Scratch with webs and moth larvae OK to eat?

[BeardedChick]

Our local feed mill guy said the moths are from wheat and come in from the field, and it can happen to very fresh feed. He said they run wheat through the equipment, some of the moth eggs end getting into other feed, and voila, you have larvae and moths hatching in other feed (they end up in my horse oats). They ARE yucky, but I personally wouldn't worry about feeding them to my chickens. It's just extra protein.

Moldy feed is quite a different thing, I wouldn't feed moldy grain to any of my animals.

 

[seismic wonder2]

"If it's moldy, pitch it. If it's buggy, bake it."

Just spread the stuff on a shallow baking pan and bake it at 350 for about 25 min, stirring often DON"T LET IT BURN! keep it moving every 10 min or so stir it around.
That will kill the moth eggs.

The other thing is to freeze it for three days.
I freeze EVERY bag of flour I get from the store. The moths and larva are harmless but I don't need any extra protein.....

 

[Akane]

or freeze it. That's what we do with usual moth infested feed. Personally I don't think the odds of mycotoxin from having moths is all that much greater than just getting a bad bag of feed with mycotoxin in it. It was barely a mention on that site and having interned with a vet and dealing specifically with horses that developped moldy corn poisoning from mycotoxins along with taking nutrition classes from that vet I never heard of bug infestation by themselves being connected to mycotoxins. It was not a big enough issue to ever come up. Now if it got wet or anything then I wouldn't feed it for fear of mycotoxins. The only real connection I see is feed with bugs is usually stored improperly in the first place and that irregardless of the pests leads to possible mold. Just bugs in scratch though I'd probably have gone ahead and thrown it to them. The only real issue with bugs in the feed and omnivorous animals is that they use up the nutrition in the feed so if it were a bag of say layer feed then I'd have probably pitched it but with scratch the bugs probably add nearly as much nutrition as they take away.

I would absolutely not feed oats with bugs in it to my horses. Horses are strict herbivores and should not be getting the bug protein anyway. Then the nutritional value of the oats is lowered and the quality of the feed in the first place is questionable. If a feed mill frequently has bug issues with their feed they are not a good mill. They either are using low quality sources for their grains or not handling them properly to keep out and kill the pests. I would be going somewhere else asap and telling everyone else to never use that place.

 

[Buff Hooligans]

I have fed webby scratch-mix to my girls. But since then I buy smaller bags of sunflower seeds and use them up quicker to make sure whatever eggs might be present don't have time to hatch.