Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Ladies-Eight]

Ex Batts good afternoon one and all!

Temperature is in the 70s with a high pollen count.

Have a great day!

 

[Shadrach]

At any rate, once I started rinsing the ferment liquor away before serving, they've been scoffing down everything with gusto.

I was going to ask if you rinsed the grains before serving.
How long are fermented and rinsed grains good for in a fridge?
The allotment lot ate the hemp seeds I did in a mix. Handy given hemp seeds complete protein profile. Fat is a bit variable on the various types.
There will be trouble if I find the Dig and Mow round the back of the coop trying to skin up with one of the leaves recently deposited.

Night storage heaters are very 1970s and though mornings were toasty, I still remember perishing cold early evenings with them.

Apparently at a certain age the more elderly of us are no longer safe around gas. All the flats are electric only. Me, being a bit of an electonics constructor is just as likely to do a "lets just see if this works" straight from the socket without putting a plug on it and electrocute myself.

I've been lucky. The flat is very warm. The windows face South apart from the kitchen window which faces East. I'm two floors up so lots of solar gain when the sun shines. All my outside walls are hot walls, not facing North or East.
There is a storage heater in the livng room and another in the bedroom. I haven't needed to put the bedroom one on in the last two winters. The storage heaters have some controls which allow one to charge them and release on fan and boost in the evenings. Rarely use that.

 

[Perris]

How long are fermented and rinsed grains good for in a fridge?

Can't help there I'm afraid; I have no idea. I rinse straight after straining and then serve. Why do you want to drain and store them in a fridge?

 

[tranquiliti]

I hear that the third cockerel and Han Solo, is doing well in his new home at another neighbors farm as well, with two hens who have accepted him. He will likely get eaten when he's 10-11 months old, but at least he is getting a chance to mate and further his genes with willing hens.

Modernizing Solo’s name changes his whole persona for me!

 

[Iluveggers]

Sunny day today, pulled some plants out of the garden, ladies had a great time! Family sat out & enjoyed the company for a bit, too.

 

[Shadrach]

Can't help there I'm afraid; I have no idea. I rinse straight after straining and then serve. Why do you want to drain and store them in a fridge?

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

 

[Perris]

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

So why not just take as much as you want daily and leave the rest in the liquor?

 

[Shadrach]

Dry and quite sunny after overnight rain.
It was a field workday today. Six people turned up which is astounding for the membership. They got quite a lot done between a bit yesterday and today. This whole committee and membership business seems to be paying off. If they did a day like today every month it would make a massive difference.

We got out onto the allotments for a couple of hours once the working lot left.
Henry and co went and dug over the next plot down which was dug over by humans yesterday; obviously didn't do a good enough job.

I carried on pulling rotten bits of pallet, posts, short planks and various branch offcuts out of the section two of us are working on and barrowed them to the wood pile. Found a mound of black plastic bags and earth once the brambles and weeds had been cut back.

Carbon was about the same today, maybe even a little more depressed looking than yesterday. She ate, pellets, supper I gave and forage and her crop was bulging at roost time.

Giving Henry his nightly stroke and crop check.

 

[Shadrach]

So why not just take as much as you want daily and leave the rest in the liquor?

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.

 

[Shadrach]

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.