I accidentally messed up with mixing my own chicken feed... and now I have a bunch of questions

[fisher39]

Thanks to this community as well as other sources, I had made a plan on how to give the exact right nutrition to my birds. I bought organic grains that I would mix myself, knew the exact amount to mix together, and how to prepare it. A month or later, I got my chickens and completely forgot about one thing: boiling/roasting the soybeans. Half of my chickens have been on whole grains with raw soybeans for a few weeks now (about 17 banties). Thankfully I just read up that it's not fatal, but I have a few questions for you all:

1. Can I roast/boil the soybeans for a few weeks at a time? I generally half-fill a 6 gallon bucket with the right mixture (which lasts maybe 2-3 weeks), so can I still take the same amount of soybeans, roast them, and add them into this mixture? Will they go bad during this time?

2. Instead of soaking overnight and boiling the next day (as it says here), can I just boil them inside a pressure cooker, which is much faster? How much water would I use in proportion to soybeans, and how long should I keep them in there for? Or an alternative question: how long would I need to boil the soybeans if I don't soak them overnight? I was thinking of roasting in an oven, but I read that they may not be baked through evenly.

3. What should I do with the current bucket of feed I have with the raw soybeans in it?

Thanks.

 

[WI FarmChick]

Not sure what you can do with your currently mixed up feed. how much did you mix. I know organic is expensive. If not much then can you pick out as many as you can?

But I would think pressure cooking would be darn close to boiling. just cook them for the recommended amount of time and you should be good.

Quote from the site you mentioned.
Keeping the soybeans at or above 180 degress F for 15 minutes destroys the trypsin. The best way to do this is by boiling.

Roasting the soy beans would hold a lot longer than boiled beans would.

 

[fisher39]

Thank you for replying.

Boiling/pressure cooker would be so much easier than roasting, but that same website lists that boiled soybeans have 17% protein, versus 37% for oven roasted =\ All the other instructions I see online say that even if roasting in the oven, they still need to be soaked the night before. I wonder if that affects the total protein content? It's a big pain in the butt to make 2-cup batches at once, and turn them after 15 minutes, then put another batch, etc etc.

What I may do is just boil them and have them have less protein content, and hope that free ranging will give them the rest of the protein that they need. Hopefully all the bugs will fill the gap.

Thanks for the info.

 

[WI FarmChick]

Thank you for replying.

Boiling/pressure cooker would be so much easier than roasting, but that same website lists that boiled soybeans have 17% protein, versus 37% for oven roasted =\ All the other instructions I see online say that even if roasting in the oven, they still need to be soaked the night before. I wonder if that affects the total protein content? It's a big pain in the butt to make 2-cup batches at once, and turn them after 15 minutes, then put another batch, etc etc.

What I may do is just boil them and have them have less protein content, and hope that free ranging will give them the rest of the protein that they need. Hopefully all the bugs will fill the gap.

Thanks for the info.

I would think soaking anything would leach out some nutrients to some degree. So yes it would effect the final product. IMO

Why do you have to roast 2 cups at a time?......... I would think you could roast a couple weeks worth and It would still be a good product...........No matter if you boil or roast the soy bean, It is no longer a living seed. (I know It has to be done) But couldn't you roast them in a big pot and stir often? Dry. Just a thought.