- Joined
- May 27, 2012
- Messages
- 5,192
- Location
- Bellmere, QLD
- Website
- www.selfsufficientme.com
- Climate
- Sub-Tropical
This summer one of my vegetable garden raised beds heavily mulched with used litter from our chicken coop started growing about 20 sorghum plants so instead of digging them in I decided to let them grow.
The sorghum grew amazingly well through our awfully hot and muggy summer and produced big heads of seed so I was interested to see if this could be a worthy supplemental organic feed for our chickens with the rest of the plant used as compost.
Whilst I found sorghum really easy to grow, unfortunately, my chickens weren't too enthusiastic to eat the grain. They did eat most of it over several days but I could tell it definitely was not a favourite and even a week later there are several heads of sorghum laying around with grains still attached.
Verdict: Although sorghum is one of the easiest grains to grow in a hot humid climate it's probably not worth the effort to be used as a supplementary food for chickens or other poultry. However, this is just my experience and our chickens might be fussy - I don't know - others may find sorghum works well with their flock...
The sorghum grew amazingly well through our awfully hot and muggy summer and produced big heads of seed so I was interested to see if this could be a worthy supplemental organic feed for our chickens with the rest of the plant used as compost.
Whilst I found sorghum really easy to grow, unfortunately, my chickens weren't too enthusiastic to eat the grain. They did eat most of it over several days but I could tell it definitely was not a favourite and even a week later there are several heads of sorghum laying around with grains still attached.
Verdict: Although sorghum is one of the easiest grains to grow in a hot humid climate it's probably not worth the effort to be used as a supplementary food for chickens or other poultry. However, this is just my experience and our chickens might be fussy - I don't know - others may find sorghum works well with their flock...