Bamboo leaves as food....

[VictoriaTemple]

OMG, bamboo making itself useful. Who’d a thunk it? I have a love-hate relationship with my 3 unknown bamboo species (all runners planted by a neighbor) because they are taking over my little 1 acre patch of woods. I can’t remove it, it’s too much work. But I can certainly harvest some for the chickens, then maybe I can love the stuff again! I loved it as a child.

 

[Serin]

But.... now wondering... don’t pandas have to eat all the time and so much because bamboo is poor in nutrition? I sorta remember that but absolutely could have that wrong.

Yeah grown bamboo stalks have almost no nutrition but the young sprouts coming up out of the soil are a bit more nutritious. I can't imagine there is any nutrition at all feeding them the leafy top growth.

 

[bpoage]

I found this article on-line about a SE Asia Study that reported feeding chickens bamboo leaves will lead to increased growth and improved health. Supposedly, the bamboo nourishes their microbiome (a natural probiotic) and provides nutrients. I have a forest of bamboo and began cutting branches with young growth and feeding it to chickens. They LOVE it - they eat the leaves and then they also hide out in the limbs and climb around as the leaves die, so it's a natural "gym" in their coop run area.

Anyway I thought I'd share this and see if anyone else has experience feeding chickens bamboo.

peace and Happy Holidays !

Where do you find Bamboo leaves?

 

[Jamited]

The giant panda only eats bamboo shoots and they grow pretty huge! I believe it gets extremely cold in China where it grows wild

 

[aart]

We love sunchokes (also called Jerusalem artichokes) but they give us remarkable gas.

If you harvest them after first frost, apparently they are less gassy.

Cheryl said; "Well no one cares of chickens fart." Which leads me to the inevitable question: Do chickens fart??

There's a thread about that:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/chicken-farts.1332859/

..and more:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/search/85638137/?q=chickens+fart&t=post&o=date&c[title_only]=1

 

[Fowl Explorer]

I am curious about the study. Can it be cited here? Did I miss it in my read-thru?

FYI on this.... from the study

Feeding chickens on an organic diet containing fresh bamboo leaves results in them weighing up to 70 per cent more than those fed on standard organic diets, according to results from INBAR’s Action Research Site in Abra Province, The Philippines. The results suggest that the fibre in the bamboo leaves enlarges the digestive tract and enables the chickens to consume more and to grow faster.

At an organic chicken farm run by the project (the Bambu Organic Natural Farm), one-day-old organic chicks were sourced from a certified supplier and split into two test and two control batches that were treated as follows:

– The two control batches were fed a standard organic diet of fermented vegetables, corn, muscovado and fermented fish;

– The five test batches were fed a standard organic diet of fermented vegetables, corn, muscovado and fermented fish, with bamboo leaves added.

Young bamboo leaves were harvested by hand on a daily basis to ensure freshness, from a widely-grown Bambusa species known locally as “bayog”. If supplies of “bayog” were not readily available, another commonly-growing species, Bambusa blumeana (“kawayan tinik”), was substituted. The bamboos grow naturally within the chicken farm itself and are not cultivated, and hence organic.

The leaves were chopped very finely and mixed into the standard chicken feed from day one to day seven. For the older chickens (days eight and onwards), fresh bamboo leaves were made available for them to peck at; the leafy branches were pruned from the bamboos and placed on the ground throughout the ranging area.

Results

The graph of results shows a huge improvement in the weights of the chickens fed on bamboo, with them being 70 per cent heavier by the fifty-sixth day.

Further development

Work continues to investigate the effects of changing the ratio of bamboo leaves to other fodder, on the number of days bamboo leaves are included in the fodder, on other bamboo species and on different breeds of chicken. The work suggests the enormous potential for using bamboo leaves as chicken fodder, though more trials are needed.

 

[HenOnAJuneBug]

I am curious about the study. Can it be cited here? Did I miss it in my read-thru?

It's the last sentence of the 2nd post

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1541-4337.2011.00147.x

 

[VictoriaTemple]

Harvested some of my invasive bamboo for my flock. Not a type consumable by humans, BTW. They LOVE it!! It’s so much fun watching them scrounge around in it. I will definitely keep a pile of cut bamboo in their yard from now on. I can lay the spent stalks down as a mat over the low muddy spots, burn it for bathing ash, or let it pile up for insect nesting (spiders adore dried bamboo). Thank you Jesus for another free and healthy way to lower my feed bills!

 

[Fowl Explorer]

It's the last sentence of the 2nd post

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1541-4337.2011.00147.x

Thank you! I missed it.

 

[Ashland Oregon]

FYI on this.... from the study

Feeding chickens on an organic diet containing fresh bamboo leaves results in them weighing up to 70 per cent more than those fed on standard organic diets, according to results from INBAR’s Action Research Site in Abra Province, The Philippines. The results suggest that the fibre in the bamboo leaves enlarges the digestive tract and enables the chickens to consume more and to grow faster.

At an organic chicken farm run by the project (the Bambu Organic Natural Farm), one-day-old organic chicks were sourced from a certified supplier and split into two test and two control batches that were treated as follows:

– The two control batches were fed a standard organic diet of fermented vegetables, corn, muscovado and fermented fish;

– The five test batches were fed a standard organic diet of fermented vegetables, corn, muscovado and fermented fish, with bamboo leaves added.

Young bamboo leaves were harvested by hand on a daily basis to ensure freshness, from a widely-grown Bambusa species known locally as “bayog”. If supplies of “bayog” were not readily available, another commonly-growing species, Bambusa blumeana (“kawayan tinik”), was substituted. The bamboos grow naturally within the chicken farm itself and are not cultivated, and hence organic.

The leaves were chopped very finely and mixed into the standard chicken feed from day one to day seven. For the older chickens (days eight and onwards), fresh bamboo leaves were made available for them to peck at; the leafy branches were pruned from the bamboos and placed on the ground throughout the ranging area.

Results

The graph of results shows a huge improvement in the weights of the chickens fed on bamboo, with them being 70 per cent heavier by the fifty-sixth day.

Further development

Work continues to investigate the effects of changing the ratio of bamboo leaves to other fodder, on the number of days bamboo leaves are included in the fodder, on other bamboo species and on different breeds of chicken. The work suggests the enormous potential for using bamboo leaves as chicken fodder, though more trials are needed.

So interesting. Thanks for your research. Bamboo does well in southern Oregon-perhaps too well. I have plenty and the girls do hang out under it, but I’ve never noticed them eating or showing interest in the leaves.