goat milk been giving to chickens but figured i should ask if i should continue

[lindy]

I occasionally feed mine kefir. I am planning on feeding my 3 week old Freedom Ranger chicks kefir every day. It is better for them than milk because it has 32 +/- good things including live probiotics. They love it. It is super easy to make. You get the "grains" from someone and put them into a jar of milk. You just keep taking out kefir and adding more milk.

did you order or have someone near by? i heard of kefir but do not know much about it. I try yogurt but get so buisy the first batch is probably too old to use for the second batch.

 

[Chicken Heel]

Have had the occasional egg eating pullet through the years and after giving them milk they stopped the bad habit. And like another member stated, I sometimes give the chickens milk that has gone sour and they slurp it up like I drink a cold vanilla milkshake. Have never noticed any ill effects from that either.

 

[lindy]

thank you, all continue to give them some milk then as long as im milking.

 

[Penpal]

I got my kefir grains from someone on a homesteading forum. You just keep making it, like yogurt. It doesn't really go bad.

 

[NatJ]

I try yogurt but get so buisy the first batch is probably too old to use for the second batch.

The obvious way to tell if it is too old to use for the next batch: try it and see.

If it comes out well, you can eat it.
If it does not come out right, you can probably use it in baking, or you can certainly feed it to the chickens.

 

[cassie]

When I was a kid, I lived with my aunt on a small farm. They milked a few cows and separated the milk. They sold the cream, but the skim milk was fed to the pigs, chickens, and us kids. I had a friend who fattened Thanksgiving turkeys on goat milk. He always had more orders than turkeys. Back in the day, poultry was routinely fed milk, usually skim because the cream was sold. It was either mixed in with the laying mash or offered in a dish. Often the milk was clabbered.

 

[SourRoses]

They sold the cream, but the skim milk was fed to the pigs, chickens, and us kids.

Abominable! snowmen

Cream is the yummy part!!!



P.S. What is clabbered milk?

 

[cassie]

Abominable! snowmen

Cream is the yummy part!!!



P.S. What is clabbered milk?

They sold the cream because they had a good market for it. A lot of folks did the same back then. The cream was kept in a milk can and the can was put out by the road on pickup day. We did have cream available to put on our cereal or fruit. Raw milk, when it sours, often clabbers. The solids separate from the whey. You can drain the whey off, press the solids, and make a sort of cheese out of it.