Does anyone here feed their chickens well soaked beet pulp pellets or shredded beet pulp? I feed it to my horses. I read an article about raising beets for your chickens, so I was just curious.
I’m not familiar with “beet pulp”. Hopefully someone else is. I assume it is just beets. When I eat beets from the garden or can them, I boil them until I can slip off the skins. The skins and any trimmings are fed to the chickens. Mine really enjoy them Two warnings though. First, the beets will color anything passing through the chickens’ systems red. The morning after I fed mine the beet skins I thought they were pooping pure blood when I first went down there. Nope, just the red dye from the beets. Like anything else, feed the beet pulp in moderation. I’m sure it is quite nutritious but their main feed provides a balanced diet and should be the majority of what they eat.
I think it was summer before last that I tried The Great Beet Pulp Experiment. Total failure. They mostly ignored it, except for the pullets, who were growing and ravenous enough to eat anything not nailed down, and that, too, if you want the truth. Otherwise, it was a big waste of a 50 pound sack of beet pulp. Even the deer turned up their noses at it. I ended up composting it all. And yes, i soaked it. Do not try that indoors! It expands and over-runs whatever container it's in. I put it in the shower stall because it was so scary! I had visions of it getting loose in the house! Come to find out, there's a viral pet house squirrel legend about it actually happening. Google it!
Beet pulp is the left over fibrous pulp from pressing the liquid out of the sugar beet. Beet pulp is high in fiber and really has no place in a chickens diet since chickens don't digest high fibrous food well.