Acorns

[dadsdeercamp]

I picked up about 10 pounds of acorns in the yard yesterday and I ground them with my old meat grinder and feed some to my chickens and boy did that make them go nuts. It was like throwing a bag of candy on the playground at a kinder garden. Is it ok to feed them a corns? do i need to grind them? Thanks all.

 

[galanie]

Yes, it's perfectly ok to feed them acorns. I have forgotten where I read about that. I don't think you'd have to grind them unless that's the only way they'll eat them. Of course, I'm sure you are just using it as a "treat" and not a full meal so any talk of causing an unbalanced diet wouldn't apply.

 

[dadsdeercamp]

Quote:
Picked up about 100 lbs. in about 15 min. just now to store for treats over the winter. I'm thinking about picking up the rest of the yard probably over a ton.

 

[pips&peeps]

Acorns can be toxic:

http://woodridge.wordpress.com/2010/10/07/acorns-toxic-feed-for-poultry/

 

[dadsdeercamp]

well i can feed the deer them.

 

[fiddlebanshee]

Well, if you go through the trouble of grinding them, could you not cook them to remove the tannin so it would be safe to feed to the chickens?

 

[dadsdeercamp]

how do you cook acorns?

 

[banks]

DadsDeerCamp........How did you pick up 100lbs of Acorns in 15 minutes?

 

[fiddlebanshee]

how do you cook acorns?

I have no idea but a quick google search resulted in a long list of pages. Two that seemed to have sensible instructions:

http://www.almanac.com/content/how-prepare-acorns-cooking-0
http://siouxme.com/acorn.html​

 

[debid]

Quote:
I'm guessing it wasn't one at a time by hand!

You should read the (single) source document for the link provided on the toxicity of tannins rather than the article itself... and even that report was sourced from someone else's thesis paper.