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  • From: EarthNSky <erthnsky AT bellsouth.net>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Oats
  • Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2008 08:34:13 -0500

This is good to know. Growing oats, even what I can't grind or hull,
will save me money. Eventually, I should probably get a Corona.
I like Carla's book. This is the first time information I needed has
been incorrect, at least according to both you and Rob. Thanks guys.

B

Clansgian AT wmconnect.com wrote:

Carla Emery says that chickens have to eat hulled oats. I have
no way
to hull them, and no money to get the hull-less variety. Is there
anything I can do without a grinder?

Most feed oats are not hulled, but rather crimped. As long as there
is even the slightest crack or breech in the hull, the groat can
absorb water and swell and split the hull. You still need the
equivalent of a grist mill to crimp them, I at least can't think of
another way of doing it. Set a Corona mill, for example, to very
coarse and run the oats through enough to crack or dislocate the
hull.

But this is mainly for horses. Horses don't chew their food very
thoroughly and so a lot of the oats escape being masticated and pass
right on through (where the chickens get them when they distribute
the horse apples over the pasture).

Although Carla Emory does say that, it isn't true. Almost nothing
can stand up to a gizzard. If you feed whole oats to chickens, you
will find no whole oats in the droppigs. Generally chickens wont eat
what they can't grind up. I fed some sunflower seeds to the chickens
and they ignored them. I roughly cracked them and presented them a
second time and they picked out the kernal and dropped the hulls.

The horse manure I get in on a regular basis is full of undigested
whole oats (oat seeds that escaped crimping and then escaped being
chewed). So much so that one of the main volunteer crops this spring
was oats. When the truck is parked full of this manure, before I'm
ready to put it on the gardens and hay fields, the chickens ransack
though it eating the oats.

James _______________________________________________ Homestead list
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