Best Grain Mill/Grinder for cracked grains?

[MysteryChicken]

What's exactly the purpose of cracking grains? Don't chickens normally eat the grains whole?
Even my broodies feed whole wheat to their 3 day olds and the chicks never had an issue.

@U_Stormcrow
Can probably explain it better then I can.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Cracking grains is why birds have crops and gizzards - to break thru the protective outer layer and get to the nutritionally dense inner contents.

But if your birds are both very small and very young such that they physically struggle to swallow certain grains, you can crack them into smaller pieces (i.e. cracked corn). If you are having problems with birds prefferencing some grains over others, cracking them into smaller pieces will help you to prevent that by making bits less recognizable and more uniform in size. If you are fermenting, cracking the grains speeds the ferment by allowing your yeast and/or bacteria to begin work without having to penetrate the protective seed coating (which exists, in large part, to keep them out!) first, as well as by increasing the surface area to volume ratio. If you, like I, serve your mash in an oatmeal-like consistency and use grains, not crumble....

In short, there are lots of different reasons to crack grains. and lots of reasons why many (most) don't need to do so [mostly, that its been done for them, in the production of crumble or pelletized feed]

Hope that helps some?

 

[Forestfarm]

I bought a couple $50 hand crank mills on Amazon and plan on using them for grinding down my whole grains a little smaller for chicks. I like that you can easily adjust the grind size.

 

[MichaelDJ]

I have a wonderf mill wth a motor like to make my own flour. It can process hard oily grains a day works great for chicken feed like whole corn, soy etc.