Update on my own duckweed experience. Yesterday, I tried feeding straight duckweed. It worked okay, but the chickens weren't excited by it. Today, I split their normal daily ration of fermented feed into two containers and mixed some duckweed into one. Both containers were emptied at about the same time, so I consider that a success.
---
As for the winter peas vs. duckweed comparison. Yes, drying is a part of the process for using duckweed normally, though water fowl like ducks eat them fresh in the wild. One item to consider is production cost/effort.
Under proper conditions, duckweed doubles *very* fast. So you can harvest and come back a week later and it looks like nothing had changed. I don't have hard numbers, but I suspect that the amount of duckweed that you can harvest from a given area is easily an order of magnitude greater than peas. But then drying comes into play... Someone serious about this could do an analysis, but it would be interesting to know which is easier to produce in quantity of dried product.
---
As for the winter peas vs. duckweed comparison. Yes, drying is a part of the process for using duckweed normally, though water fowl like ducks eat them fresh in the wild. One item to consider is production cost/effort.
Under proper conditions, duckweed doubles *very* fast. So you can harvest and come back a week later and it looks like nothing had changed. I don't have hard numbers, but I suspect that the amount of duckweed that you can harvest from a given area is easily an order of magnitude greater than peas. But then drying comes into play... Someone serious about this could do an analysis, but it would be interesting to know which is easier to produce in quantity of dried product.
Last edited: