Spent Grains as Chicken Feed?

Hey all
Just wondering if anyone has had any success drying spent grains and storing them to use as poultry feed. Also if anyone has comparative nutritional information on different kinds of brews (wheat beer vs straight barley for example) in regards to animal feed that would be great.
Really any advice on the subject of grains as feed would be helpful.
Trying to work on yet another way to utilize the by products of our favorite weekend activity!

i'm not sure about drying it down, but it would make excellent chicken feed.

Probably be great as fiber for them... Not sure if there will be any (or how much) nutrition left in the grain, depending on how well you mash...

A lot of people make dog treats out of the spent grains... Some have made bread with them (myself included) but it's as a flavor element. If you want to add it to what you give the chickens, go for it... I just wouldn't substitute it for their normal feed.

I know my local brewery gives all of their spent grains to a local farmer for feed.

wow thanks for all the quick replies!
I know the mash process uses up most of the starches first, leaving a good amount of proteins intact. This is great for chickens and other livestock, though spent grains usually need to be supplemented with some sort of higher energy micronutrients.
I guess the real meat of what I'm asking is is people have ever successfully stored spent grains without a 5000 dollar tube dryer or acres and acres of direct sun...
Keep em comin though, this is great!

How much grain are we talking about? How often and how many chickens do you have? You could always vacuum pack bags of it and toss them into a freezer in a pinch... Unless you're talking about multiple sacks worth of grain a week, and you only have a handful of chickens...

I always feed my spent grain to the chickens....they love it. I don't dry it or anything, just throw it out like scratch and they love it. I also have to feed big piles to the goats and the sheep or they would break into the chicken pen to get at it. A friend of mine puts it out for deer in his backyard. He told me the deer now smell him brewing and wait out in his backyard...sure enough, when we were brewing at his house there was bunch of deer waiting across the creek for him to dump the grain. I'm not sure there is a ton of nutritional value left after you have washed the starch and sugar, but there must be enough left for them to enjoy it as a filler grain, and it still has some sweetness to it.

I dump out my mash tun, spread it out on a thin layer on my driveway and let it cool down over night. I bag it in gallon ziploc bags, freeze it, and give it to my friend who has cthree hickens and a turkey. They love it. It's not their sole feed, but they go crazy for it. I get fresh eggs in return.

A friend and i bolth bought chicks the same day. he fed his store bought feed ,i fed mine dried brewin waste with the store bought feed. the chicks are about three weeks old and there is allredy a big differance mine fed on brew waste are noticably larger than his, there fethers are fuller and they just look better all around. i highly recomend it although when they are young you dont want it to be their entire diet. at least thats what the breader said.

I feed mine my spent grains all the time. I even have guys in my club giving me their spent grains for the chickens. In return they get some eggs.

@Golddiggie: I'm trying to figure a way I can pick up a large amount of grain from a local brewery and have it dried and ready for feed so it'll keep. So, beyond personally produced byproduct. I'm really trying to get it to the point where I can pick up a large batch and dry it for storage once a month or so.
Not sure how viable of an option it really is, but I bet there are some solar grain dryer designs out there that can be adapted for backyard brewers size....
Thanks again!

@sanch: So you dried it down? howd this go?

I would just use it as justification for brewing at least 10 gallon batches every weekend...

"Better brew again, the chickens are giving me the evil eye."

Make a BIG barley wine and they'll probably love you for life... :rockin:

I dump my grains in the chicken yard right after mashing. When it cools they scratch and eat all of the grain pieces but leave all of the husks behind. They LOVE it.

I dumped wet grains in the backyard once as an experiment to see if the birds would eat it but I don't think they did. The pile of grains just sat there for weeks until the lawn mower finally did away with it. Maybe I should have dried the grains first?

I oven dried two batches of specialty grains & gave them to a coworker for his chickens. He said they didn't seem particularly interested in them.

My chickens love spent grains, I do like others have mentioned and freeze most of it in gallon bags and defrost as needed. The birds come running like crazy to eat it up. Never dried it though, seems like a lot of work for what it is. When my freezer is full I just toss extra to them in the yard on brew day.

chickenandbeer said:

Hey all
Just wondering if anyone has had any success drying spent grains and storing them to use as poultry feed. Also if anyone has comparative nutritional information on different kinds of brews (wheat beer vs straight barley for example) in regards to animal feed that would be great.
Really any advice on the subject of grains as feed would be helpful.
Trying to work on yet another way to utilize the by products of our favorite weekend activity!

Click to expand...

1) It is great chicken or lovestock feed.There is still a lot of protein and fiber there.

2) Large regional and craft breweries often contract sell or donate their spent grains to local livestock operations.

3) I have no idea what the actual breakdown of the remaining nutritional content is.

My chickens love the grains. I just let them cool down. For 10 chickens, it takes me 2-3 days to get rid of grains from a 5 gal batch. I was told to spread it out over time.

Mike Rowe was with an Alaskan vet on Dirty Jobs a while back checking up on an old bull moose who's teeth had gone bad. The farmer said they switched him over to beer mash because it was softer and the vet said it was good. my in-laws asked for my spent grains for thier hogs & chickens, and the local brewery gets rid of theirs to local cattle farmers, so I'd say they're fine for livestock.

I remember the Bowman distillery used to put their spent grain out to feed cows.

AB sells their spent grains for cattle feed. On the tour they said that AB provides 10% of cattle feed in the US with their spent grains.

cfrazier77 said:

AB sells their spent grains for cattle feed. On the tour they said that AB provides 10% of cattle feed in the US with their spent grains.

Click to expand...

Well, that explains "Mad cow disease"...

Beau's brewery in Ontario not only sells there spent grains to a local pig farmer but they also sell the trub/yeast cake to them as well. The hogs go wild for it. The one thing they did learn was to water down the tub/yeast cake a bit or the hog got a little tipsy!!

My stepdaughter wants to make a bird feeder out of an old milk carton, and I told her that we could throw in some spent grains. Not sure how many birds it will attract, but it is worth a shot.

Yeah that's interesting. I have a small dairy farm nearby I'm gonna ask if they would be interested in my beer mash.