Chicken Feed - Home Grown Sunflower and Millet! 

I have seen some amish around here do a "sunflower braid"(like garlic) - they take off as much of the flower, greens and leaves as they can without compromising the head - leave about a foot of stem(?). Using 3 heads at a time, all facing outward - they bundle the stems with twine move up 6 inches add 3 more etc. - it seems space efficent and provides a lot of air flow.

I foresee many sunflower and millet volunteers in your garden next year! haha :-)

We are putting our millet and sunflowers in pillow cases this year to prevent mice from getting to them. Even hanging from the rafters did not keep the mice away. Make sure your sunflowers are super dry hefore storing or they will mold. We also let overipe corn dry and use it for chicken feed. We use a bottle opener to scrape the kernels off.

It's wonderful to see a small part of the life you lead, you seem truly fulfilled with life and it's heartwarming

Your attached greenhouse with the cats is a great idea. I tried to dry sunflowers in my shed and the mice had a field day.

Sean you have such a calm, relaxed manner and voice. Ty for great info and amazing video

Sean, I like to roast my sunflower seed and then use that roasted seed to cut my whole coffee beans as they go into the grinder, they add a good flavorful and nutty component to the coffee and sunflower yields a different yet seemingly longer lasting energy than caffeine

*** then the wild birds spread the seed and makes for next year's harvest ❤️

What a wonderfully harmonious way to farm!

Best part for sure is that chuckle at the end...

I think I'll plant sunflowers next year in my newly prepped garden bed. The birds will love them. Must get the Wizard of Oz look for my wife when she goes to harvest! 😊

I want to see how to press sunflower seeds for oil!

Thanks for this vid. It has given me some excellent ideas to help sustain my future chicken project. Thanks

We did this accidentally at first. We had a huge bag of feed for the chickens along with wild bird seed sitting out because I forgot about them and our lovely buck, fred escaped, and completely tired the bags apart, scratched at them digging for his favorite seeds and spread them all over.lol then while cleaning what I could up, the girls had a heyday grabbing handfuls to plant in their planter and around the small part of the land we use a "yard" with maybe less than 100sq ft of grass. Well, now its probably a few hundred sq ft of free feed that has been feeding our animals all thru the summer as treats and still have some to put away for the winter. We are now going to designate an area and continue to grow it ourselves to help supplement feed and use as treats. And hopefully one day become completely self sufficient. As feed is getting harder and harder to come by when its needed. And we can find hay for the life of us. Anywho. One day. As long as we keep working hard, I believe our day will come. You have been such a huge help and inspiration this year since I've found your channel. Thank you so much.

Never mind. I already bought some. Will plant and water them once a week lightly in a poked water bottle ☝️

Terrific! I love what you both are doing. Ideas I definitely wish to incorporate in my future growing operations! Love the bouquets of seeds. Thank you for your creativity, generosity and gentle sharing! I look forward to seeing more of what you do and come up with. Much appreciation and gratitude 🙏

Beautiful and well thought out video again. I find your voice very soothing which just makes my chicken watching that more pleasant. Yes I come to watch your chickens lol... One note, I finally had some goji berry bushes take and they flowered this year! It's fun to try even if I'm in a apt. and container gardening, I got zucchini and tomatoes and bunches of herbs, I'm satisfied

Probably the best thing I’ve seen about keeping chickens, compliments

Thanks for leading by example. I’m doing similar next year. Love providing forag and activities form my chickens guineas and ducks

Your videos are always so interesting… you’re always giving me ideas to implement around my home stead.

Thank you for sharing your little piece of heaven with all of us!

Your garden looks amazing. Its so green and lush.

Gotta love Stanley

You've been teaching very well you're doing a great great work..our Creator would have wanted this is why you are doing this I don't know how I missed this video.. but it's very good!! I try to convince a lot of my friends live this way because in the countryside it has sustainability in the city you don't have much sustainability meant to be built up and goes out like that you go to other countries don't do that what we do here....costarica good example...

Excellent work Stanley

The sunflowers looks beautiful hanging like that

Thanks for the ideas! I planted both sunflower and amaranth for their beauty and the bees love/d the sunflowers. I’ve a friend that just started keeping chickens and I’ve already told her I’m going to save the seed heads for her to give her chickens some snacks. I didn’t even think about trying to save the amaranth. I bet they’d enjoy that too. Now I have to figure out when to harvest those. Thanks!

