the sultan thread

[cluck-cluck]

Awww, they're so CUTE!!!!

I can't get on the youtube though address not understood it says

 

[cluck-cluck]

Is the one on the right side of my screen the full blooded sultan? Ach, he'll move before you see my note, but he has the biggest puffball head, LOL. So cute! Maybe he's a silky cross? Mine didn't have quite as much of a puffball head

Oh yes, I see black feet on him, he must be part Silkie ??

 

[Jharper]

She is that's my Roosters Fav. Hen then he has Diana the sultan hen.

 

[Jharper]

For those of you who were watching yes I did use a hand held vacuum cleaner. Black and Decker to be exact.

 

[cluck-cluck]

I didn't see that... What did you vacuum?

 

[Jharper]

The spilt feed when I was cleaning it out.

 

[cluck-cluck]

Ah, LOL.

Speaking of feed, and I don't know if I'm repeating myself, but I've been fermenting my bird's feed and they've been getting incredibly dirty, but now I'm using a colander to drain the feed better and so I can serve up dryer fermented feed that way. The birds are starting to look cleaner again! I'm happy, 'cause I do like them to look pretty, LOL.

 

[SilkiesForEver]

Ah, LOL.

Speaking of feed, and I don't know if I'm repeating myself, but I've been fermenting my bird's feed and they've been getting incredibly dirty, but now I'm using a colander to drain the feed better and so I can serve up dryer fermented feed that way. The birds are starting to look cleaner again! I'm happy, 'cause I do like them to look pretty, LOL.

How do you ferment your feed? I'm very interested in trying that. What feed do you ferment?

 

[hokankai]

There is a fermented feed thread in the Meat Bird area of the forum I believe.

 

[cluck-cluck]

Yes, there is a very good thread here but it's long........ and involved, so while you are going through it, in a quick overview, this is what I do:

I have 2 - 5 gal home depot buckets that I filled with a days worth of food each, filled with tepid water until the feed was well covered (feed sucks up the water, so you need to check on it and make sure there is an inch or so of water above the feed). Tepid water isn't warm enough to hurt the yeast, it's no warmer than our body temp. Then I added some apple cider vinegar, a bit of brown sugar and some bread yeast (actually Red Star yeast which is supposed to be rejected brewer's yeast as it didn't perform well enough in testing) to the mix. You don't need to add any of those things, it just helps get the mix going. Most people just use the apple cider vinegar with the mother in it to get it going.

So after a day of sitting in the kitchen, I feed out of one bucket (not optimal, but not bad for the chickens) and then, that evening, after I've fed out as much as I'm going to, I add more feed into the bucket and water, then let that sit until the day after tomorrow

The next day I use the second bucket, which got to ferment almost 2 days. I feed that one out and refill end of day to feed out the day after tomorrow.

Now I got my system going, and just continue it. I never have to restart the mix, because the water in the bucket (and leftover feed) is the starter for the next batch. When I feed the fermented feed out, I use a colander to strain the water out. I'm thinking of getting a third bucket to make this easier, LOL. Other people nest buckets into each other with the top one having holes drilled into it so it can drain. Before using the colander, I just used a spaghetti spoon that has tongs around the edge and holes for draining in the center because it scooped up the feed and drained it really well, but to get the feed much drier, a colander allows me to let it drip for half an hour to an hour before serving, which is much drier. My birds are no longer getting so messy.

It's late, I'm afraid I wrote this rambling... I hope I covered all the aspects of it. The thread will probably help you a lot more to understand, I just stupidly thought I could give you a quick overview but I can barely re-read what I wrote!