expired yogurt?

[poultrycrazy]

Is giving the chickens yogurt that expired on febuary 16 ok?

 

[Dar]

my rule of thumb is...

If I would not eat it... I will not feed it to my chickens

 

[werttyy]

Probably. Anything is okay in small amounts.

 

[BrattishTaz]

Quote:
x2

 

[Judy]

If it was sealed it may be fine. Open it and look and smell. The expiration date is generally not the oldest a product can be used. If you would taste it, you can give it to your chickens. If it's bad it will smell bad and probably have off colored things growing in it. I've certainly eaten expired yogurt.

 

[GiddyMoon]

Expiration dates usually mean nothing. They were put there to put a sense of "safety" in the consumer after the producers got people to believe that they could only hang onto their food a short time..and then have to buy more. Yogurt is cultured milk that has to ferment and sit. in warmth. 90% of the time, you can ignore all expiration dates on a package. I agree with the other post, open it, smell it, taste it. Your tongue generally knows if it is bad becuase it should sting. I know there are things we cannot know by the sting...but point it, don't go by the date on the package.

 

[DaveBeaty]

It is my understanding that the older and funkier the yogurt, the better!

Since chickens are not mammals, they lack the enzyme lactase to digest milk sugar, or lactose. The bacteria that ferments milk into yogurt (lactobaccilus being the most famous) help convert that lactose into other carbohydrates. The funkier the yogurt, the more completely it can be digested by a chicken.

And the calcium content is great for eggshells.

 

[Tala]

Quote:
Ditto. The kind of yogurt that you get at WalMart like mainstream brands, they do tend to go bad, but they will smell funky and you will know it.
I had a jar of super-organic stuff in a glass jar, man I kept some of it around for over a year, expected it to be bad but I opened the jar just to see and it really looked/smelled ok. That's a bit extreme, but so long as the GOOD bacteria are in control the yogurt is still good. If the bad bacteria take over, it turns. Refrigeration only slows the bacteria growth (good and bad) it doesn't completely stop it.
I used to make my own buttermilk too, using some from the store as "starter" and putting a small amount into a gallon of new milk (it was specifically NOT homogenized and only regular pasteurized, NOT the ultra-pasteurized crap) and letting it set out overnight to allow the bacteria to grow a bit before putting it back in the fridge. I would repeat the process with a starter from my last gallon whenever I had to buy a fresh one. Also a good way of "saving" milk that is getting close to expiring. Like yogurt, it never really went bad, at least not for a LONG time (as milk goes anyway) I once threw out an empty in December, that was dated for the previous May, and it was still good.
Sour cream gets that same green fuzz that cheese does. We cut the green off the cheese and eat it anyway. I scrape the green off the sour cream and feed it to the dogs all the time. Chickens really aren't any more sensitive than dogs, ever seen them eat roadkill?? LOL