In case you haven't noticed, I am very phytic acid aware. If I'm going to be feeding a whole grain or a legume to my family, you can bet it's going to be soaked for a minimum of eight hours before I start cooking or baking. This is because I want my family to receive the full benefit of the good food I'm cooking, and phytic acid is an antinutrient that latches onto minerals in your diet and carries them right out the back door. It doesn't matter how much magnesium you eat if it all ends up in the toilet, and that's exactly what happens when you consume whole seeds, grains or legumes that haven't been soaked.
So when I look at the bags of pelleted grain or ground, dry "mash" that people feed to their animals, I have to wonder: why would I feed uncooked, unsoaked, unaltered grain to my animals when I wouldn't feed them to my family? Beyond my desire to take good care of my animals, I'm paying for their feed, and if they aren't absorbing all the nutrition from their feed then at least a portion of my money is going in one end and out the other. And preventing just that sort of waste is exactly what this blog is all about.
The main focus of this article is going to be on two homestead regulars who are particularly susceptible to feed related waste: poultry and pigs. Both lack an internal fermentation system (which cows, goats and sheep all have); both are relied on heavily for the food they produce; and both can produce their food with much less waste at both the front and back end if their mash is soaked before feeding.
To pellet, or not to pellet? Pellets and their related crumbles are considered the go-to high efficiency feed of choice for meat and egg producers alike. Compared to a dry mash, pellets are harder for chickens to wastefully scatter in their effort to fulfill their instinctive compulsion to scratch the ground before eating, and hold a similar advantage for the violent eating habits of pigs. Pellets also pack a few more Calories and a few more nutrients into a given tablespoon of feed, again, compared to dry mash, so if you are limiting your choices to dry pellets or dry mash you're almost certainly better off with the dry pellets even if they cost a little more. (Mash also becomes airborne easily and can lead to respiratory problems if fed dry).
However.
Another option is to soak your mash for several hours before feeding. How does that stack up compared to pellets? Here's what we've found:
Chickens, as before mentioned, are gonna scratch. And hogs can't leave anything alone; their dishes are constantly jostled and trod upon throughout their feeding each day. In our experience, however, the weight and viscosity of water soaked mash makes it even more difficult for the animals to disperse it into the surrounding grass or soil than the pellets; in short, it tends to stay put in the dish even despite the determined ministrations of several rowdy eaters.
It should also be noted that the feed gains volume in soaking--possibly as much as doubling in bulk depending on how long you soak and how much water you add--and it will take less feed to fill your animals' bellies. And before you get worried that they'll feel satiated and therefore not grow as fast because they won't consume as many calories, just keep reading, because...
Ever found chicken or hog droppings on the sole of your shoe? Ever notice a grainy texture to those droppings? If so, it might come as a surprise that this grainy texture is, in fact, caused by grain. That's right, the very grain that you fed your animals is right there, on that napkin, mixed in with the very stinky poo that was stuck to your shoe. It didn't get soaked adequately in the crop or stomach, so it didn't get absorbed properly in the small intestine. If you really, really, really wanted to you could wash off the fecal material, save the grain in a cloth, and feed it to your chickens again. (Don't. No, don't. Just throw it on the compost pile.) A much better solution is to grab a bucket, put your mash (or pellets) in said bucket, and add water (2:1 proportion of grain:water.) Let it soak, and tomorrow feed your hens and/or hogs properly soaked grains. We've found that the texture of their stool is smoother and that, over all, we're feeding less volume because the critters are utilizing their feed more thoroughly. That's a welcome relief for our bottom line, and we're also relieved that rodents can no longer live on the contents of our livestock's excrement.
Depending on your management practices, keeping chickens and pigs watered might be more or less of an issue for you than it is for us. We here in upstate NY haven't found a great way to provide unfrozen water for our bristly and feathered friends in freezing weather, so anything we can do to help them stay hydrated when water unavoidably becomes scarce is a major plus. So when we look at dry mash or pellets, we immediately see it for what it is: dry mouth waiting to happen.
One way or another, that mash needs to get hydrated before it's going to go through the chicken's crop into the gizzard, and the same goes for the hog needing to pass mash from his stomach into his small intestine. So you can add the water 8 hours in advance, ensuring proper digestion from the get go, or you can fight to keep adequate clear water in front of the animals every time they choose to eat their parched feed throughout the day. In our case, at least, it's way easier to get part of their hydration into them in the convenient, tasty vehicle of soaked mash. (on the coldest days we don't leave the chickens with feed in front of them all day, because it would freeze; we give them their feed, let them fill their crops, then remove it and bring it back at, say, noon and just before dark--a more natural way for them to eat than free choice grazing.)
There are other considerations before switching to soaked feeds. The high volume free choice feeders won't work at all for this purpose, so if you're accustomed to not having to feed your hens or hogs for a few days at a time, you'll need to adjust your expectations; so far the only effective means we've found for feeding soaked mash is in a flat pan (or, in the pigs' case, even on bare dirt--they don't mind eating a little dirt and it prolongs to joy of feeding time for them). Your habits, too, will have to shift--the morning feeding will have to get mixed up the evening before, and the evening food should be mixed right after breakfast. (This really doesn't add extra time to your chore schedule once you're used to it, but adjusting can take a few weeks and sometimes you'll forget; even wetting the food right before serving at least somewhat improves digestibility and gives them some hydration.)
And there are other methods than mine that might certainly work as well or better. These folks soak their feed for three days in perforated buckets to get optimized bulk, zero phytic acid, and tons of probiotics; and this lady sprouts whole grains and legumes to make an optimized, fully organic fodder for her flock. Our system works for us and easily translates for hogs or hens, mitigating food waste but taking up a minimum of space and time; I strongly encourage every reader to research and find the best way for yourself.
