Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[MrsNorthie]

Went out to the run to feed the girls their evening meal (drizzling on and off all day, and very damp), and the whole yard smells like sardines! These things need a warning label! Heavy rain is predicted again for this evening, so fingers crossed.

@Perris and @Shadrach, you've read a lot of academic journal articles and so forth on poultry nutrition. I've been trying to figure out how much these three (12 weeks) want to eat, and I saw ~ 240 g for the total amount. I weighed the feed, and that came out to about 1 1/4 cup (~295 cc) per day. I fermented that much for three straight days, and it's WAY too much (no treats, other than the slivered almonds the other day and stinky fish today.)

Are there recommended feed weights for FERMENTED feeds which take into account the apparent extra nutritional availability provided by fermentation? Otherwise, all I can think of is that their whole-grain feed is literally more dense than commercial pellets, so less (by weight) needs to be fed. Or both. I know there are lots of "save money by fermenting feed!", but that's not my motivation.

Anyway, any research articles you might recommend about fermented foods and amounts needed per chicken that I could read? I can generally gnaw through most of them, as long as they have a reasonable abstract, discussion, and conclusion.

- I'm just fermenting what seems to work. This isn't keeping me up at night. But I'm a bit shocked.

@Perris has a great article about fermented feed: https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/wholesome-homemade-feed-2.79307/

 

[Shadrach]

Well she thinks she is the bees knees so I probably won’t share your comments with her!
That picture was late summer before her molt. She is darker now but also less pink. Don’t have a great picture but you can kind of see here that her chest got darker.
I honestly couldn’t care. She seems like a healthy happy little chicken with a good eye for wriggly things in the soil. She survived a hawk attack and I am just happy to have her still with me.
View attachment 4091872

Oh, I meant no insult tell her. CCLs are a bit of a big deal here in the West country. Cream Legbars without a crest were popular for a while but proved not as hardy as the created version I'm told. The place I got the hatching eggs from last year had some nice examples of CCLs.

 

[ChaosMom]

There are lots of articles on fermented feed on the internet but not much in the way of proper studies of chicken feed. Not really surprising because there are so many different feed mixes in use by those who make their own feed that it's almost impossible to get a meaningfull result.

What you may not be taking into account is feed nutrition for a given weight. Once fermented the feed takes on water and that's volume and the chicken eats relative to it's crop state, so they say. If say 30% of the feed is water a couple of studies say the chicken stops eating. There are complications but the point is if the volume of the feed is increased by the addition of water then in effect the chicken eats less of the feed because the water has filled a portion of their crop, if that makes sense.
What you may have done is compared their consumption of dry feed to the fermented feed (?) That's the important metric.
Anyway, I wrote an article that may explain better.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/ar...fluence-it-may-have-on-feeding-regimes.79124/

In most cases it doesn't bear much relevance to the majority of chicken keepers but I found the topic interesting. The links at the end are worth reading. The one thing that I found of particular interest is that chickens can choose to send food to their crop or straight to their proventriculous and on to their gizzard so crop contents will not give a true picture of what and how much a chicken has eaten.

Thanks, this is a good start. And yes, it's the consumption of dry feed vs. fermented that interests me. Supposedly fermentation makes more nutrients available and digestible. So I wondered how much of that was in play.

Re: the crop being filled more easily - their food is available except when they're locked in the coop at night. I'd have thought that if they were being cheated out of their full meal by the water, so to speak, they'd just go eat again or more frequently.

And the food routing options! That's great. That's right up there with hens rejecting sperm from an unwanted mate. Who knew these things were possible?!

 

[ChaosMom]

@Perris has a great article about fermented feed: https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/wholesome-homemade-feed-2.79307/

Thank you! In fact, I just re-read it a few hours ago, along with the original article.

Ultimately, I'd like to do this, if only to replace the corn and soy so prevalent in agricultural (and human) food. Whether it makes sense to take this on (it does involve a bit of fiddling, although not a ridiculous amount) for a tiny flock and at my age (did anyone see my car keys?) is the challenge.

But it's fun working through this in my over-heated little head.

 

[no fly zone]

Why is it that the time people choose to act up is the same time when one has least pateince for it!

Two hours today. No ranging pictures; human stuff got in the way and then I had to clean Henry up. He's got maggot worms. That's technically fly strike and it's happened in the last three days, or at least the worms have. There is no wound that I can see but his feathers are disgusting, caked in wet shite. Hopefully I got most of them. It's difficult on your own. Hopefully it's just the shite the maggots are in and there isn't a wound.
He looked very sick today. He's gone to roost with a damp arse. I had him on my lap for a good half an hour cleaning his arse and getting some rooster booster into him with a syringe. There's blood in his droppings now.
Not at all sure where we go from here in a positive direction.
Sylph flew up on to my lap a couple of times while I was tending to Henry.
I was at the field until 21.30 with a head torch on trying to get things done.

