Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Growing grain is labor intensive, but your poultry will help with the threshing.
If you're ambitious, you can grow a few hundred square feet of these grain crops
without much difficulty. This supplies feed for a dozen or fewer hens for quite some
time. The bundles, simply placed in the pens for birds to pick through them, provide
fresh bedding as well.
Oats
Oats are nutritious and a good feed source for poultry, and the straw is excellent for bed-
ding. Oats do not like hot weather. Seeds must be planted in early spring — as soon as
the soil can be worked.
Oats
Barley
Barley is a superb poultry feed but the grain heads on most are bearded, with sharp parts,
making barley seed heads rather pokey and miserable to deal with. Nevertheless, poultry
are more likely to eat barley than oats. Barley also needs to be planted early, and in some
areas can be planted in the fall. Check with your local Extension agent to learn whether
or not your winters are favorable for fall-planted barley. Barley is shorter, and therefore
a bit harder to scythe and bundle.
Wheat
Modern wheat types consist of winter varieties, which are planted in fall, and spring
varieties, planted in spring. Winter wheat has to go through a winter dormancy period
