Amaranth?

[flockmarket]

so im trying to get away from commercial feeds. i'm thinking, duck weed, dried comfrey, goats milk, black soldier fly larvae, oats, sunflower seeds, and amaranth. do you think they could eat amaranth? i mean, i could cook it if neccesary, but i really want to have a grain i grow at home just in case the whole world runs out of grains one day for some crazy reason. but i would mix it with the oats and sunflower seeds, also how much could i feed to them at once?

basically is it poisinous? can i cook it to make it safe?

 

[emys]

Here is a study on using amaranth as chicken feed.

http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/ARTICLE/AGRIPPA/550_EN.HTM

Seems impractical to me to always have to cook their food for them. If I were you I would look at other grains such as broom corn or the same millet found in bird seed (proso?) Let the bugs be your protein.

 

[extraordinaryfowl]

I would feed amaranth in their mash if I could, but it is expensive to buy and a pain in the neck to harvest, the seeds being so tiny with so much chaff. I've never heard of it being poisonous raw, did you read something that said that? The link above looks very informative. MW

 

[Mac in Wisco]

I've bought scratch mixes that had ameranth in them. I thought it was millet seeds until it started growing in the yard.

That study refers to replacing corn with ameranth in high percentages. Some grains have anti-nutritional factors. Barley comes to mind. It generally not added in high amounts without a supplemental enzyme to make it more digestible.

Ameranth is fine at smaller percentages in the diet, just don't try to make it the sole energy source in the diet.

 

[saladin]

I grow and feed Amaranth. The birds love it and it is a fairly good source of protein. Watch the goats milk; to much will really be bad for the birds.

Your feed mixture sounds ok, but it utilizes some really non-traditional grains; thus, it is going to be hard to determine (research will be scarce and possibly one-source) how balanced you mixture really is.

I would suggest instead a more traditional mixture with the ingredients you have listed as additions to that basic mixture: corn, oats, wheat, millo, alfalfa, etc.

Also, you need to consider a vitamin supplement to your feed such as Red Cell. I don't see that your named ingredients are going to provide all the vitamins a minerals needed by the birds.

 

[SunflowerKing]

Here is a study on using amaranth as chicken feed.

http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/ARTICLE/AGRIPPA/550_EN.HTM

Seems impractical to me to always have to cook their food for them. If I were you I would look at other grains such as broom corn or the same millet found in bird seed (proso?) Let the bugs be your protein.

Its not so simple, Amaranth is easy to grow and attracts a plethora of bugs! It also can be used as a human food so it stacks functions on the homestead. I think its a wonderful annual for chickens on the same level as sunflowers. You can just cut the heads off of the weaker specimens of these plants and throw it to the chickens to work at. Keep the better specimens for next years seed stock.