Mow is in a nestbox.
View attachment 4091877

Hopefully you got all of them. I know flystrike can go from not even noticeable to severe in the blink of an eye.

 

[JAMarlow]

I want to hug Henry, but I know he wouldn't appreciate it.

 

[ChaosMom]

Why is it that the time people choose to act up is the same time when one has least pateince for it!

Two hours today. No ranging pictures; human stuff got in the way and then I had to clean Henry up. He's got maggot worms. That's technically fly strike and it's happened in the last three days, or at least the worms have. There is no wound that I can see but his feathers are disgusting, caked in wet shite. Hopefully I got most of them. It's difficult on your own. Hopefully it's just the shite the maggots are in and there isn't a wound.
He looked very sick today. He's gone to roost with a damp arse. I had him on my lap for a good half an hour cleaning his arse and getting some rooster booster into him with a syringe. There's blood in his droppings now.
Not at all sure where we go from here in a positive direction.
Sylph flew up on to my lap a couple of times while I was tending to Henry.
I was at the field until 21.30 with a head torch on trying to get things done.

Mow is in a nestbox.
View attachment 4091877

No words. Poor Henry.

 

[Perris]

Are there recommended feed weights for FERMENTED feeds which take into account the apparent extra nutritional availability provided by fermentation? Otherwise, all I can think of is that their whole-grain feed is literally more dense than commercial pellets, so less (by weight) needs to be fed. Or both. I know there are lots of "save money by fermenting feed!", but that's not my motivation.

Anyway, any research articles you might recommend about fermented foods and amounts needed per chicken that I could read? I can generally gnaw through most of them, as long as they have a reasonable abstract, discussion, and conclusion.

I haven't found such; if you are interested, these are some of the papers that have most shaped my thinking on feed (besides the books on nutritional geometry, which I came to relatively late in my journey, but perhaps for that reason fell onto fertile ground):

http://dx.doi.org/10.3382/ps/pey191 (The foregut and its manipulation via feeding practices in the chicken)

http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/molecules25040927 (Impact of Fermentation on the Phenolic Compounds and Antioxidant Activity of Whole Cereal Grains: A Mini Review)

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psj.2022.101789 (Application of microbial analyses to feeds and potential implications for poultry nutrition)

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmet.2024.03.007 (Our extended microbiome: The human-relevant metabolites and biology of fermented foods)

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007114522003592 (Ergothioneine: an underrecognised dietary micronutrient required for healthy ageing?)

https://doi.org/10.3390/metabo12010063 (Yeast Protein as an Easily Accessible Food Source) [which usefully compares AA figures with wheat, egg and milk, amongst other things]

Apologies in advance to those for whom these papers will be completely indigestible

 

[Perris]

Why is it that the time people choose to act up is the same time when one has least pateince for it!

Two hours today. No ranging pictures; human stuff got in the way and then I had to clean Henry up. He's got maggot worms. That's technically fly strike and it's happened in the last three days, or at least the worms have. There is no wound that I can see but his feathers are disgusting, caked in wet shite. Hopefully I got most of them. It's difficult on your own. Hopefully it's just the shite the maggots are in and there isn't a wound.
He looked very sick today. He's gone to roost with a damp arse. I had him on my lap for a good half an hour cleaning his arse and getting some rooster booster into him with a syringe. There's blood in his droppings now.
Not at all sure where we go from here in a positive direction.
Sylph flew up on to my lap a couple of times while I was tending to Henry.
I was at the field until 21.30 with a head torch on trying to get things done.

Mow is in a nestbox.
View attachment 4091877

so sorry to read this. I think you are the only one who can really know what's best on a day-to-day basis.

 

[BDutch]

I'm adding more azaleas (and kalmia etc.) from other parts of the yard to that spot and hope that our girls can go yard-ranging there. I just worry about the chicken digging vs. shallow-rooted systems of this type of plant.

I added a few azaleas to our garden about 8 years ago. One died because we had a very hot and dry summer. Not bc of the chickens. The one that survived was near the water tap and got a little more water.
If you want to be sure the chickens dont disturb the roots , you can add a circle of HWC around it for the first year of lay a few strips of HWC around the stem to cover the disturbed soil.