Good day, I am wondering if anyone has used whole sunflower seeds with hulls as feed supplement. The protein content is one reason why I am considering using this feed. The other is to add diversity in the feed by bringing in different oils that are in the sunflower. The animals involved are laying hens, rabitts, pigs, goats and sheep.

Thankyou.

-- Pat Gagnon (pgagnon@nbet.nb.ca), March 05, 2000

Answers

I feed unhulled sunflowers to my goats. I give it to my doe with her other grains when I am milking her.

-- R. (thor610@yahoo.com), March 05, 2000.

Pat, we have fed black-oil sunflower seeds to our Dairy Goats, Nubains and LaMancha's for some time. With the Y2K stuff it was what I put away for feeding of protein during lactation. The only draw back in storage is that they contain moths. So we store them in their sacks in a metal dumpster with a lid, away from the house and barn. I keep about 150 pounds in the barn in rubbermaid trash cans. (A dear friend down the road had squirrels chew holes through the top of her lids to get to them, they left her sweet-feed alone) Sunflower seeds are high in protein, excellent roughage (the shell) and add excellent fat to the diet which increases the butterfat of my milk, more cheese etc. The one added bonus that we found is that it is a food that my baby goats love and will start consuming early. We take our kids from their mom's at birth and raise seperatly,(the only way I can guarantee health for sales) so they don't learn to eat from mom. I offer them some of our custom mix at about 2 weeks and though they pick through it, I wouldn't call it eating, with the sunflower seeds on top, it is eating! We have such poor hay quality here in Humid Texas, we can get nice hay it just doesn't keep, so getting the kids eating good feed with nice roughage is important, we show our stock and kids have to be extra growthy. I have never fed seeds to anything else, I am going to go out this morning and see if the rabbits want some. Good luck with your farm. Vicki McGaugh

-- Vicki McGaugh (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), March 05, 2000.

I grow sunflowers every year for my goats. They eat the whole plant and love it. I have even fed them dried leaves and stalks, also corn stalks. I understand that if you feed sunflower seeds to your goats it helps prevent overeating disease that they get vaccinated for. The name of it slips my mind.

-- Christine Allen (cfallen00@hotmail.com), March 05, 2000.

We have sunflower seeds put in our speciality feed mix. If you add sunflower seeds for protien make sure your protein content does not exceed 16%, (for dairy goats) as after that level you could run into problems. I like the shine it puts on our girl's coats.

-- Bernice (geminigoats@yahoo.com), March 05, 2000.

Sun flower seeds are very good for rabbits, when i was showing my angoras i gave them about 1/4 teaspoon a day [improves coats and helps produce babys high in vitamen e]. My rabbits wouldnt eat them unless they were shelled [ spoiled rabbits].

-- kathy h (saddlebronc@msn.com), March 05, 2000.

Any grain is digested better if it's been cracked or ground (or sprouted) - particularly if it's got a coat like sunflower - and that makes better economy and less labour growing and harvesting, or doing whatever you do to pay for bought grain. Even cereals are better that way - look at what passes right through untouched in droppings from a working horse fed on grain, or even a milch cow fed a grain supplement. If you can afford to get a hammer mill it will improve the digestibility of just about everything you want to feed to any of the above, and make some things possible feed that wouldn't be otherwise (like bones for pigs and poultry).

-- Don Armstrong (darmst@yahoo.com.au), March 05, 2000.

Ditto for goats. I mix my own grain, so I allow for the protein by cutting down on some of the other high-protein grains. It can also be a decent source for selenium. I leave the hulls on because the goats like the crunching sound the shell makes when they chew. :-)

-- Jim Roberts (jroberts1@cas.org), March 06, 2000.

Ditto for pigs

-- Rich (pntbeldyk@wirefire.com), March 06, 2000.

I have fed a few sunflower seeds mixed in with the chicken feed to my chickens. They seem to love them. I figure if birds can eat them, why can't chickens?

-- barbara (barbaraj@mis.net), March 08, 2000.

I hang sunflower heads in the poultry coops for our chickens, ducks and geese. The ducks generally just ignore them, but the chickens and geese devour every bit of seed.

-- Kathleen (kalfy53@hotmail. com), March 12, 2000.