Wheat For Home-Grown Feed

[markt1]

Can white wheat seeds be fed to geese without grinding them? The cheapest online source for white wheat berries (seeds) I've found was Walmart (at almost $1 per pound). Would rather go with oats due to their higher protein levels, but the rigging something up for kilning the oats (steaming followed by a bake) to avoid rancidity during storage is just too inconvenient. Corn is too low in protein to make it the dominant grain fed, and from what I understand geese hate barley. So it's wheat. Do I need to grind it up or not? I may try to sprout it, but don't have 100% confidence that I could get sprouting to work. Looking at a mix of 60% wheat, 30% corn, 10% sunflower seeds with a little bit of lime added for calcium. Would the sunflower seeds also need to be shelled & ground up or can they be fed as is? Thanks for all help...

 

[ChickensAreSweet]

I don't know about geese but I feed whole wheat and whole black oil sunflower seeds to my chickens without grinding. I make sure they can access grit or give them grit.

Chickens have a gizzard which grinds whole grains and seeds fine as long as they have grit. I personally wouldn't feed the large striped sun. seeds unless they were shelled- to chickens.

 

[markt1]

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[tillyita]

My geese eat barley (mainly because I have it on the property as I sprout it for the horses). They eat it quite happily and raid whatever sprouts the horses leave (which isn't much!). And I've never heard of whole grain going rancid during storage. So long as its kept dry you shouldn't have a problem.