. Usually will still ferment around 50* and upwards.
Fermenting feed...
- Thread starter Nao57
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I put mine in my mud room porch for the winter....it stays pretty cool in there but it still manages to ferment. Usually will still ferment around 50* and upwards.
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- #12
So when I look at the guides its saying you strain the water out before giving it to the animals. But its almost day 3 and its become so soupy that when I try to measure it out to give to the animals I have no idea how much I'm giving because its so hard to separate water from the feed anymore.
Any suggestions on this part?
(I tried strainer a bit. But its still like a crap shoot, in telling if I'm giving enough.)
Any suggestions on this part?
(I tried strainer a bit. But its still like a crap shoot, in telling if I'm giving enough.)
Beekissed
Herd Master
Yeah....you don't actually have to strain the water out of it to feed if you get your measuring down right. I use layer mash~not pellets or crumbles~so my mix is one gal of dry feed to 2 gal of water, which gives me an end result like thick mortar consistency. Whatever you are feeding, you'll have to play with your water amounts until you get the end result that you desire so you won't have to deal with soupy feed.
Now, fermenting whole grains is a little more difficult, as they don't absorb as well as a cut grain will and take a bit longer to ferment, which requires you keep them pretty wet while doing so. When I first started out I had a two bucket system wherein the top bucket had tons of little holes, like a strainer, and I could just lift it out of the bottom bucket a bit(had a rope on the handle that clipped to the coop roof to keep it hanging)to strain out the liquids for a bit before dishing it out. That proved too fussy for me and I sooned learned to just mix the feed with less water and use a single bucket system.
Here's a vid from when I had a two bucket system I was feeding out to meat birds, but it pretty much shows how my feed looks right now while just using a one bucket, no straining method....just using less overall water to mix with the feed. And I also found since then that it doesn't require much stirring up at all...just initially to mix the feed with the water, but after that, I don't stir it...I just scrape down the sides of the bucket now and again as I feed it out and it gets stirred up a bit naturally when I scoop through it to feed.
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- Thread starter
- #14
If chickens need 4 ounces of food, and ducks need 6 ounces each per day.
Then... are you counting the water as part of that weight or taking the water as less than whole part of the measurement in calculating this?
Sorry, I'm working out the kinks and wanted to ask this.
I did want to report that so far your comments and help have made this possible. And it seems to be working. I am deeply appreciative.
Now I'm just trying to work out the kinks on how to calculate the measurements when a 1:1 or more weight has 50% water in it? What do you think?
Then... are you counting the water as part of that weight or taking the water as less than whole part of the measurement in calculating this?
Sorry, I'm working out the kinks and wanted to ask this.
I did want to report that so far your comments and help have made this possible. And it seems to be working. I am deeply appreciative.
Now I'm just trying to work out the kinks on how to calculate the measurements when a 1:1 or more weight has 50% water in it? What do you think?
Beekissed
Herd Master
I don't measure food given to chickens or ducks, as their needs change seasonally and sometimes even due to weather changes. I just feed once per day and notice how much is left over or if the trough looks like its been licked clean...then I adjust the next day's feeding accordingly.
I have found, though, that it seems as if I feed the same bulk amounts dry as I do wet and fermented in most cases, so if I fed 3/4 gal of feed dry and that satisfied their needs, it seems the same 3/4 gal wet feed did the same, though there is about half the actual feed grains in the wet portion than there is in the dry portion due to the addition of the water within the grains causing swelling of the feed.
So, in the end, go ahead and feed them the same amounts you did when you were feeding dry feed and see how it all turns out....same amount as in wt/cups/scoops, etc.
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- #16
Thanks very much.
It truly takes a lot of skills and applied thinking in agricultural sciences. Interesting!
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- #17
OK, new question popped up about fermented feed.
Let's say you have a group of ducks on one side; group A. And you have a group of ducks on the right side, group B. Now let's say they are all ducklings and you are all raising them this way. Now let's say you feed one group ONLY dry feed, and the other group ONLY wet feed. (Then time passes while continuing this way.)
I'm a bit curious if you think the ones on the fermented wet feed would mature faster than the others, and also lay faster than the others? (And I ask this since people say they get more health benefits from the fermented stuff...so if that's true then...)
Anyway curious what you think.
Let's say you have a group of ducks on one side; group A. And you have a group of ducks on the right side, group B. Now let's say they are all ducklings and you are all raising them this way. Now let's say you feed one group ONLY dry feed, and the other group ONLY wet feed. (Then time passes while continuing this way.)
I'm a bit curious if you think the ones on the fermented wet feed would mature faster than the others, and also lay faster than the others? (And I ask this since people say they get more health benefits from the fermented stuff...so if that's true then...)
Anyway curious what you think.
Beekissed
Herd Master
Sexual maturity and laying traits are genetic and they will likely mature and lay when their genetics for those traits kick in and not so much due to differences in nutrition.
When they say they get more health benefits from the FF, they mean more probiotics for better gut health, better immune system and better parasite resistance, then also more readily available nutrition that can be utilized more quickly than regular grain based feed which requires more energy to digest and even then doesn't digest fully in a monogastric animal. The fermentation process predigests the grains, making them require less energy for the animal to digest them and makes them more readily available to the animal on a cellular level.
Better health benefits won't make a breed or strain of poultry mature more quickly and reproduce earlier than other breeds....that's purely genetics.
Kusanar
Loving the herd life
Like Bee said, they may GROW faster and maybe even get larger as an adult than the others but they will still age the same rate and so hit sexual maturity the same time (roughly, they are animals and do have variations naturally).
Would be an interesting experiment to do. Maybe with 2 tractors of CX or something similar where you could expect them to be very similar birds genetically. Keep all factors exactly the same with the 2 groups, feed the exact same number of scoops of feed to both batches but feed 1 group dry feed and the other fermented feed (same feed for both, just 1 straight from the bag). Then keep track daily of how the birds acted (were they moving? sitting at the feeders?) and then make notes of weights and general health condition when they get to butcher age. I would guess that the FF birds would have more muscle, less fat, probably be a touch taller and heavier but maybe look a little thinner (due to muscle weighing more than fat) and be more active than the ones on the dry feed.
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- #20
Well a new question popped up.
Haha.
Amazing how so many things can come up.
If you do 3 buckets of feed fermenting with each day being a bucket and cycling them, then it would generally mean 1 bucket is a morning feed and an evening feed if you are feeding 2x a day.
So when I lug the buckets out to feed in the evening, I thought, hey I wonder if there would be any problem in leaving that bucket outside to have everything ready in the morning (which is cold), and to make it faster to do the morning feeding.
Is there any problem in doing this, with leaving the fermented bucket outside over night in winter? Or would it weaken the process somehow? (So to be clear, half this bucket got used for dinner. And then to save time, I thought I can leave it there and then just dump it in the morning, and then refill, and reset the bucket cycle.)
Haha.
Amazing how so many things can come up.
If you do 3 buckets of feed fermenting with each day being a bucket and cycling them, then it would generally mean 1 bucket is a morning feed and an evening feed if you are feeding 2x a day.
So when I lug the buckets out to feed in the evening, I thought, hey I wonder if there would be any problem in leaving that bucket outside to have everything ready in the morning (which is cold), and to make it faster to do the morning feeding.
Is there any problem in doing this, with leaving the fermented bucket outside over night in winter? Or would it weaken the process somehow? (So to be clear, half this bucket got used for dinner. And then to save time, I thought I can leave it there and then just dump it in the morning, and then refill, and reset the bucket cycle.)
