Can chickens safely eat soaked/fermented beans?

[Tilhana]

Hey y'all, I have a question about beans. I have always heard that chickens shouldn't eat raw beans because of the lectins, and every source I've looked at says to cook beans before adding them to your chickens' feed. I normally feed my birds a homemade mix of raw grains which I soak in water and allow to ferment. I've been doing it this way for years using just whole grains and peas and have never had a problem - at least none that I could trace back to their food.

We have a lot of old beans and grains that have been sitting in the shed in sealed buckets for years, just as an emergency deep pantry store. They're old enough that we want to get rid of those old stores and replace them with fresh batches, and it just makes sense to feed the old ones to the chickens. Not all at once but I've been adding one or two buckets of old grains at a time to their regular feed mix as I buy replacements. But we probably have at least 100 lbs of various types of dried beans that will need to be used up, and I don't have time to boil all those beans - especially given the challenge of storing them. We have very limited fridge space so I can't do a huge batch and then store it in the fridge for weeks. But boiling smaller batches every couple days would require significantly more time.

So my question is, does the soaking and fermentation accomplish the same thing as cooking them? Can I just add the dried beans to my dry feed and ferment them all together, and would that deactivate most of the lectins?

Thanks in advance!

 

[nuthatched]

Still toxic, the need to be cooked at high heat.
They can sprout, perhaps.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

Plant them?

 

[Tilhana]

Plant them?

I'm not sure they are still viable...also its a LOT of beans. Way more than I can plant in a season and reasonably hope to harvest.

 

[Perris]

So my question is, does the soaking and fermentation accomplish the same thing as cooking them?

you might find this useful
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5636019/

 

[Tilhana]

you might find this useful
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5636019/

Thank you! This is very encouraging. Sadly they didn't specifically test for lectins, but based on the reduction in similar anti-nutrients that they did measure, they found an improvement of digestibility of up to 90%, especially after 2-4 days of fermentation. I suspect that the amount of lectins also gets significantly reduced, although I'm sure it's not totally eliminated.

I'm inclined to try it conservatively, adding just a little bit at a time to their regular feed, but I'll definitely increase the fermentation time to ensure they get closer to 4 days so we get the maximum benefit.

 

[DKD3071]

Hey y'all, I have a question about beans. I have always heard that chickens shouldn't eat raw beans because of the lectins, and every source I've looked at says to cook beans before adding them to your chickens' feed. I normally feed my birds a homemade mix of raw grains which I soak in water and allow to ferment. I've been doing it this way for years using just whole grains and peas and have never had a problem - at least none that I could trace back to their food.

We have a lot of old beans and grains that have been sitting in the shed in sealed buckets for years, just as an emergency deep pantry store. They're old enough that we want to get rid of those old stores and replace them with fresh batches, and it just makes sense to feed the old ones to the chickens. Not all at once but I've been adding one or two buckets of old grains at a time to their regular feed mix as I buy replacements. But we probably have at least 100 lbs of various types of dried beans that will need to be used up, and I don't have time to boil all those beans - especially given the challenge of storing them. We have very limited fridge space so I can't do a huge batch and then store it in the fridge for weeks. But boiling smaller batches every couple days would require significantly more time.

So my question is, does the soaking and fermentation accomplish the same thing as cooking them? Can I just add the dried beans to my dry feed and ferment them all together, and would that deactivate most of the lectins?

Thanks in advance!

Don't want to deny your birds a food source, but consider testing your dried beans for viability. Plant seeds, including dried beans, especially if they were grown organically, can be viable for hundreds of years, if properly stored. The proportion of viable seeds declines over time, but if you're someday needing to grow from scratch, they could come in handy. If yours date from the 1900s and predate the advent of genetically modified foods, they might be a better option for you than ones you're putting away now. And there's always sprouting as a way to reduce lectins. Blessings.

 

[Tilhana]

Don't want to deny your birds a food source, but consider testing your dried beans for viability. Plant seeds, including dried beans, especially if they were grown organically, can be viable for hundreds of years, if properly stored. The proportion of viable seeds declines over time, but if you're someday needing to grow from scratch, they could come in handy. If yours date from the 1900s and predate the advent of genetically modified foods, they might be a better option for you than ones you're putting away now. And there's always sprouting as a way to reduce lectins. Blessings.

They may well be viable, as they are organic and have been stored in airtight buckets with oxygen absorbers and are at most about 10 years old, but I don't keep them for planting. I keep them as an emergency food source in case of natural disasters or other long-term emergencies. I also don't have a ton of space for planting so the number of beans I need to keep for my garden is pretty minimal compared to what I have stored away for food. The ones I plan to buy to replace them would also be organic and thus non-GMO, so same quality, just fresher.

I do have a friend who recommended sprouting them in a mason jar before feeding them to the chickens - I guess that is better for them than just fermenting. So I will probably try that.

 

[Al Gerhart]

Ever thought about burning out a 55 gallon drum, cleaning it, then boiling the beans in a batch outside over a wood fire? Then freeze until needed? That would deal with the time issue of boiling the beans.

 

[Tilhana]

Ever thought about burning out a 55 gallon drum, cleaning it, then boiling the beans in a batch outside over a wood fire? Then freeze until needed? That would deal with the time issue of boiling the beans.

I have a giant cooking pot that can fit maybe 10 gallons in it, and I have a camp stove, but I don't have space in my freezer to hold that many beans. And the smaller the batches I boil, the more batches I have to do. And then I have to set up the cook stove and put it away each time, clean the pot, etc. I just don't have that kind of time to spend on chicken feed.