Can chickens eat sprouted sunnhemp

[Family dust bath]

I have some sunn hemp (Crotalaria juncea) which is a legume I'm growing as green manure. The seed has a toxin that is toxic for poultry and pigs. I want to know if sprouting the seed would make it good feed for the hen's. And has anyone done this?

 

[azygous]

Yes. It's safe. That legume only contains a very small amount of the alkaloids that are toxic to poultry, and sprouts would have even less, if any.

 

[a64armt]

Revising this older thread:

We planted 401 Rye grain and Sunn Hemp in the run during construction of the coop, just to help with erosion. The chickens have obviously decimated both. They really enjoy the Sunn Hemp leaves, I’ve brought in young stalks (without nitrogen nodules) and the chickens go nuts. The advice above indicates “safe”. Is this something we can give them regularly, just a treat or avoid if possible.

Thanks

 

[EddieSalita]

My chickens are fond of both raw cassava and cane toads.

No doubt not all alkaloids are equal. But both those things are riddled with powerful alkaloids. Especially cane toads. So it's a group of chemicals chickens are clearly well adapted to consume. If my dog ate the same toads my chickens did, it would surely die. I think maybe sometimes the interwebs looks at something as toxic for kne animal and assumes it's toxic for all. When it's just not the case.

They have a remarkable ability to self moderate it seems. Dose makes the poison is genetically programmed into them kinda thing.

In fact there may be far more wisdom to our chickens food choices than we know. I found an article testing the effect of nematode infections in goats and a diet of raw cassava leaves. A limited anthelmintic effect was observed.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17568377/