POULTRY FEEDS AND FEEDING 



BARLEY AND BREWERS' GRAINS 



Barley is not fed nearly as extensively to poultry as are 

 corn, wheat and oats, but is used considerably on the 

 Pacific Coast where very little corn is produced. This 

 grain is grown extensively in this country and has been 

 used largely for brewing and stock feeding. Bald or hull- 

 less barley is grown in the Western States and is a better 

 feed for poultry than the ordinary barley because it has 

 no hulls and does not contain so much fibre. Barley con- 

 tains more digestible protein than corn but less than oats. 

 It ranks between oats and corn in its carbohydrate con- 

 tent and is lower in fat than either of these grains. In 

 1918, 256,225,000 bushels of barley were produced in the 

 United States, the average production per acre being 26.3 

 bushels. Its value was estimated at $234,942,000. In 

 1919 only 165,719,000 bushels were produced. 



Malt used in making beer is produced from barley by 

 steeping the grains in warm water and allowing small 

 sprouts to form. In this process the diastase, which is the 

 enzyme that converts starch into malted sugar, is greatly 

 increased. After the sprouts are started the sprouting 

 grain is quickly dried and the dried sprouts separated from 

 the grains and sold as malt sprouts. The dried grains form 

 malt, which is mixed with cracked corn to make beer by 

 mechanical treatment and fermentation. The residue 

 makes up wet brewers' grains which are dried in a vacuum 

 to make dried brewers' grains. Experiments with live- 

 stock show that there is more actual food value in the 

 original barley than in the malt and malt sprouts com- 



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