I get a fair amount of grain from local farmers. Some of it was spilled and I go shovel it up, some is payment for removing beaver. I just went and picked up about 500 lbs of barley and when I was by the grain bin unloading it, some chickens came over so I threw a hand full on the ground. The chickens ran over and would not touch it. I have noticed that some grain they will not hardly eat. It varies from one batch to the next, of even the same type grain. Any idea why? They use barley when trapping ducks with cannon nets. Barley stubble is often where the wild ducks geese and cranes feed.

I used to buy scratch at Tractor supply, part of the mix was barley and the chickens would not eat it either....

My guineas won't touch the Barley in the scratch grain mix either.

Barley, like soybeans, has some chemicals in it that are hard for chickens to digest. Cooking the barley, like you would soybeans, makes it better for chickens.

Keith

I read that raw soy beans have a poison in them. I have a couple hundred pounds of them too. I bake flock blocks for the chickens in the winter, when I don't mind having the oven going. A mix of grain, tallow, and eggs baked in a cake pan. They eat those up. I have over 1000 lbs of durum they won't eat unless it is baked too. I was hoping you would see the post KeithC.

Why not ferment the grain I hear that's good for chickens.

What I read said soybeans and lintels had to be cook for about any animal. It said nothing about fermenting. I started baking and making flock blocks to use up the soy beans and durum they would not eat. I make a 9x13 pan about two inches thick and it is gone in a half a day. I do often soak grain over night, but it is not fermented. I have heard they like grain fermented, but never tried it.

I know deer will eat soybeans in the field. If it was rolled, I wonder if they would take em.

I know deer eat them also. But I wonder how many. Here is what I read.
Feeding raw soybeans can have a detrimental effect on single-stomached animals. The reason for this is that they contain a trypsin inhibitor that prevents protein uptake. The beans also contain a protein called Soyin which, when raw, can be toxic. By heat-treating soybeans, these problems can be removed, leaving a high protein product.

There are probably two main reasons poultry does not eat barley well. 1. Barley has 6-7 times the fiber that corn or wheat have. 17% for barley 2 % for shell corn about the same for wheat. 2. There are chemicals in barley that many poultry species can not digrest because they don't have the enzmes to digest those components. So even if the do eat some they don't produce or grow as well as with other grains. Beef and pork on the other hand can benefit from some barley in the mix with corn.

Bryce

Thanks Bryce. It is something to me how many of the grains chickens don't do well on, and wild birds do.

I have friends who brew a lot of beer, and we give the spent grains from brewing to the chickens. They go nuts for them.

I was hoping for beer flavored eggs, but no such luck.

I buy scratch to feed the birds at my bird feeders. It has oats in the mix. The birds will eat everything except the oats.