SOYBEANS!! Are my chickens lucky?

[patandchickens]

Well, if you're a hungry pheasant, especially if you are a hungry pheasant who has never studied nutrition and does not have the advantage of knowing what happens to tens of thousands of other hungry pheasants when fed this diet or that diet, I am sure that (raw) gleanings from a soybean field are pretty nifty

That does not make them the best idea to intentionally feed to your chickens, especially in any significant quantity.

Pretty much all beans have the trypsin inhibitor in different amounts; soybeans have more of it than most other beans. Cook 'em first.

Have fun,

Pat

 

[Attack Chicken]

So would boiling the beams work?if so how long?

 

[ams3651]

ok, I cant imagine cooking dried soybeans. Are we talking about fresh soybeans? Soybeans you are talking about are dried on dead plants being harvested. I dont know about the toxicity, I do know about soybean fields.

 

[digitS']

I'm no expert on this but soy is tested to determine if it reached the proper temperature during processing as feed. The rule of thumb suggested by greathorse as 180°F at a minimum should probably do it. In looking thru the info on poultry science sites, it looks like on either side of the boiling point of water is as hot as might be needed. And, the processors aren't allowing all that much time for cooking. Apparently, it is getting it up to that temperature that is most important. But rest assured, the soy in commercial feed is apparently all processed with heat, by one method or another.

We probably are not talking about toxicity with these antinutrients in the short-term. Part of the research on the processing of soy has been in comparing the weight gain of the chicks. The researchers are trying to determine what is BEST. Not whether it kills the birds or not.

That being said, in the long-term, a diet that promotes deficiencies is going to be physically harmful to an animal.

Steve

 

[skeeter]

i fed mine alot of soybeans last winter and spring,but i did boil them for awhile,I read where they needed to reach 175 degrees for poultry,I figured if the water was 212 the beans should be at least 175

 

[patandchickens]

We probably are not talking about toxicity with these antinutrients in the short-term

In soybeans, my reading suggests that is probably true. I just want to add, though, since we're on the general topic, that for beans with REALLY high concentrations of hemagglutanins -- most notably red kidney beans, but some others sometimes too -- acute poisoning apparently *can* be an issue. In humans as well as birds btw (it can take as few as half a dozen raw red kidney beans to make a child quite sick).

Pat​

 

[CarolMinnesota]

I cook soybeans in a crockpot overnight on low (for both human and chicken consumption). They do not get mushy soft like other beans, but the trypsin will be deactivated.

You can also soak them overnight and then cook in the oven at 350 F for an hour till they are dried out again. Add spices or maple syrup and they are a nice crunchy snack.

Carol in Minnesota

 

[tazcat70]

Quote:
I forgot to add the link, and I couldn't find it today.But here is another one.

http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/reprint/88/2/187.pdf

 

[digitS']

I was hoping that you would come back and post a link, Tonya

. I have been looking for things like that.

Quote:
Thanks Pat, it is just as easy to say that uncooked soybeans are toxic. It mostly has to do with what we mean by toxic. (It looks like these hemagglutanins would fit with any definition.) Some of the antinutrients are in a wide variety of foods and livestock feeds. Degrading some of them is just a matter of heating.

Extruding pellets or crumbles is a mechanical processing but it generates heat. The feed manufacturers deliberately control that heat so as to make their products less "toxic" and more digestible. Sometimes, heat sufficient for pasteurization is applied before extrusion. That serves 2 purposes.

The link Tonya provides shows that cooking is more important with young birds, at least with regards to using the protein. I'm getting to be an old bird . . . I wonder how this wasabi I put on my sushi is made less toxic

.

Steve

 

[truechick]

My neighbor plants soybeans in the field next to me. Will it hurt my chickens to eat the leftovers?
They are free range and the field is right behind their coop.