Spent grain

Squeaky McMurdo · #1 08/14/13, 10:42 AM

This subject has probably been beaten to death but does anyone use it for their milking does?

Have you ever fed it dry? I have a large dehydrater and time so I was planning on getting a couple 5 gallon buckets full and drying as much as I can before it goes bad.

o&itw · #2 08/14/13, 02:50 PM

It is great stuff, especially if you can purchase it dried. However the cost to dry it isn't worth it for most processers, so mostly one can only get it wet. The problem is that one usually has no idea how old it is when they get it, and it can sour quite rapidly. If one had hogs or chickens there would be nothing to worry about.... it is a bit dicey feeding it to anything else.

The reason it is such a great feed, is that all the starch and sugar has been removed. All that is left is complex carbohydrates and protein. Think of it like wheat bran or wheat shorts (middlings). Of course it is more likely corn or barley, but the concept still applies.

Squeaky McMurdo · #3 08/14/13, 06:52 PM

Well, I'm going to get it from a small brewing club that does their brewing on Saturdays, so I can get it right away.

Like I said, I have a rather large dehydrator so I could dry it myself. I might just start with 1 bucket and see how much I can dry in a day.

o&itw · #4 08/15/13, 06:41 AM

You might be able to spread it on a large screen. A cattle panel piece. or some 2 x 4 wire with window screen stretched over it on a couple of saw horses. If I remember correctly your humidity in Wyoming is fairly low. It might sun-dry pretty quickly. Don't know how fine it is, so you may need to put it on the lee side of a building so the wind can't catch it. I used to have some wood framed screens from an old house that I used for drying herbs, it worked fairly well, even though our humidity here is usually in the 85-90% range. If you have low humidity, I think it might work very well.

warnimct · #5 08/15/13, 08:46 AM

I would make a solar dehydrator with a bunch of screens as o&itw is talking about. If you want to do it often I would make shelves where you can slide the screens in and out, have it all enclosed, a fan at the bottom to blow in air or an exhaust fan at the top to keep air moving through the grains. I brew so I want to do this so that I'm not feeding my chickens 25-30 pounds of wet grain at one time

Squeaky McMurdo · #6 08/15/13, 10:55 AM

Not much humidity in Wyoming when it isn't raining and it was 95 the other day so sun-drying larger quantities might work. I sun dry grass by laying it out on a felt sheet on my deck and turning it with a rake whenever I think about it. It's usually dry within a day or two depending on the weather and if it rains I can fold the whole thing up and drag it inside.