Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[BDutch]

With dry feed the chicken gets more nutrition per gram or per volume than with fermented feed.

If dry grains and peas get soaked they take up water. You cant compare dry stuff with soaked stuff if you neglect the water which is not in the dry food. I came across this before when people claimed yoghurt has less proteins than chicken feed. If you remove the amount of water, there is more protein in yogurt.

 

[TropicalChickies]

Good grief, an awfull lot of lets just throw it all together and see what happens going on here.
One problem I think I'm seeing currently is not only is the nutritional profile for a given weight changing through the fermenting, so is the volume. The stuff I've been fermenting grows in volume by about 35%. That 35% is water basically.

Depending on the breed, the commercial concerns dealing with high production breeds recommend 100g to 150g of feed per bird per day. A chickens crop has volume limitations; they're all different but as I've mentioned before, I've estimated the volumes of a number of bulging crops and none that I've felt could hold even 100 grams of the mash/pellets and let alone the feremented feed.

With dry feed the chicken gets more nutrition per gram or per volume than with fermented feed. Does anyone think the advantages claimed of fermented feeds gives a 35% boost to the nutritional value?

The allotment lot if I'm there for three hours get two shots at eating whatever feed I take; one as soon as I get there and one just before roosting. What I need in this case is maximum nutrition and minimum volume.

My Light Sussex keeping friend limits his chickens morning feed which he says keeps them hungry enough to forage during the day. He finds his birds a bit lazy in this respect. They're a big breed and need the excercise.

However, a person who doesn't free range and feeds by a shedule rather than leaving feed out all day might find that the birds don't/cant eat enough in nutrients in the time and at the volume of the fermented feed.
For those who range their birds all day on larege areas with diverse vegitation this is unlikely to be a problem.

I'm trying out drying the fermented feed. The fermentation should have reduced the bioavailabilty problems and the drying will reduce the water content and I hope, the volume by a significant amount.

I'm hoping to produce a wholegrain feed with a similar profile to the low calcium commercial feeds.
I'm still waiting for a delivery of teff and spelt. I think teff may be too small a grain to be useful but a good quality wholegrain spelt can reach 18g of protein per 100g; 18% for those of you who don't do metric. What I have coming is advertized as 17%. I now can look at other grains or pulses that only need to have the right amino acid profile that gives the same protein per 100g or one percent more rather than looking for stuff 6% to 8%. This increase the possiblities a lot.

Yup, it's expensive. But, in theory, I can then add one other componant with a better lysine profile and have a complete balanced protein similar to a commercial feed. The best price I've found so far is forty one uk pounds for 20kg. Would one save the extra cost of the spelt by being able to spend less on the other componants needed to bring the protein content up and balanced?
Why does Shadrach keep banging on about commercial feeds when we're all on the feremented whole grains and pulses? Well, while the overall quality of what goes into commercial feed may leave a lot to be desired, the industry has done the math and the reasearch and has billions of chickens as evidence that chicken can survive and thrive on their feeds.

Wow. Thorough research and experimentation you are doing. I guess there are some advantages to the chickens free ranging on big land with varied vegetation thing (like I've got here) but when I'm hunting egg nests and looking for broodies hiding in jungle thickets, welp, there are the downsides (for me anyway

 

[Molpet]

And the first two are fluid ounces so a measure of volume not of weight.
I have never understood the need for fluid ounces as a measurement.

Scales get out of calibration
I don't think I have a kitchen scale. If I do it was inherited.
I do have a scale to weigh chickens though LOL

 

[Shadrach]

Not much above 2C at the allotments and it got colder as the afternoon wore on. It stayed dry. We all got out for three hours.

Carbon showing signs of discomfort. Her droppings were more solid than yesterday but still runny. Henry looks a bit like this in profile when the moulting is making him uncomfortable. Everyones droppings are of a similar colour now, including Carbon's. Dig has the largest colour range mainly because he forages away from the group a lot and tests out a lot of stuff.

Fret is putting on weight slowly now she eating more and giving less to Mow and Dig. Dig steals food from her beak and today was the first time I've seen Fret object.

 

[BDutch]

I must get some stickers made up that say natural selection will weed out the pre packed high fat and salt pre made UPF dinner you're about to buy and take them with me on my next supermarket shopping trip.

If you take the chickens with you to the super, I bet they go for toast with beans in tomato sauce and pork sausages for breakfast and a salami pizza for diner.

 

[fuzzi]

One year ago today, this holy terror of a bird broke out of a egg bought for twenty-five cents from a neighbor, one day before his only hatchmate.

