Hello all!
I am just starting with this whole chicken escapade. I own a brewery, and one of my major reasons for getting chickens is using my spent grain to make eggs. I did a quick search, and saw some weird comments about spent grain on this site. I wanted to clear some of these issues up, i may not know a lot about chickens, but I do know a lot about barley. 1st there is a lot of protein in this grain, a lot of carbs, simple sugars and complex sugars. I saw one post where someone would add sugar to spent grain to “let it ferment again,” there is no need for this. In fact I give my spent grain to farmers because I do not want it around, it will naturally ferment within fifteen hours or so and stink up. There is no need for this, there is a lot of nutrients left in this grain. I have been to the cow farm that gets my grains, these cows will often let the grain sit a day before they attack it. Almost like they enjoy a little buzz. They go at it though all at once, and go nuts when they smell the truck coming.
In a nutshell spent grain, is different kilned malted barley malts that have been put in a mash. This mash (through a hydrolytic process) activates natural enzymes on the husk of the grain to cut down long starch strains into as many simple sugars as possible. Though the majority of this sugar has been used to make wort (virgin beer) there is still a lot of sugar, protein and carbs left in this grain. As a brewer you should never, ever strip all sugar and color etc… from this grain. If this happens you bring a lot of different compound that make beer hazy, and bitter in a tannic way. As a matter of fact brewers avoid doing this so we constantly monitor our flow of wort coming from the mash, making sure it does not fall under 1.012 specific gravity. There is a lot of nutrients in spent grain I have a list of 10 farmers waiting to pick up my spent grain, they range from pigs, cattle, goats, chickens, sheep, and even dogs. The person helping me hatch my eggs went from 80 chickens to 180 off of spent grain.
Naturally I do not know much about chickens. From the little research I have done, it seems you cant just feed grain. But I just wanted to clear the air about spent grain. There is a lot left in this stuff, hence why big farmers hit us brewers up on a constant basis. If you live next to a brewery give it a try, then let me know what amount worked for you!
Cheers!
I am just starting with this whole chicken escapade. I own a brewery, and one of my major reasons for getting chickens is using my spent grain to make eggs. I did a quick search, and saw some weird comments about spent grain on this site. I wanted to clear some of these issues up, i may not know a lot about chickens, but I do know a lot about barley. 1st there is a lot of protein in this grain, a lot of carbs, simple sugars and complex sugars. I saw one post where someone would add sugar to spent grain to “let it ferment again,” there is no need for this. In fact I give my spent grain to farmers because I do not want it around, it will naturally ferment within fifteen hours or so and stink up. There is no need for this, there is a lot of nutrients left in this grain. I have been to the cow farm that gets my grains, these cows will often let the grain sit a day before they attack it. Almost like they enjoy a little buzz. They go at it though all at once, and go nuts when they smell the truck coming.
In a nutshell spent grain, is different kilned malted barley malts that have been put in a mash. This mash (through a hydrolytic process) activates natural enzymes on the husk of the grain to cut down long starch strains into as many simple sugars as possible. Though the majority of this sugar has been used to make wort (virgin beer) there is still a lot of sugar, protein and carbs left in this grain. As a brewer you should never, ever strip all sugar and color etc… from this grain. If this happens you bring a lot of different compound that make beer hazy, and bitter in a tannic way. As a matter of fact brewers avoid doing this so we constantly monitor our flow of wort coming from the mash, making sure it does not fall under 1.012 specific gravity. There is a lot of nutrients in spent grain I have a list of 10 farmers waiting to pick up my spent grain, they range from pigs, cattle, goats, chickens, sheep, and even dogs. The person helping me hatch my eggs went from 80 chickens to 180 off of spent grain.
Naturally I do not know much about chickens. From the little research I have done, it seems you cant just feed grain. But I just wanted to clear the air about spent grain. There is a lot left in this stuff, hence why big farmers hit us brewers up on a constant basis. If you live next to a brewery give it a try, then let me know what amount worked for you!
Cheers!
