Fermenting Feed for Meat Birds

[PeepsCA]

Great story and pics! I'll be anxious to see how you like it as you go along and see if you notice any other changes in your flock. Keep an eye on your egg yolks if you have eggs from your flocks...I'm interested if the yolk sizes change.

My Guineas have stopped laying for the season, so the only eggs I am collecting this time of year are from my little Coturnix Quail Hens, but since I am eating those little eggs (and maybe a half a dozen of the extra males soon) I'll be moving all of my Quail onto FF, ASAP. Their eggs are small, but I'd still be thrilled with an increase in the yolk size. I'm hoping to start a 2nd 2 bucket system tonight once it cools down a little using some of the water or slurry from the first set-up (and maybe a little more bread machine yeast) to get it going. The Quail food is expensive and they waste a lot of it... to the point I've considered just eating all of them, lol. I'd start them on the batch I already have going for the Guineas but it has sweet feed in it with large pieces of rolled corn plus rolled oats and I don't want to choke or impact all my Quail, lol. I think they will do fine on the game bird feed and scratch mix tho... I hope anyway.

Come next Spring I'll be collecting a lot of Guinea eggs (from 50+ Hens), quite a few will be for consumption but I will also be incubating so if the ferment will keep going thru the winter (and I don't get burned out on the extra work) my plan is to have most of my Guineas on FF well before they start laying. One of my flocks' coops is way down the hill tho so I probably will not be putting them on FF, and I'll be able to give a comparison with their eggs and the FF eggs. I'm interested to see if there will a keet size difference too, and if there are any hatching issues (or improvements) due to the difference.


Thanks again for this thread!

 

[Pozees]

I bought a bag of alfalfa pellets from the local feed store a couple of weeks ago, primarily to feed the local cottontails which keeps them away from the garden, but also to soak for the hens. The cottontails hate it, they prefer the pet store pellets (go figure) but if I soak it in water for about 30 minutes in the morning and give it to the hens for their morning snack they clean up almost all of it, and I gave them more than I intended as I did not fully appreciate how much it would swell

 

[mammaducky1]

Well, I received my second batch of meaties today. I ordered 60 birds this time instead of 50. My first birds (butchered the first of September), were started on FF at about 3 weeks of age (when I found this thread!). I was so pleased with the results that this second group will go FF the whole way.

These babies are hilarious. I placed the FF in the little tray and they loved it. I tried putting the divider lid on, to keep them from climbing into the tray, but they were so small they seemed to be having trouble getting to the feed, so I just took the top back off and let them jump on in. I actually found them wading through the feed and eating as fast as they could! I was a little concerned about them getting damp, but it did not seem to bother them at all. I will put the divider top back on in a couple of days when they have grown a little.

I plan on keeping better records of the amount of feed that I use with this batch and will keep you all abreast of the results.

This is so much fun!!!!!

 

[Lacy Blues]

Ive never heard of rehydrated grass pellets before. Have to check at the feed store. I know the hens like grass since they were chowing down on the grass clippings I threw in their tonight.
I took the bucket of alfalfa pellets I hydrated and stirred it around so it would dry out. I put the bucket in the run tonight since I am going away for the weekend. I am curious how much is gone by the time I get home Sunday. They do eat it when I put it in the FF so I am guessing they should it eat it plain as well? The hens arent picky by any means. Only thing they havent liked much is grapefruit so far

In my experience, you can't let wet alfalfa sit. It will spoil really really fast.

 

[Island Roo]

I thought I would share the results of the trial run of offering FF to my 5 month old Turkeys this AM. The pics speak for themselves, lol, they were scarfing it down so fast my poor old camera couldn't keep up to focus on their heads

FF Turkey dinner !!!
After tasting chicken fed FF, and reading this post my mind drooling over the thought of FF turkey.

 

[PeepsCA]

Quote: LOL... I can't eat these Turkeys, they are way too much like puppies with huge personalities. If I can switch these little piglets over to FF it will save me a LOT of feed tho, they eat like horses.

Seriously considering raising a few FF fed broad breasteds next Spring tho... (and raising them as meat birds/staying detached!)

 

[Lacy Blues]

Good luck with that!

 

[binders]

I thought I saw somewhere on this thread that the fermentation process brought on by baking yeast was different from the fermentation process that we want for the feed (lactic something). Don't understand all this but thought I'd mention it now for PeeopsCA in case you hadn't read that far into the thread. Will see if I can locate the post that talks about it.

 

[binders]

Found the post I was thinking about. It is Post #1761 on page 176. Here is the link https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/644300/fermenting-feed-for-meat-birds/1760

 

[PeepsCA]

I saw Bee say that the ACV w/Mother wasn't really needed, that the grains/feed would eventually ferment on their own gathering yeast from the open air... so I understood it that both (the yeast and the ACV w/Mother) were just used to jump start/continue the actual fermenting of the grains/feed, but maybe I am wrong since I have never done this before

If ACV is better to use and provides better nutritional benefits for my birds then I'll want to start a new batch and not use yeast any more (but I did/do not have any ACV w/Mother and wanted to see if my birds even liked fermented feed ASAP so I used what I had).