View attachment 3693751
Baby Lucio, 1 yr ago

The two chicks, Paco and Lucio (named after the great Spanish flamenco guitarista Paco de Lucia), were raised by a feral broody foster mother named Cheri (after the lead singer of the seminal 1970s all-girl rock band The Runaways). Cheri rejected all offered food and raised them on a wild foraged diet. A fearsome fighter herself, she instilled her warrior spirit in the growing cockerels.

View attachment 3693753
Paco and Lucio warred with impressive acrobatic and flying skill. They didn't do much damage to each other, but put on a Kung Fu theatre worthy show.

Cheri heavily favored Paco. Strange, because Lucio resembled her much more in color and even comb type. At four months, when Paco began to crow, she protected Paco and bullied Lucio, even intervening in their battles to grab Lucio by the neck and toss him roughly aside.

Then, early one morning in March, Cheri quite abruptly died. Literally dropped dead during the morning feed. The despondent Paco wandered off. That same day, I found his body floating in a pond.

Leaving the suddenly orphaned five month old Lucio as the only male and eventual lord and master of his domain.

Long-legged, awkward and gawky, he was rejected by the younger hens at first, his only friend was Cleo, who treated him with a benign disinterest -- which was at least better than the outright disdain he received from the others.

Wanting to help this struggling youngster adjust, I introduced two pullets to the small tribe of four hens. 8 month old Rusty and 6 month old Dusty.

Rusty and Lucio immediately bonded and became inseparable. He treated for her all day long. The other hens gradually warmed to his attention. Cleo -- who up to that point had been the "acting rooster" took the budding cockerel under her wing and showed him how to inspect the coop at night before letting the others settle in.

View attachment 3693756
Lucio at 6 months old with his first crush, Rusty.

So a happy birthday wish to Lucio, now officially a rooster. And father of four healthy cockerels and one unknown so far.

You're not the easiest to handle, Lucio, with your belligerent moods and flying side kicks and two inch razor spurs. Definitely not a "good rooster for beginners" -- which is what I admittedly am. In fact, if you were a character in a movie, this is undoubtedly your signature scene.

And more than once I have lost my temper and imagined you simmering in a pot with some lovely herbs and vegetables. But you have taught me patience, and perseverance, and actually seem to be leaving your dreadful jerk phase behind as you mature.

Here's to you Lucio the Bad Mother&$#+!r you are. I won't try to change you, and I will always be wary of you, but I nurse a small hope that someday you will mellow the heck out.

Thank you for taking such stellar care of your hens. At that you truly excel. Because if you didn't, that failing would truly be your demise. I'll deal with your posturing, your flapping and psychopathic side-eye glowering -- as long as you remain generous, protective, and patient with your adoring wives. Here's to a hopefully calmer and less temperamental year.

View attachment 3693759
General Lucio the Terrible, guarding Patucha while she breakfasts.

Very nicely done, thank you.

 

[BDutch]

I'm trying out drying the fermented feed. The fermentation should have reduced the bioavailabilty problems and the drying will reduce the water content and I hope, the volume by a significant amount.

Arent you afraid the feed will go bad?

 

[BDutch]

Scales get out of calibration
I don't think I have a kitchen scale. If I do it was inherited.
I do have a scale to weigh chickens though LOL

I have a two-in-one scale. I use the kitchen scale to weigh my chickens.

tax Photo from the past. (Spring 2019 or 2020)

 

[fuzzi]

It took me many (many!) years of living here before I realized people had sets of measuring cups.
What a revelation!

I have my mother's set of Wearever teaspoons, and several sets of aluminum measuring cups for dry ingredients (1 cup, 1/2 cup, 1/3 cup, and 1/4 cup). I also have 4 Pyrex glass measuring cups (a 1 cup, 2 - 2 cups, and a 4 cup) for liquids. Those are also handy for warming up gravy and other liquids in the microwave, and I have used the 4 cup (quart) cup for making batter.

45 years ago the manufacturers of measuring cups started printing metric measurement lines on one side of the glass cups, the side that a right-handed person would use due to the location of the handle. I felt it was an attempt to push metric. But now the metric information is on the other side. Yay!


Tax:

Chickens enjoying turkey leftovers

 

[fuzzi]

Yes, we do have specific cups for measuring. I hardly cook, but I have all the gear, lol. Even though I haven't baked in years, I got hooked on the Great British Baking show. I was, wait, what? They're weighing the ingredients? Wow, who knew? Well you all, obviously. So, back to chickens, and cooking. I have never given my girls scrambled eggs. In my head, I guess I kind of felt that was my payment for caring for and loving them. Especially now when I am having to buy eggs! Today I thought, well I buy them tuna, mealworms, sunflower seeds etc, why shouldn't I give them a bought egg. So I scrambled one for them. It was well received.

You've got an older right-hand metric cup!