# Animal feed that can be used for human consumption...



## Vashti

Hubby wrote down a list of animal feeds available at our local COOP and I wondered if some of you may know if these can be used/stored for humans. I know that feed wheat, for instance is just regular wheat that may not have been cleaned as much as that which is sold for human use. I wouldn't at all mind purchasing that and storing it for us, if it were available here, but it's not (at least not today, we'll keep checking). 

So, this is what is available right now:

Wheat Bran
Whole Oats
Whole Corn
Whole Milo

Now, I'm accustomed to eating lots of oats and corn, but I'm wondering about that which is packaged in bulk for animal feed. Does anyone know what, if anything, I would need to look for on the packaging to see if it were fit for humans? I'm actually not that worried about it. I've half a mind to go pick up the oats and corn now. I'm wondering if that dried corn can be ground to make corn flower, or re-hydrated to eat as a vegetable side dish, made into grits, etc. I've never used bran or milo, and I'm not even sure that we can eat milo anyway....

I read recently that the Irish Potato Famine was particularly sad because the people had plenty of corn and grains stored that they didn't eat because they felt that it was only for animals. I also read about a famine in France that America sent corn and grain for assistance, but the people refused to eat it because they thought it was only for animals...sad.


----------



## 7.62mmFMJ

You'd be surprised what you can eat if you must. 

Oats must be de-hulled to be usable to us. 

Field corn could be ground for flour, meal, gruel.

Milo? 

Wheat is king.


----------



## damoc

i read somewhere that all grass seeds are non poisonous (but that does not mean they are "mechanically compatible")

wheat, barley and sorghum/milo are all good

certain grains can be made better by malting/sprouting 

i think in most flour you buy the barley has been malted prior to grinding and adding to the flour.


----------



## Jim-mi

I grind wheat for cereal . . . .think "cream-o-wheat"

No it doesn't have the >"Organic"< label on it but my tummie doesn' know the difference . . .big difference in the price tag too.

when theres a good breeze take and pour a cup or two from bowl to bowl to let the wind carry away the chafe.

Now take and sprout a bunch of that wheat for very healthy "wheat grass"

And now I'll grind some hard red for some mighty good wheat bread.

Yes I have a nice stash of wheat......................


----------



## wogglebug

As has been said already, we can eat them all and extract nourishment from them, but they may not be mechanically compatible. If anyone has diverticulitis you have to be very careful of what they eat. Whole oats isn't "mechanically compatible"- you've got to get rid of the outer seed coat first. Look carefully though - some places sell rolled oats as an animal feed. 

You MUST be careful about killing off bugs, weevils and moths immediately, before they infest your other stores and your home. Any place that stores bulk grains for animal feed will be infested.

Wheat, corn, milo (grain sorghum) are all good. So are barley and triticale. So is rye, but I'd tend to steer clear of it because of the possibility of ergot infection. I have a very low opinion of soybeans, but if they're available they'll be no worse than from any other source.

You may find millet as well. Look at all the bird seed they have. Again, no worse than other sources for nutrition, but kill the insects. Also sunflower seed, if you consider it edible.

Wheat bran isn't as high in nutrition as whole grains, but it is nutritious. We used to raise chickens on a mash of bran and pollard (finer than bran and with a lot of starch dust). As they grew we'd drop the pollard and add blood-and-bone meal.

For corn and I assume for soybeans, you'd need a heavy-duty grinder specifically rated for corn, and with the right burrs.

NOTE THAT seeds are living organisms. If you store them without oxygen, they'll die. For food that isn't a bad thing; but they won't sprout or grow afterwards.

There may be things grown locally which won't find their way into the retail area of a co-op store. Things like beans, peas or garbanzos. Ask at the store if there's anything else grown locally.


----------



## brosil

The only thing I personally would avoid is poultry feed due to many types having antibiotics in them. If you're sure they don't have any, cook them up. Don't forget dog and cat food. If it didn't kill the dog, it probably won't kill you.


----------



## ET1 SS

We stock-up on Barley, oats, corn and sunflower; each fall. During harvest. It has not sat in a warehouse long at all. Once I was able to get the oats, being bagged directly from the back of the combine.

We pay:
oats $5/40-pounds;
barley $6;
corn $8;
sunflower $12.

We fill 55-gallon drums. Each is food-grade and lined with a drum-liner, and when they are near full I include a cup of desiccant. [that we re-charge and re-use the next year]

A ton of each grain will require different numbers of drums. Eight drum for the barley but only 4 for corn.

