Can you feed fruit pulp to livestock?

Is it possible to use fruit pulp after the pressing to feed livestock? Do you think it would need to be kept frozen to use over a period of time, or could it be silaged by itself or with other material? It seems to me that if you produce a good deal of pulp, it would be a good source of feed.

— Steve Fields
Metuchen, New Jersey

Fruit pulp can be used to feed livestock, but if it is high in sugar, like apple pulp, it needs to be fed quickly, or ensiled with plenty of extra fiber to minimize ethanol production. Mixing apple pulp with 15 percent to 30 percent straw works fairly well. If pulp is going to be a large component of a feeding program, some nutritional analysis should be made, and it really needs to be ensiled for ruminants. Freezing might work on a small scale … it might be a big hassle too.

Chickens, hogs and ruminants would all likely consume the materials fresh, some with more relish than others. There is no problem throwing pumpkins, squash, apples, pulp, etc. into a feeder for your home flock or herd, but it should only be used as a supplement to good pasture, hay or other balanced feed.

One more thing … dried apple pulp can be pelletized and stored/fed pretty conveniently.

— Oscar H. Will III, editor, Grit magazine

2 Comments

martin gardner 2/27/2009 12:09:30 PM

If you feed fruit to any laying hens , they will stop laying and take as much as 4 - 6 weeks to start laying again. I know this from expierience and also from reading a booklet from the N.C. Dept. of agriculture . I hope this will steer anyone from feeding fruit to their layers .

S. Gardner
Scott Gardner 2/27/2009 12:08:52 PM

If you feed any fruit to any kind of laying hens , they will stop laying and take 4 - 6 weeks to start back . This is from expierience and from the N.C. Dept of Agriculture . I hope this helps .

Scott G .

Add Your Comment

Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br> tags.

New to Mother Earth News?
Sign up to share comments.

Asterisks(*) indicate required fields.

Name*

Your name appears next to your comment.

E-mail Address*

This will be your login ID.

City	State	Zip Code

Password*

Confirm Password*

Have you signed up before?
Please log in before you enter your comment.

E-mail Address

Password

Forgot your password?

Comments

Ask your question, get an answer:

Question:

Name:
City:		State:

Email:

2 Comments

Asterisks(*) indicate required fields.

Your name appears next to your comment.

This will be your login ID.

(Offensive materials and/or spam will be removed, no HTML allowed)

Please Note: Your sign-up must be verified via e-mail before your comment is published.

Ask your question, get an answer: