Just stumbled upon this little trick and had a d'uh moment. If fermenting our foods is as good for us as it is, it should prove to be as useful in our livestock.
- Increased surface area & water weight helps reduce amount of necessary feed.
- New nutrients from the fermentation process.
- Increased bioavailability & absorption
Gonna have to start doing this for my birds. 2 to 1 water to feed in distilled, well, or spring water. Loosely capped. Stir once a day for three days (24 hours at least). You want it to bubble and expand. Then strain water and either mix with dry feeds or feed straight.
Tried it. Super simple & birds love it. Pics exist, so it must have happened.
Blondie there is trying to hatch and theres no rooster around, so she's not happy with anything. But the turkens get down on it.
alogan wrote:
Just stumbled upon this little trick and had a d'uh moment. If fermenting our foods is as good for us as it is, it should prove to be as useful in our livestock.- Increased surface area & water weight helps reduce amount of necessary feed.
- New nutrients from the fermentation process.
- Increased bioavailability & absorption
Gonna have to start doing this for my birds. 2 to 1 water to feed in distilled, well, or spring water. Loosely capped. Stir once a day for three days (24 hours at least). You want it to bubble and expand. Then strain water and either mix with dry feeds or feed straight.
I did some fodder feeding for my chickens awhile back and wrote about it on my blog https://www.hartnana.com/fodder-feeding-system-backyard-chickens/ I just used buckets purchased at the dollar store. It fermented some of the seeds as well as sprouted them. My chickens loved it.
Aw I love the blog. Thank you for sharing that. I'll definitely be looking around there some more.
My system feels a bit primitive in comparison...as i just throw three days worth of feed mix in a bucket and strain n feed from there. Most liquid is absorbed by then and whatever isnt is dumped into a dish that they drink up. Then rinse, wash, repeat. But I do have a bunch of wheat, barely, and black sunflower seeds I'd like to sprout with the fodder system. Probably results in more bioavailability & greater nutrient load.
Alogan; I'm a super lazy farmer LOL the bucket system worked well for me and my six chickens It took about a week of throwing in seeds everyday to have a cycleable system. And I did it in my office. I think even soaking the seeds starts the life process and bumps up the nutrition a lot. I've done that with wheat then dried it and ground it to make bread.
Heyy very smart. I like that a lot. My uncles a farmer out here and gave me a ton of wheat that the old timers think is good enough as is, but man it just seems like some of the last stuff they want to eat. Only above cracked corn which is another old timer go to for bird feed. But I just really dont think gmo corn and dusty, hard wheat from two years ago is what they'd prefer to munch on or give them the healthiest diet for my sweet sweet eggs.
That being said, sprouting those grains (and ditching the gmo corn) could totally make an unviable resource beneficial again. 300% increase in vitamin A and 500% increase in vitamin C. Wowza!