All of this is just fine for human consumption.

My Dw has a hand-crank grist mill that can flatten each grain to remove the hull, if you need to.

Keep in mind that corn is not real good for you. It needs to be limed first to change the whatever in it to human whatever.


----------



## bee

Being new to grains, if you can find it, wheat berries(feed wheat) will be the easiest to work with first. Feed wheat will say not for" human consumption on the bag". Please note SEED wheat, or any other grain marked SEED, may or WILL have been treated with fungicides and is poisonous. Don't eat it or feed it to animals. Feed wheat is allowed to have higher percentages of dust,dirt,chaf/straw and rodent dung than human wheat. The answer is to wash(rinse) small amounts before you grind/cook it. Dry on top the wodstove or in the oven,,not toast- just dry. During the rinsing you can look for anything you need to remove like bits of straw or small rocks(ever read a dry beanbag and see the warning to look for rocks?). Depending on how fine you grind it you can go from cereal to flour.

Now a note on corn.I grew a dent corn this year to use for my consumption. No lime involved in my preperation. Just took it off the cob, ground and cooked it. One small ear produced almost half a cup of cornmeal that cooked up to nearly a full cup of mush or what is considered a "normal" serving. A note on the lime..I need to research the reference. I think I remember it was found that the way the Natives prepared their corn that kept them from nutritional lacks in their diet and had to do with lime. I am sure it is LYE that Europeans use to remove hulls from corn to make hominey. UPDATE..google Nixtamalization. Gonna add lime to my preps!


----------



## palani

We can sustain 4 stock cows and their calves during the summer months on 2 acres of grass. Figure that as around 6,000 lbs of critter or about 3,000 lbs per acre. All it takes is grass.

Take wheat seed, germinate it, juice it and from first planting to 6 days later you have a crop that can sustain you practically indefinitely. You might do the same with millet, oat, corn or even soy seed.


----------



## Forerunner

ET1 SS said:


> Keep in mind that corn is not real good for you. It needs to be limed first to change the whatever in it to human whatever.


Corn is a worthy addition to the sustainable human diet, but..... the Native Americans did figure out that certain locked up vitamins could be further released by making hominy.
I know that flint and dent corn varieties benefit from the hominy process.
I _suspect_ that sweet corn, fresh or dried, stands well enough on it's own.

As for the grass seed issue, they can all be ground/cooked/sprouted profitably to the human digestive...... just be sure it's a grass.
There were scientists and doctors who fed their families on powdered grass and milk during the depression. 
There have also been farmers, plowing via a pair of oxen collectively weighing over 5000 pounds....who have sworn (rather short-sightedly) that you can't make meat out of grass. Ooops.


----------



## rean

I had the pleasure and I say it sincerely, of working at the local grain elevator during harvest season.

The grain brought in is directly from the field. It goes straight to the bins, and from the bins to the train cars. Some is held behind for bagging to sell as feed. There is absolutely no cleaning of the grain.


----------



## SquashNut

we were able to buy dent corn from our feed store that was grown by an Amish farmer.
The feed store said he saved his own seed from year to year. I ground enough to make corn bread twice now and it is so much better than the Organic corn meal that I bought from Azure standard. 
I have an electric grain grinder,a Corona corn grinder, and a cast iron grain grinder of unknown origin. You'll need to think about having this if you plan to use feed grains..


----------



## Vashti

Ugh. All of this sounds very promising but....I can't find feed wheat anywhere. Now, THAT is what I wanted in the first place, but I'm having a heck of a time finding it. I read yesterday that whole oats can be ground into nutritious flour...no? They have to be hulled first? I need to read some more lol.


----------



## Callieslamb

Once as a kid, I had to work really hard for a very long time. One of my tasks was shoveling grain into the dairy barn. I got so hungry that the calf grain started to look very appetizing. I tried some and decided I liked it. If I ever get that hungry again, I am sure I won't mind again either. 

Have you asked your feed store to GET you some wheat? The oats that are rolled for horses will probably go through a blender just fine. There are varieties of oats that are hulless. I plant them in my garden to overwinter. I haven't ever harvested them, since I till the oats under in the spring.


