Chicken Scratch Cornbread and Oatmeal from 50lb bag of Horse Oat Berries

I have 18 or 20 domestic ducks on a pond and have tried all kinds of feed for them.
I thought for a while that purchasing chicken scratch at the feed store would be highly nutritious based on all the different grains
and with different brands of chicken scratch I could get different grains.  Many sounded kind of exotic since we dont normally see them
in grocery stores.    The problem with making cornbread was that all the grains are " cracked instead of ground with the pieces way too big to
make  a batter with.   I tried both a blender and an actual grain grinder.  I dont like corn muffins made with powdery cornmeal  and prefer
a more coarse cornbread so the food processor worked great.   I just followed the normal cornbread recipe and it turned out great and you
could barely detect that it was not regular cornbread.  If things go  dark because of nuclear war  or I am really really cash challenged,  I want to
have a 50 pound bag of scratch as I think that is the biggest financial stretch I could make if I couldnt afford regular food.

Also,  I tried a bag of horse feed oats and what I got was a bag of oat berries which is the oat grain before the hull is removed.
Well the ducks would have nothing to do with these oat berries...    So I put some in the blender and ground until a coarse powder
and then boiled like regular oats until  a texture was reached like regular oatmeal  and it was not bad.  Now here is the bonus.  
Apparently the oat hulls are pure fiber  and can do wonders  for your... uh.... bathroom routine.   Funny thing I gave some to my mom
and she became addicted  after a few days and she was telling all her friends and she wanted more to give to them.   At that point I
referred to the  "wonder food" as Race-Horse-Oats  or my mom would kill me if she knew I was feeding her horse food.  

Anyways there is no way to get nearly as much nutrition at a grocery store for the price  so remember if you ever face a survival situation
that you can plan for.   Go to the FEED STORE instead  

PS, the  chicken scratch cornbread   cooked  in iron skiillet  in the oven was seriously good !

Some premium blenders have both wet- and dry-bladed cannisters. The wet ones have sharp blades -- similar to (but less so) the food processor. The dry blades have flat edges that pulverize instead of slice. If you use the dry blades on grain, it busts them up. The produce is less good than using a stone or burr grinder, but maybe it's acceptable. If you use the wet blades, you get similar results to a first approximation, but the blades are quickly worn to garbage. Same with the food processor blades. Unless you have a steady supply of free or very cheap food processors, I bet you're not saving money.

OTOH, if you were using a grinder, everything you said would be a great tip. Additionally, hand-crank grinders are quite normal while hand-crank food processors are pretty niche -- this is a concern if you're planning for the lights to go out.

That’s good you found a cheaper way to get nutrition! I like acorns too, and mostly all people want to do with them is to feed them to the pigs. They are very nutritious as well.

I would just make sure the feed is organic…

Christopher Weeks wrote:Some premium blenders have both wet- and dry-bladed cannisters. The wet ones have sharp blades -- similar to (but less so) the food processor. The dry blades have flat edges that pulverize instead of slice. If you use the dry blades on grain, it busts them up. The produce is less good than using a stone or burr grinder, but maybe it's acceptable. If you use the wet blades, you get similar results to a first approximation, but the blades are quickly worn to garbage. Same with the food processor blades. Unless you have a steady supply of free or very cheap food processors, I bet you're not saving money.

OTOH, if you were using a grinder, everything you said would be a great tip. Additionally, hand-crank grinders are quite normal while hand-crank food processors are pretty niche -- this is a concern if you're planning for the lights to go out.

I have only  ever used cheap blenders  and all of them had removable bottoms where you unscrew the bottom and take the rotating blades out etc.
on these blades, when you take them out you can sharpen them with a whetstone or fine steel file.   I always make sure the blades are razor sharp.
Also I must add it is vitally important that only about a third of the blender jar be filled up so that the grains will swirl and fly around.  If you fill the blender jar too full the grains will not uniformly mix as the grains on top will not be sucked to the bottom of the jar when blending.   You have to monitor closely when grinding so that you do not over-grind if you like moderately coarse cornbread instead of the "corn-cake" like corn muffins.

Tricky business. While I am inclined to think that much grain used as animal fodder would be passably safe for human consumption in hard times, there are risks.

Feed destined for animal use is not screened or handled with the same rigour as grain destined for human use.

For example, I grew up on a farm and we milled/ground most of the feed we grew, destined for for cattle and chickens. The rolling mill we used had a formidable set of magnets arranged as a deep grill, 1" apart and 4" deep. The amount of steel filings and chunks it caught were impressive. It had to be cleaned off after every job. Some of those sharp chunks, if ingested, were enough to survive the stomach and perforate the intestinal wall.

The other concerns are fungal contaminants and chemical traces/additives. Animals have a higher tolerance than humans, and accepted volumes and labelling requirements are very different for human food.

Personally I wouldn't automatically say no, but I'd be damned picky. My 2c.

How long will 100 lbs of animal feed last in terms of reliability?

Does it go bad in storage?

If also feeding to animal this might work ...

when i make nixtamalized corn masa, i buy it from the feed store!! it is the only place I can get whole corn kernels (that aren't popcorn). I figure whatever has happened to it, by the time it goes through my process it's fine. It does get carefully picked before washing and soaking (the same as we do for beans, any raw-state product like dry grain will probably have stones).