Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
me then, and it will work well for you if you have fewer than a dozen fowl. But stor-
age of grains in this manner requires that you really get a handle on the area rodent
population or every day will be Thanksgiving for them.
Corn, sunflowers, and sorghum are the easiest feed crops to thresh and use. Hand
shellers can be purchased for approximately $10, and you can shell a bushel of corn
in a few minutes by hand. Sunflowers are easily harvested by rubbing two flower
heads together over the container used to store the seeds. To thresh sorghum, get a
good pair of leather gloves and strip the seed off with your hands. The job is a quick
one.
Soft white spring wheat is the best for poultry. It's softer and easier for them to digest,
so they get more nutrition than from the hard wheat varieties. Hard red winter wheat is
higher in protein, but when fed dry it takes more energy for the bird to digest than soft
spring wheat.
Wheat, of course, is just as much of a challenge as is barley to harvest on a small
scale. Of course, you can always place a temporary fence around the wheat, turn the
poultry out into it, and let them do the harvesting themselves. This method is somewhat
wasteful but will supply them with food for a few days, and it does provide a good rota-
tion for the garden.
Corn
If you're looking for a grain that's relatively easy to grow and use for supplemental feed,
choose corn. It can be planted and harvested easily, and dries and stores well. Dent corn
is the common livestock feed corn. Though sweet corn can be used, it is a bit harder for
poultry to digest and utilize. Flint corns mature earlier and are a bit hardier than dent
corns, so they are easier to grow farther north.