----------



## Forerunner

Before we started growing our own, we used to get hard and soft wheat varieties from these folks, via a local Amish man who dealt in their products.
Cost then was about 12 bucks....I don't remember if that was for 40 or 50 pounds.
http://waltonfeed.com/


----------



## PhilJohnson

I ate dog food when I was a kid, does that count? :baby04:


----------



## texican

If I feed it to my animals, I've tasted or eaten it... dog food included.

I've dehulled oats, in my mouth before, it's just a laborious process.

I've also wondered if you ground the oats to flour, would the extra roughage hurt you... I don't think it would. Anyone ever made oat flour? from raw oats???


----------



## PhilJohnson

texican said:


> If I feed it to my animals, I've tasted or eaten it... dog food included.
> 
> I've dehulled oats, in my mouth before, it's just a laborious process.
> 
> I've also wondered if you ground the oats to flour, would the extra roughage hurt you... I don't think it would. Anyone ever made oat flour? from raw oats???


I hear eating too much roughage will make you moo.........


----------



## Vashti

I'm so excited! Called a feed store a couple of towns away and they have wheat for $7.00 for 50 lbs! yay!!! We have to go there twice this month, so we'll be getting LOTS.


----------



## Bearfootfarm

> they have wheat for $7.00 for 50 lbs! yay!!!


Make SURE its *not* SEED wheat.
If it is, it may have been treated with a fungicide


----------



## ET1 SS

Bearfootfarm said:


> Make SURE its *not* SEED wheat.
> If it is, it may have been treated with a fungicide


Everyone knows that seed is more expensive than feed.


----------



## wally

I buy whole corn in 50 lb bags and use it make hominy with and feed whats left to the other animals on the farm. Thanks for the info about not using seed wheat for human use..I bought 1500 lbs of winter seed wheat to plant this last fall..due to the weather the soybeans were late comming out so I could not plant wheat and was thinking I could just add the seed to our preps


----------



## denaliguide

I keep barley and oats on hand for rabbit feed. However I will refuse to eat the timothy-hay/alfalfa blocks the rabbits love so, to gnaw upon.

Any good suggestions how to "roll" or de-hull those grains?

DG


----------



## ET1 SS

denaliguide said:


> I keep barley and oats on hand for rabbit feed. However I will refuse to eat the timothy-hay/alfalfa blocks the rabbits love so, to gnaw upon.
> 
> Any good suggestions how to "roll" or de-hull those grains?
> 
> DG


We have a hand-crank grist mill that can flatten each grain to remove the hull, if we need to.

It cost us $135.


----------



## redbird

Might be interested in purchasing one and wanted to know what brand this is?


ET1 SS said:


> We have a hand-crank grist mill that can flatten each grain to remove the hull, if we need to.
> 
> It cost us $135.


----------



## arcticow

Milo makes a good flour, texture is kinda grainy. I really like pancakes made of a mix of wheat, corn and milo. Each one fills gaps the others leave, nutritionally...


----------



## ET1 SS

redbird said:


> Might be interested in purchasing one and wanted to know what brand this is?


http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/barley-crusher-w-7-hopper.html


----------



## backtocolo

As a kid I used to pick the wheat kernels andmilo out of the chicken feed to munch on when I was doing chores.

I have made oat flour out of oatmeal for homemade bread as I didn't want to pay what the store was charging for oatflour.


----------



## willbuck1

A diet of too much corn will leave you short on one of the b vitamins and usually the first sign is when people start acting real crazy. Treating with lime or lye will release the missing vitamin. Like anything else though you will be fine as long as you keep a diet with several staples not just one or two.


----------



## DEKE01

willbuck1 said:


> A diet of too much corn will leave you short on one of the b vitamins and usually the first sign is when people start acting real crazy. Treating with lime or lye will release the missing vitamin. Like anything else though you will be fine as long as you keep a diet with several staples not just one or two.


right you are. The disease is called Pellagra, caused by a lack of B3 - niacin. Symptoms include mild to severe dementia and eventually death. Corn doesn't cause the disease, not eating a balanced and diverse diet causes the disease.


----------



## MichaelK!

Vashti said:


> I read recently that the Irish Potato Famine was particularly sad because the people had plenty of corn and grains stored that they didn't eat because they felt that it was only for animals. I also read about a famine in France that America sent corn and grain for assistance, but the people refused to eat it because they thought it was only for animals...sad.


This most certainly is not true. I suspect this may be intentional mis-information.

