Spent Grain What To Do With It ?

[crazyhorse]

My three chooks plow through 5kg of spent grain. Gotta be fast to beat the Labrador to it!

 

[drsmurto]

Do you chook feeders have issues with spent grain causing the chooks to be egg bound? I cant remember where I read it and perhaps it was 5kg for 2 chooks or some dumb **** like that....dunno. My dad breeds bantam chickens and if my spent grain kills one of them it will be equivalent to accidentally releasing his specially bred black canary when I was 4... he has never forgotten!

How many choocks do you have and how often do you brew? to get a feel for a healthy/safe grain to poultry ratio.

Thanks guys..........Bong

4 chooks, they demolish a 5kg batch in quick time. Double batches or double brewdays, still no issues.

You can spend a lot of money buying grain mixes for chooks rather than standard layers pellets.

I've also read that breeders/hobbyists give their chooks a monthly worming mash which is a mix of grains (barley, wheat, oats) with turmeric, garlic and chilli.

I've tried in the compost... too stinky. Smells like someone's layed a cable on your front step
I've tried in the garden... rotting carcass anyone?
I've tried offering to the next door neighbours chooks... no good, apparently they didn't go for it (I call ******** as i reckon she just didn't want it hanging around)

Now i just scoop it out into a couple of garbage bags and chuck it in the bin. If i had chooks of my own i'd probably feed to them, with an eye out for mice and rats.

No need to keep an eye out for mice when you've got chooks. My chooks eat mice. Saw the cats chasing a mouse across the backyard and it must have thought it was safe when it snuck through the chook fence only to be ripped to shreds by the chooks. Cats didn't look too impressed.

The next door neighbours have chooks too and all theirs line up along the fence watching my chooks eating the grain. Almost felt sorry enough to throw some over the fence. Almost.

 

[going down a hill]

You need a method of drying the grain, it's perfect for animal feed then as we only take the sugar but leave the protiens.



Might make the difference between getting rid of it for nothing or even a little cash recovery and paying to have it disposed of.





Some kind of tumble drying system. :unsure:

Tumble dry in a bag (tdiab)

 

[mfeighan]

make me want a couple of chooks

 

[Fodder]

No need to keep an eye out for mice when you've got chooks. My chooks eat mice. Saw the cats chasing a mouse across the backyard and it must have thought it was safe when it snuck through the chook fence only to be ripped to shreds by the chooks. Cats didn't look too impressed.

Mine are the same. Murderous little buggars when they want to be. I've removed a number of pigeon carcasses from their coop when the silly little 'rats with wings' get in there going for their feed and then are too stupid to find their way back out. Ended up having to put one out of its misery when I came home to find it half dead and not moving. Chooks where having a great old time though...its like some sort of blood sport for them.

 

[sim]

pity they wont knock the bush turkeys over.

 

[Kingbrownbrewing]

My 3 chooks know when I'm brewing and start carrying on like idiots and making all sorts of noises.

They wont settle down until I've dumped the grain for them to forage through.

10kg of warm grain in about an hour.

Fat little *******s.

3 eggs a day guaranteed since we bought them.

 

[seamad]

Just poured some beer for myself and my boatbuilder, chooks came bolting to me from out of the blue, must have recognized the smell from eatingbthe grain. Saw an interesting show on chooks on the abc recently. They have one eye always looking for food and the other switches from looking for predators and food, plus they see movement much faster than us, no wonder the lizards and bugs get munched.
Also trained them to find food under a particular shape (0 or X), so not that stupid.

 

[Yob]

pity they wont knock the bush turkeys over.

:icon_offtopic:

awww cmon, Colins are great



Pic from Chrissie... and yes he's been pulling quite well :lol:

 

[benno1973]

No need to keep an eye out for mice when you've got chooks. My chooks eat mice. Saw the cats chasing a mouse across the backyard and it must have thought it was safe when it snuck through the chook fence only to be ripped to shreds by the chooks. Cats didn't look too impressed.

Yep, same here. Whatever mice the cat doesn't eat, the chooks make short work of. If one of them gets a mouse she runs around and around the place with 7 other chickens chasing her, all trying to eat the mouse. I've never stayed to see how they get it past the beak, but a few minutes later and the mouse is gone.

 

[seamad]

Bought myself and my 5 yo boy nerf guns for xmas, worked well at first on the turkeys, now the feking things grab the bullets and bolt off with them, might need something biggeer

 

[Batz]

pity they wont knock the bush turkeys over.

I got something that does

 

[Doubleplugga]

i put mine in the compost bin at the moment. chooks will be coming next year. but compost bin=worms which =rich compost which = nice healthy hops. its a great cycle

 

[davo4772]

Dry it out nice. Put it in a bag. Give it to a mate and tell him the grain is excess to your needs. Then laugh at his pathetic 10% efficiency.

 

[Doubleplugga]

thats just plain evil. its like telling him to put it outside his open window and just let the breeze carry it through the house. beautiful used grain smell!!!!!

 

[ekul]

my next door neighbours chooks will knock over15kg of grain in a day! I had bout 10kg (i think) of grain i was trying to malt. It got a tiny bit of mould on it so i gave it to the chooks. They didn't want to know about it, which i thought was odd as it would have more goodness in it than spent grain. They each took one peck and then went to look for something else

 

[drtomc]

+1 to the chooks.
+1 to the chooks eating mice. Our mice have wised up - evolution at work. I have to catch them out of the compost bin with a bit of PVC pipe for the chooks. h34r:

 

[Murcluf]

Chooks

 

[Aces High]

Was cleaning up today and moved some green waste and found 3 rats hiding underneath, just next to me spent grain rich compost pile. They ran off as I was trying to whack them with a stick. Time to start throwing it in the bin me thinks

 

[HoppingMad]

Time flies. I think I posted on this thread 2 years back! (page 2)

I'm no longer black-bagging and binning mine. Now it's in the compost. The garbo actually left my bin behind on a couple of occasions after black bagging - possibly because my 20kg of spent grain (after I'd done a couple of double batches) was making the bin too heavy. Got desperate and wound up having to split and share it between other people's bins in seperate bags - a ridiculous situation to deal with on bin night. Way too much hassle plus not a great way to get along with people in your street :lol: .

Now reckon composting is the way to go. Hoping that with the grain decomposed in a sealed composting bin it will be less of a magnet for mice and critters once composted down. Time will tell on this.

Hopper.