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jenica_gw

Anyone feed Duckweed to Chickens?

jenica
14 years ago

Hi everyone,

I've been researching feeds and I came across some info on duckweed. For those who don't know it's a tiny plant that grows on the surface of ponds and other still water and it is one of the fastest growing plants around. It caught my attention because if grown under the right conditions it has over 40% protein content. I recently read that my current protein source, soybean meal, can cause reproductive cancers in chickens due to the photo-estrogens it contains. This also concerns me because I wonder how much of this estrogen gets passed on in the eggs. So I was looking for an alternative that's locally available and stumbled on duckweed. I have a pond on my property and I was thinking about trying to grow some. Apparently you can dry duckweed and it retains it's protein content. It also has a bunch of other vitamins and minerals and seems to be more nutritious in general than soybean meal. The big question is will the chickens eat it? I'd hate to go through all the trouble of growing and harvesting it for them to turn up their little beaks at it. So has anyone tried this?

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