This is more like what really happened. The British drove the poor Irish tenant farmers off the good lands suitable for growing wheat and oats, forcing the natives up into the highlands where only potatoes can grow. While the British occupied the richer lower lands, they grew wheat which was exported for cash. The local Irish couldn't afford wheat to make flour for bread, so they subsisted on potatoes. Along come _Phytophthora infestans_ which starts destroying the potato crop. Rather an giving away export wheat that they could sell for cash, the British allowed the Irish to starve. This is one of the reasons that the British are hated so by the Irish.

I would guess the mis-information you read is likely to be of British origin, so they can claim the Irish were too stupid to recognize wheat as the source of flour for bread.


----------



## Cyngbaeld

Check your co-op for wheat. Many will order it for you. Be aware that feed wheat tends to be lower gluten than bread wheat. Usually better for baking powder, not yeast.

On Whole Corn, not Cracked, look for the label that says what the aflotoxin levels are. If not tested, don't get it. When you do get it, sort the grains, removing any dark or blackened ones. That is where most of the aflotoxin will be and removing those will dramatically lower the levels. Also, corn will need to be washed and dried. Don't soak it, just rinse quickly, drain and spread to dry. Don't put it away wet! Corn can be parched or made into hominy. Hominy can be ground dry for grits or wet for tortillas.

Don't get animal oats. You will not be able to hull them without the right equipment. The hulls are inedible.

Milo, must be hulled to be edible. Special equipment again.

Wheat bran is ok, IF it is not rancid. I wouldn't bother, personally.

Barley is good IF it is hulled.



The Irish starved because the grain was their rent payment to the English owners of the land. If they ate the grain, they wouldn't have it to make the rent and would be put out of their houses. Better to be hungry and have a roof and walls than to be hungry and out in the cold. This is why you want to be out of debt and not have a mortgage or high taxes.


----------



## Ohio dreamer

MichaelK! said:


> This most certainly is not true. I suspect this may be intentional mis-information.
> 
> This is more like what really happened. The British drove the poor Irish tenant farmers off the good lands suitable for growing wheat and oats, forcing the natives up into the highlands where only potatoes can grow. While the British occupied the richer lower lands, they grew wheat which was exported for cash. The local Irish couldn't afford wheat to make flour for bread, so they subsisted on potatoes. Along come _Phytophthora infestans_ which starts destroying the potato crop. Rather an giving away export wheat that they could sell for cash, the British allowed the Irish to starve. This is one of the reasons that the British are hated so by the Irish.
> 
> I would guess the mis-information you read is likely to be of British origin, so they can claim the Irish were too stupid to recognize wheat as the source of flour for bread.



Not sure about the corn thing, but when we lived in Hungry people (friends and co-workers) were on the verge of appalled that we wanted to find oats to eat. They see oats as animal only food, even when we found it in the Bio section of the store, they still said it was only fit for animals. So there is a chance that Europeans had "issues" with corn, especially since it wasn't a very known grain over there.


----------



## Shrek

Whenever I make black eyed peas and collard greens I remember the old stories of how the Yankees often bypassed those crops in the civil war as they burned their paths because to them black eyed peas and collards were only good for horse and on the hoof livestock feed.


----------



## snakeshooter1

DEKE01 said:


> right you are. The disease is called Pellagra, caused by a lack of B3 - niacin. Symptoms include mild to severe dementia and eventually death. Corn doesn't cause the disease, not eating a balanced and diverse diet causes the disease.


Would taking a good multivitamin counter this?


----------



## secuono

Oats, wheat and such are usually given radiation to stop them from sprouting, is that safe for people?

I know whole corn will sprout, mine sure did.


----------



## DEKE01

snakeshooter1 said:


> Would taking a good multivitamin counter this?


I don't play a doctor on TV, but yes, it would. Eating a balanced diet with all the normal food groups would also. As I said previously, today's cereals and flours are vitamin fortified, so you would have to work at getting pellagra these days as long as you live in a first world country. 

I have seen blonde haired black Indian children in South America. They have a diet short of B-12. Feed them meat and fish and their blonde hair turns black. There are lots of diseases we never see in the developed world due to better diets, as hard as that is to believe in the snack food aisle of the supermarket.


----------



## Wanda

secuono said:


> Oats, wheat and such are usually given radiation to stop them from sprouting, is that safe for people?
> 
> I know whole corn will sprout, mine sure did.




I think that is not the case.


----------



## FireMaker

We used to chow down on calf pellets, etc. when in the barn and getting hungry. Milk replacer isn't too bad, better when cold.


----------

