Brewers yeast and spent malt for pigs?

Hi,

Just made a deal with a local micro brewery to take spent malt and yeast.

The grain i understand is fine as is.

The yeast will be sloppy.

A quick research suggests it's dodgy to give to lactating sows as it may affect the piglets.

Other sources suggest adding it to general feed at up to 5%

Another source indicated it may give a poor meat texture (flabby)

Any experience with this or other sources you may have folks?

Thanks

Tim

Do you have any chickens who could get the brewers yeast?

Mountain Krauss wrote:Do you have any chickens who could get the brewers yeast?

Actually, I'd think ducks would be a better option for the Brewer's Yeast...ducks need more niacin than chickens do and BY is full of niacin...

Also, is it possible to dehydrate it so it will store longer?

(If you haven't already, check feedipedia....)

I have ducks and was considering them too.

Yes feedpedia is a good guide.

How to dehydrate? It is very damp below the keyline on my property and that's where my roads and buildings are. And we are approaching the wet autumn and winter season. I will get a regular supply all things being well so I should just take what I can use rather than create a processing a storage problem. Although the brewery has to pay to dump the yeast so it would help them if I can take as much as possible.

I could boil off the liquid in a large metal water tank would the heat affect nutrition? or mitigate any potential nasty in the yeast?

Tim Wells wrote:I have ducks and was considering them too.

Yes feedpedia is a good guide.

How to dehydrate? It is very damp below the keyline on my property and that's where my roads and buildings are. And we are approaching the wet autumn and winter season. I will get a regular supply all things being well so I should just take what I can use rather than create a processing a storage problem. Although the brewery has to pay to dump the yeast so it would help them if I can take as much as possible.

I could boil off the liquid in a large metal water tank would the heat affect nutrition? or mitigate any potential nasty in the yeast?

I was going to say "don't boil" because it would kill off the beneficial microbes but then isn't the brewing processing heated? If so, then heating won't change the nutritional benefits further but it could become a drain on energy to try to dry it. So, how to make use of it as it...

Ducks, as already mentioned...
Dogs also benefit from BY supplementation
Compost piles and/or general soil amendment....
horses
goats?
meat rabbits

If you can give your animals access to your compost pile(s), you can just dump it all in your compost pile. They'll take what they want from it, and whatever they don't eat will go to work breaking down organic matter.

The wort is boiled then cooled to yeast temperature 15-18 celcius, so the yeast will have been mostly exhausted but still some activity with lots of their waste product from their fermentation

Im sure Sepp Holzter would agree that the pigs would take what they needed and not over indulge if it was bad for them, just as he doesnt remove "poisonous forage".

But...the feedpedia suggests up to 5% of feed only and that this could replace 80% of protein in the diet.

Will sun drying also halt any activity? activity needs temp , moisture and food. Or is the heat going to kill the goodies that will reactivate in the gut from their dehydrared slumber?

I think I will take all I can transport and dump it in a container and sun dry where possible experimenting on my boar and ducks initially.

I've been toying around with feeding spent brewers grains to my hogs this fall, as my GMO-free feed is expensive and the spent brewers grain is free.

They didn't do more than nibble at it, until I let their purchased ration feeder go empty. After that, they would really go after it when I dropped a fresh load on the ground for them. I also did this while they had access to a lot of acorns, hickories, grass, and persimmons. So they had other options in the way of high-carb and fat feeds.

All that to say, they don't prefer it, it doesn't have as much of what finishing pigs need most (carbs), and may cause slower growth. But it is a free "waste" stream that you're bringing onto your land to improve your fertility, your bottom line, and your resilience. -If you're paying for it, think about what the brewer would be doing if he didn't have you to take care of his waste disposal, and bargain with that chip.

In my limited experience, it had not ill-effects on the eating quality. The pork was lauded as "best I ever had" from customers who's pigs were fed no beer mash, to the ones who got 2 months of mostly beer mash and forage -Acorns cover a multitude of sins.

I look forward to feeding it to younger pigs (they have higher protein requirements) next spring, and also am thinking of mixing it with non-GMO corn in portable troughs, or offering it every morning, and offering a more balanced ration every afternoon (sounds like work though).

We feed 1.5 tons of spent brewing grains (sbg) per week to our animals. Pigs eat about half of that.

Last year we tried to carry them through the winter on 75% sbg and 25% corn. It was a mistake. Growth rates were slow and we lost smaller ones. Cheap though.

After investigation of amino acid profiles, protein/carb percentages, and most importantly maximum fiber intake, we have a system which is working very well.

Basically sbg is 30% protein (and fairly balanced at that, though, like all plant foods lysine deficient) and 70% fiber. It can be included in a pigs diet up to how much fiber they can handle (which is a growth curve not a ceiling of course).

Traditional pig diets have recommended against feeding too much fat to pigs, because of its negative effects on the quality of pig fat (too soft, I think), but fat and fiber stand in a relationship. More of one demands more of the other. So we have balanced our sbg with things like flax seed (expensive, but good amino profile) and sunflower seed (cheap) as well as corn.

Our goal has been to maximize useful sbg uptake. Partly this is an age thing, so we have a creep feeder with a 1/9th sbg ration (because everybody needs some fiber and it might as well come from sbg instead of oats) and a regular feeder with 1/4 sbg. But these are dry weight rations. Our actual wet feed ratios (sbg are 35% dryweight) are 1/7 and 1/2 So we mix the main ratio 1/2 and 1/2 with sbg, and the larger pigs and breeding stock thrive on it. No lactation problems.

Sbg is great for cheapening pig ration. It should be the first feed of choice for supplement dairy animals, since they both benefit from the protein, and receive a calorie value from the celluose/fiber which their rumen breaks down. We don't do dairy, but our cattle/sheep eat whatever the pigs don't, and it drops their winter hay consumption by 2/3. The cattle are capable of 75lb/head/day if you have it.

Also, don't forget your bringing massive amounts of carbon/nutrients to your land, which might otherwise be landfilled. Encourages me on bad days to know that every week, good or bad, our soil is appreciating.

Don't know much about yeasts, I'll have to ask about them myself. Good idea...heavy in B Vitamins.