Home Feeding Ideas and Solutions Discussion Thread

[cluckcrazy]

Can you give chickens dried duckweed? Because if I grow enough, I will probably have enough for preserving.

 

[Lacy Blues]

I calculated today that a 1.5lb loaf of homemade bread would cost 19 cents a pound to make. If you just used water, oil flour and yeast. Bake one a day and this would be a pretty big supplement.

If your lucky and have acorn trees you can get that cost down to 2 cents a pound. Cost is only oil, yeast and electric. With the acorns, all you would need to do it dry them and grind up shell and all. Maybe not even need to dry them. Gunna try it and see.

Any thoughts?

Have you tried your acorn bread yet? How did it go? Was it well received? Wanna share the recipe? I have zero trees here, let alone oaks but I have a brother in law with several of the live oak trees in his yard.

 

[Kikiriki]

Any type of leaf--moringa, mulberry, duckweed--are dried because the water causes the percentages of nutrients to be lower. The animals may not be able to eat enough of a wet forage to get enough nutrition, while in the dry forage the nutrients are more concentrated. Like you have to use more of a fresh herb than the same herb which is dried in cooking...

All the plants performed well as a feed, BUT only as a portion of the diet. I think it was 10% for moringa, and 30% for the duckweed and mulberry... Please check this as I, too, am getting that sometimes memory! I use google scholar and use keywords including poultry, feed, chicken, the name of the plant or feed type (like corn or oats), on the results page you will get a list down the left side. You can click any to read the abstract, which is just a paragraph long synopsis of the study. Usually they conclude with a statement that is pretty clear: it did not do well, or it did well to a percentage. On the right side of the results page you will see some of the listed results have a link. Those links take you to the full document. When you read a full document they typically start out with the reason for the study: history, other research, why they are looking at whatever... Good background info there. The middle of the paper will have their methods and results. Sometimes you can find good tables, and always info about how long they ran the study, percentages they used of feeds, and how they measured results. The discussion of results is at the end and that is where they use plain language, usually: sometimes the discussion is very complicated...

I find it to be an awesome resource for everything... Just a wealth of knowledge....

 

[Arielle]

Pardon me for butting in, I am still months behind on reading and have a couple questions if that is ok.

@ sky the chicken man-- you wrote last Feb (2012) "Cassava and sweetpotatoes are both grown from cuttings you take from the top part of your plant so you don't even need to sacrifice part of your root harvest for the next crop." I'm confused by "slip" as I am used to the cuttings of a white potato-- how are slips made?? It is my understanding that a few varieties of sweet potatos can now grow in the colder, shorter growing season areas.

 

[Arielle]

Also, looking for a source of duckweed. Thank you.


Sorry for buttin in to the conversation

 

[cluckcrazy]

Look at a local pond. They should have it.

 

[Arielle]

No sure I want anything from these local waters-- all mills for hundreds of years along the major rivers here, which means lots of heavy metals and signs warning " do not eat the fish." Will see if some ponds are safer than others.

 

[cluckcrazy]

I didn't know that. Darn. I'm moving to MA.

 

[Arielle]

I didn't know that. Darn. I'm moving to MA.

You are moving to Mass or NOT moving to Mass?

 

[RaZ]

No sure I want anything from these local waters-- all mills for hundreds of years along the major rivers here, which means lots of heavy metals and signs warning " do not eat the fish." Will see if some ponds are safer than others.

Don't take duckweed from ponds that you don't know are safe. Duckweed is used for bio-remediation projects because it takes up heavy metals and other contaminates.