ok to feed spent grain from brewing beer

[slrose24]

Thanks everyone for all the info. Just got my first 2 5 gallon buckets of spent grain from a beer brewery thanks to one of my neighbors. (free is always nice) The girls (have six hens) loved it. I have since bagged it all and crammed it into the freezer. I did make a huge batch of dog cookies last night with it and both my dogs sat in front of the oven the entire time the cookies where baking. I'm thinking this is gonna last me for some time.

you have the recipe for those doggie cookies? do you refridgerate them after baking or are they shelf stable?

 

[Wonky Woods]

you have the recipe for those doggie cookies? do you refridgerate them after baking or are they shelf stable?

Dog Cookie recipe:
It was 4 cups of spent grain, 2 cups of wheat flour, 2 organic eggs, including the egg shells which I washed before adding to the mix and 1 cup of organic peanut butter. Mixed well in my kitchen aid mixer till the egg shells broke down to little pieces. Roll out small portions using a little flour to keep it from sticking to the counter and rolling pin. I used christmas cookie cutters and placed the dog cookies on cookie sheets (do not spray the cookie sheets). Baked at 350 for 30 mins then turned down the temp to 225 and bake for an additional 2 hours til dry. ( it will depend on how thin or thick you make the cookies as to when they are completely dry) I have them stored in an air lock container and they are nice and crunchy and the dogs love them. I was able to make 160 cookies, some small ones for my chihuahua and some larger ones for my Shiba Chow mix.

 

[Moorenagerie]

Hi folks,

Great thread!
I bunny trailed onto this thread while researching fodder systems and I'm wondering if feeding brewers grains has any advantage/disadvantage to setting up a fodder system. Here in Austin, TX I'm surrounded by craft breweries and if I can get free (or at least cheap ) stuff from the local brewers instead of buying grains/grasses for fodder (plus the DIY equipment cost) then that would be awesome. Any insight on fodder vs. spent brewers grains?

 

[Wonky Woods]

I'm up to my eyeballs in spent grain. I still have a freezer full. I only give it to the girls once or twice a week. I only have the six girls and one of the girls is not doing well so she doesn't really eat any of it ( She's been having seizures, seems to be a neurological disorder). I have been putting small amounts into my worm bin and the worms seem to love it. My neighbor just dropped off two more 5 gallons buckets of fresh spent grain tonight. I'm thinking I'm gonna spread it in the garden and the rest in the compost. Might contact a friend of mine who has chickens and see if she wants some.

 

[Beekissed]

What a blessing!!!! Should do your garden good and it's nice if you can share. I'd love to have a resource like that.

 

[StevesFarm]

I've been feeding spent grain from a local brewery whenever it's available in addition to commercial GMO free laying ration. The chickens clearly LOVE the wet mash and seem to eat it in preference to just about anything. I decided to run an experiment so see how much commercial ration it was displacing.

Test 1: For several days I fed just the commercial ration giving them as much as they wanted (ie filling their feeder with more than they would eat in a day and subtracting what was left at the end of the day). My 84 hens ate about 16 litres of commercial ration per day.

Test 2: For several days I fed commercial ration and spent beer mash, again giving them as much of each as they wanted. I was extremely surprised (and disappointed) by the results. My 84 hens at about 16 litres of beer mash AND 15 litres of commercial laying ration.

In other words, 16 litres of "free" beer mash displaced only 1 litre of commercial laying ration.

I've been considering possible explanations:

* Maybe the chickens LOVE the beer mash so much they ate twice as much food when the beer mash was available compared to what they normally would.

* Maybe during test 1, the chickens foraged more (they free range over a couple acres of grass pasture) preferring that to the commercial ration. So during test 2, the beer mash may have displace forage rather than commercial ration. While possible, this doesn't make a lot of sense to me. If the commercial laying ration was their least favourite, I would think they'd still forage in preference to that.

* Maybe the beer mash, in the quantities consumed (about 50/50 mash vs layer pellets), was affecting digestion and everything was going right through the chickens. In other words maybe they were pooping everything out without deriving much nutritional value or satisfying their hunger.

Can anyone think of any other possibilities or suggest which explanation might be most likely based on your experience? I'd like to do some further experimentation to determine the optimum amount of mash and commercial ration to feed. Any thoughts on how best to do that?

Thanks in advance.

 

[bobw189]

So I get 4-600 lbs per week from my local brewery, I have been tarp and fan drying some, feeding some strait from the bag, fermenting some and composting the rest. This is a great way to help keep your farm and your local brewery more sustainable. I do mix cracked corn into the fermenting grains, into the dry feed I mix well dried SBG, cracked corn, sweet feed, mineral suppliments, salt, DE and I free feed oyster shell. It's important to note that the SBG are not a complete feed for chickens, it lacks carbohydrates and sugars as well as a bunch of other stuff. Between adding some extra ingredients, I end up spending about $10 on 2-300 lbs of feed, my local non-gmo stuff was about $22 for 50lbs. I highly encourage you all to give this a try, if you have the space, dry as much as you can, if not check out the threads on fermenting feed and apply those principles to this, you can lower your feed cost, have happier healthier chickens and keep hundreds of pounds of waste out of landfills.

 

[RichnSteph]

If I had access to that much I'd build a 10'x4'x2'deep BSF bin and have natural larvae to feed my chickens all year round.

 

[Judy-n-Seth]

Spent grains are very high in protein and fiber and are very nutritious. They are highly digestible and are an excellent food source for chickens. However they are very perishable and can grow pathogens within hours ~ 24 hours if not dried. This includes botulism and others that can be fatal to chickens. Handled properly there is hardly anything that is more nutritious.

 

[cfgroen]

My pigs come running when they see me coming with the container I haul spent grain in. They go after it like it's candy, and I treat it as such, not a feed replacement but a treat. My laying hens, the ducks and the turkeys go nuts for it also! It took the turkeys eating it before the ducks would, they are leary of everything new to them. The Cornish X chickens for some reason can care less about it! I read where barley is not all that good for poultry, especially ducks because they do not digest the carbohydrates in barley well. However, after making wort most of the carbohydrates are changed and used up making it much more digestible for them and the protein is increased to the mid 20% or better along with increased fiber and other nutrients. Once again, I feed it as a treat to them.
I have not checked into it very much yet but I am wondering just how close to sprouted barley this would be as many of the same things are accomplished. The barley for brewing is first sprouted then malted. Something I need to investigate further.