Sure hope a kombucha scoby doesn't kill 'em!

[joebryant]

I just now poured out the remainder of last week's kombucha to make room in the gallon jug for what's been getting ready for a week to replace it. While starting to make the new batch for next week, when I seperated the two scobies, I put the old scoby, symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast, on a plate and took it out to the chicks to see if they'd eat it. I'll let you know later if they ate it and if it killed them.

 

[MissPrissy]

Isn't it a fungus?

I don't think it would hurt them any more than kefir or yogurt.

 

[joebryant]

Quote:
It's bacteria and yeast; hopefully, it'll do the same as yogurt. Kombucha is a 2,000-year-old Chinese medicine that's used all over the world now, especially in third-world countries. It's "reputed" to be a cure for almost everything. Anne and I really believe in it. We drink a glass of it every day.

I just went out and checked to see if they'd eat it; they're wolfing it down. Using someone's suggestion of sprinkling some of their feed on the watermelon that I gave them to get them started eating it, it's working with the scoby.
BTW, kombu is Chinese for mushroom, and cha means tea

I'll know tomorrow whether I have eleven sick or dead or possibly the healthiest chickens in the territory.

 

[MissPrissy]

Mushrooms are a fungus. LOL Fungus tea.

 

[gumpsgirl]

Crossing my fingers for you that they'll just be the healthiest!

 

[joebryant]

Quote:
A scoby really does LOOK like a mushroom. We ferment ours in a two-gallon, one-foot-wide, glass, wide-mouth container. The "mushroom" was a foot in diameter and about 1/4 of an inch thick. It really tastes awful, and I'd NEVER eat one, but chickens...

 

[MissPrissy]

So you need a new mushroom thing every time you make 2 gallons?

 

[joebryant]

Quote:
Thanks! They'd better be, or Anne will kill ME.

 

[joebryant]

Quote:
Right, but we only make one gallon a week; that's all we drink. All it is is seven black tea teabags and two cups of sugar put in one gallon of boiling water, cooled and poured over the new scoby and two cups of the old kombucha as a starter. When it's ready to drink after seven days, the old scoby (the mother) has grown a new one on top of itself. If there's nobody who wants a start to give the mother to, we always throw the mother away.

 

[MissPrissy]

Send me a start! I have to try this!