KEFIR - who makes it, drinks it, and/or feeds it to their chickens? - Page 9

I think you absolutely can drink the kombucha. Also, when I owned a laser/aesthetics clinic, my aesthetician used to do a probiotic facial for patients suffering acne and rosacea. This was extremely effective. You can use lactobacillus capsules that you open up in water, yogurt, kefir or kombucha.
Just slather on your face, relax in a warm room for thirty minutes and rinse off. I think she usually followed with a mud mask for the acne patients to further absorb oil and toxins. Don't use an acid peel on the same day, as the probiotic ingredients are naturally acidic, especially if using yogurt or kefir, not sure about kombucha.

What kind of grain is used for kefir grains? I've always wondered this.
I give my excess sourdough to the dogs, they love raw sourdough. I make thich sourdough starter, so it's like a raw, sour cookie for them. I figure it's all good bacterias and yeast. When I start baking again in the fall, I may start giving some of it to the chickens, as well. I really don't get too much excess, since I don't use a liquid starter.

kefir grains are not grains at all!

This is from Dom's site:
This is to say that the grain part of the name can be considered as a misnomer. Kefir grains, or kefir granules if you wish, are in fact a natural-starter. The biological structure or each grain [which I feel can be referred to as a bio-matrix] is created through a dynamic association symbiosis between a vast mixture of friendly Lactic acid bacteria [LAB], vinegar-producing bacteria and yeasts strains.

A batch of kefir grains consist of many individual white to bone-coloured mostly self-enclosed bodies made up of a soft, gelatinous biological mass somewhat resembling cooked cauliflower rosettes. The complexity of the kefir grain is a mixture of protein, amino acids, lipids [fats] and soluble-polysaccharides. Kefiran a unique polysaccharide with many health-promoting virtues, is the major polysaccharide of kefir grains and is also found in kefir. The bacteria and yeasts not only create the bio-matrix structure, or the grains, the organisms are also harboured by the very structure that they create; abiding on the surface, and encapsulated within the grain itself <[The abode of the friendly microbe]>

http://users.sa.chariot.net.au/~dna/kefirpage.html#what-is-kefir

Hey Joe, sounds good.

Hello, any-every one, haven't been on here for quite some time; and it seems I am not a lone. My grains were producing soo much this summer and I couldn't give it away so I started keeping it in the fridge. seems to be working very well just slow enough for me to consume. Has any one else tried this? have been doing it for 3 or more months  now haven't noticed any harm to my grains.

I have been following this thread almost since it started--a lot of my questions have been answered, except one (unless I missed it): how do you know when your 'grains' are bad/need to be replaced? I am just about to get up the nerve to try my hand at this & experiment with flavorings. Not crazy about yogurt (except yoplait's whipped chocolate) & definitely tired of paying almost 70 per serving! And I don't care how old the thread is; something like this needs to be kept alive!

Hi tigerlilly, my grains are not quit a year old, they keep growing so I don't think they go bad. I have heard that if you freeze them they don't last as long. I am hoping refrigerating regularly doesn't hurt them.I may take some out and put them in a jar on the counter again now that it has cooled off. The grains grow fast left on the counter and i'm not sure how much and how often you can give to the hens. Maybe some one will check the thread and pipe in? If you haven't tried it yet I would be glad to send you some grains. Mine came from a BYCer in California and I am in Mi. so they travel well. I only have milk grains my water grains didn't do well.

They don't go off as long as they're regularly strained, shaken and put in new milk. I do mine once a day, but they ferment quicker as the grains grow, so it's best to take some of the grains out once every couple of weeks (give to chickens or give away/sell). A tablespoon of grains seems to work well on about three cups of milk.

Once there are too many grains for the amount of milk, the kefir ferments super quick and then it could possibly go off (because the little lovelies would eat up all the lactose, have nothing left to eat, and start to die). Perhaps a better way to put it is not so much going 'off' as having the wrong bugs take over from all the good ones.

The fridge is great to slow them down, but they don't seem to like being in there constantly. I put mine in for a week or so when I feel I've got too much or don't have time to do the whole straining/shaking thing.

Hope this helps, kefir is wonderful. Unfortunately it has the wrong calcium-phosphorus ratio for layer hens, but small amounts don't hurt and I'm sure do a lot of good.

Can you please explain the calcium-phosphorous ratio a little more.  I feed kefir to my birds and I just want to make sure I'm not giving them too much.

thank you, ...are the grains OK on a weekley bases for hens? Like once a week? I have 25 hens but it is hard to tell who is getting how much. I usually mix about a cup in some dry oat meal or feed. I haven't given them grains as I was afraid the bossier hens would get to much.I do love my kefir but only can drink so much and I can't convince any one else in my house hold to drink it/ DH was for a while but he stopped.   Have a great day