Can chickens eat sprouted flax seeds?

[katie_3487]

I love sprouting my own flax seeds and they grow into cute little green sprouts. Does anyone know if chickens can eat sprouted flax?? I’ve heard chickens can eat whole flax seeds but I haven’t heard that they can eat sprouted flax.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Yes they can.. It has a decent amino acid profile for a plant, but like all the seeds, is high fat - even sprouted.

 

[arazla]

@U_Stormcrow My boyfriend mixes in approximately 3 tablespoons of ground flax seed with a couple cups of regular feed when making ferment overnight. He gives them some of this ferment twice per day. They have access to their regular dry feed throughout the day unless we're letting them free range while we're working in the garden for an hour or so. In addition he gives them a handful of grubs in the morning when they go out into the pen and a little bit of quinoa at night when they go into the coop. Do you think this could end up being too much fat?

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Depends on flock size. Mostly, it will thin your wallet. Hopefully, those aren't freeze dried grubs - if so, a handful is a lot, even for a moderately larrge flock. But the quinoa is no concern.


Flax seed is usually givern around 23% protein, 37% fat, and as I said, good AA profile for a plant.

Live (or dead, not dried) grubs atoub 15% protein, 20% fat, the rest is almost entirely water. Drid, the water content goes way down, the protien ends up around 26-29%, and the fat 36% or higher.

Because both the flax and the grubs (if dried/dehydrated) are nutrient dense, they have the optential to imabalnce a diet pretty easily. Keep it under 10% by weight of the total diet (combined) - and even then, expect its roughly doubling your bird's fat intake - that's as high a number as I'm comfortable with, absent a very active lifestyle or your birds.

 

[arazla]

Thank you @U_Stormcrow as always for a thorough and educated response. This is all good to keep in mind.
These are the grubs we bought according to my amazon order list, although at the time I think it was a 5 lb bag for $10.99? I believe it was a new product special or something, so I see now that it will be more expensive going forward. So dried, but not freeze dried? Originally we bought grubs as a treat for the neighbor's turkeys back in January. It's lasted a long time so now we're giving it to our chickens. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09YKNT2X7/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Hella good price on those - and yes, they are dried to a state similar to freeze drying - I screen capped the side of the box. They are claiming higher protein, lower fat than is typical for grubs because those are BSFL.

(I have to rely on published averages, which can vary wildly for some products)

Even so, you should keep it in moderation. Thanks for the link!