So when I look at the bags of pelleted grain or ground, dry "mash" that people feed to their animals, I have to wonder: why would I feed uncooked, unsoaked, unaltered grain to my animals when I wouldn't feed them to my family? Beyond my desire to take good care of my animals, I'm paying for their feed, and if they aren't absorbing all the nutrition from their feed then at least a portion of my money is going in one end and out the other. And preventing just that sort of waste is exactly what this blog is all about.
The main focus of this article is going to be on two homestead regulars who are particularly susceptible to feed related waste: poultry and pigs. Both lack an internal fermentation system (which cows, goats and sheep all have); both are relied on heavily for the food they produce; and both can produce their food with much less waste at both the front and back end if their mash is soaked before feeding.
To pellet, or not to pellet? Pellets and their related crumbles are considered the go-to high efficiency feed of choice for meat and egg producers alike. Compared to a dry mash, pellets are harder for chickens to wastefully scatter in their effort to fulfill their instinctive compulsion to scratch the ground before eating, and hold a similar advantage for the violent eating habits of pigs. Pellets also pack a few more Calories and a few more nutrients into a given tablespoon of feed, again, compared to dry mash, so if you are limiting your choices to dry pellets or dry mash you're almost certainly better off with the dry pellets even if they cost a little more. (Mash also becomes airborne easily and can lead to respiratory problems if fed dry).
However.
Another option is to soak your mash for several hours before feeding. How does that stack up compared to pellets? Here's what we've found:
1. Soaked mash is even harder for chickens to waste than pellets.
Chickens, as before mentioned, are gonna scratch. And hogs can't leave anything alone; their dishes are constantly jostled and trod upon throughout their feeding each day. In our experience, however, the weight and viscosity of water soaked mash makes it even more difficult for the animals to disperse it into the surrounding grass or soil than the pellets; in short, it tends to stay put in the dish even despite the determined ministrations of several rowdy eaters.
It should also be noted that the feed gains volume in soaking--possibly as much as doubling in bulk depending on how long you soak and how much water you add--and it will take less feed to fill your animals' bellies. And before you get worried that they'll feel satiated and therefore not grow as fast because they won't consume as many calories, just keep reading, because...
2. Soaked mash digests more thoroughly than dry mash or pellets.
Ever found chicken or hog droppings on the sole of your shoe? Ever notice a grainy texture to those droppings? If so, it might come as a surprise that this grainy texture is, in fact, caused by grain. That's right, the very grain that you fed your animals is right there, on that napkin, mixed in with the very stinky poo that was stuck to your shoe. It didn't get soaked adequately in the crop or stomach, so it didn't get absorbed properly in the small intestine. If you really, really, really wanted to you could wash off the fecal material, save the grain in a cloth, and feed it to your chickens again. (Don't. No, don't. Just throw it on the compost pile.) A much better solution is to grab a bucket, put your mash (or pellets) in said bucket, and add water (2:1 proportion of grain:water.) Let it soak, and tomorrow feed your hens and/or hogs properly soaked grains. We've found that the texture of their stool is smoother and that, over all, we're feeding less volume because the critters are utilizing their feed more thoroughly. That's a welcome relief for our bottom line, and we're also relieved that rodents can no longer live on the contents of our livestock's excrement.
3. Unsoaked feed demands extra hydration.
Depending on your management practices, keeping chickens and pigs watered might be more or less of an issue for you than it is for us. We here in upstate NY haven't found a great way to provide unfrozen water for our bristly and feathered friends in freezing weather, so anything we can do to help them stay hydrated when water unavoidably becomes scarce is a major plus. So when we look at dry mash or pellets, we immediately see it for what it is: dry mouth waiting to happen.
One way or another, that mash needs to get hydrated before it's going to go through the chicken's crop into the gizzard, and the same goes for the hog needing to pass mash from his stomach into his small intestine. So you can add the water 8 hours in advance, ensuring proper digestion from the get go, or you can fight to keep adequate clear water in front of the animals every time they choose to eat their parched feed throughout the day. In our case, at least, it's way easier to get part of their hydration into them in the convenient, tasty vehicle of soaked mash. (on the coldest days we don't leave the chickens with feed in front of them all day, because it would freeze; we give them their feed, let them fill their crops, then remove it and bring it back at, say, noon and just before dark--a more natural way for them to eat than free choice grazing.)
There are other considerations before switching to soaked feeds. The high volume free choice feeders won't work at all for this purpose, so if you're accustomed to not having to feed your hens or hogs for a few days at a time, you'll need to adjust your expectations; so far the only effective means we've found for feeding soaked mash is in a flat pan (or, in the pigs' case, even on bare dirt--they don't mind eating a little dirt and it prolongs to joy of feeding time for them). Your habits, too, will have to shift--the morning feeding will have to get mixed up the evening before, and the evening food should be mixed right after breakfast. (This really doesn't add extra time to your chore schedule once you're used to it, but adjusting can take a few weeks and sometimes you'll forget; even wetting the food right before serving at least somewhat improves digestibility and gives them some hydration.)
And there are other methods than mine that might certainly work as well or better. These folks soak their feed for three days in perforated buckets to get optimized bulk, zero phytic acid, and tons of probiotics; and this lady sprouts whole grains and legumes to make an optimized, fully organic fodder for her flock. Our system works for us and easily translates for hogs or hens, mitigating food waste but taking up a minimum of space and time; I strongly encourage every reader to research and find the best way for yourself.
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