Looks like a great way to dry them out. I would mention that we grew Black oil sunflowers next to Mammoth sunflowers and the Mammoths don't seem to attract the gold finches as much if at all. They grew well in a berm I made to stop fall flood waters from getting to the house, no fertilizer or soil amendment.

I love growing sunflowers. Millet is easy to grow and one can always replant the seed next year.

These are really beautiful, in addition to being so functional, very nice video, I really enjoyed watching.

I'm going to have to try this next year. The few sunflowers I had that survived the deer I've been trying to harvest.

Loving the chickens♥️

Great Video very helpful to me. My sunflowers I put quarter inch hardware cloth to protect them from the squirrels. I also put Crisco and pepper on the stems of the tallest sunflowers to protect some of them from the squirrels. I get about 10 seed heads .

The eggs will be amazing! The oils and nutrients are phenomenal.

The whole video is great for me. Thank you

So wonderful and creative. Really love the idea to use a sack of store-bought black oil sun flower seeds.

this is exactly the topics I am interested in, and many more. ty very much.

You're an impressive observer of nature my friend, and you have a funny way with words as a bonus

No you are drying them the right way keep up the good good man keep up the good work someone has taught you very well Soldier good job

Thanks for sharing this good info!

Very loved and happy chickens. Inspiring ideas thanks

Beautiful sunflower harvest! I had about a 1/2 dozen or so Mongolian Giant Sunflowers grow this year. No chickens sadly but I am in the process of harvesting the seeds for our own eating or replanting next year!

I always wait for a relaxing time to view ur videos. You guy are awesome..... thx....

Isn't it just amazing how God created gardens to grow! Plant one tiny seed and get a huge return on your efforts, gotta love it!

I love this video. It gave us great ideas for our home garden.

Keep planting those sunflowers! Their pollen has medicinal benefits for the guts in bees...

sunflower sprouts add a nice nutty flavor to salads My dad couldn't eat seeds but always missed the flavor so we tried sprouts and he got to have those flavors back, was cool figuring that out.

I used to have Cockatiels and whenever they got a fresh dish of seed mix they'd always go through and eat all the sunflower seeds from it first.

Your chicken vids are the best.

Great Video!

My grandparents used to put them in paper bags on the ceiling on the back porch to keep mice out of them...

Love this, I’m gonna try sunflowers next year! Have you thought about or have you grown any alfalfa for the chickens? On an unrelated note, love your hair! And the candid moment with your wife was adorable :)

The birds are already having a field day north of u on our sun flowers.....do to the large amount of produce from my garden spot always lots of free food that is so luvd by our chickens. Actually have millet growing where the bird feeders were last winter.

I have fence wire over my chicken run. In the fall I just through the sunflower seed heads on it. Many of the seeds fall out on their own but I also occasionally hit them with a stick to thresh them on to the ground.

oh gosh millet! That would be a hard one to share...LOL Love it so much!!!! I make my sushi and my grape leaves with it. Yummy!

Amazing!

very lovely

Great ideas.

Interesting ideas.

Chooks are amazing

Hmm, at 0:44 it looks like somebody's wearing stockings and slippers similar to the "witch of the east," in the Wizard of Oz. ^ ^ You're so right about the massive return to be harvested from planting one seed and harvesting a seedhead.

really nice

We well the chippys helped us plant sunflowers lol the chippys and rabbits are enjoying them now Happy harvest im very tired but trying to push on Much love xoxox

This is awesome I made a millet vegan meat loaf that's some good stuff and I eat butternut daily good video new sub

A added bonus is the sunflowers and millet can be good for your soil.

You may get new, smaller sunflowers on the stalks you left standing. I always do.

Chicken heaven!

super nice harvest. it would be interesting to see how much oil could be pressed from that sunflower plot if totally harvested.cant wait to see the corn harvest.

Thanks for sharing👍🦋👍🦋👍🦋

I would wrap hanging sunflowers with a mesh screen to catch any that drop as they dry

Sean rub the flowers off of the sunflower seeds so the heads dry faster and are less likley to mold.

Hi there! Love your vids ❤️ We’re from Qld Australia and am a lil annoyed that out of all of the sunflower seeds I planted, only 2 have survived 🤷‍♀️

i can dig it. jah bless!

I used to be a raptor biologist and what we do is run some survey cord at about eight feet and tie some aluminum pans on it. It is a little trashy looking but it really seems to mess with a raptors mind from two perspectives, 1) the twisting aluminum startles them and 2) as a falconer I can attest to this personally, it is dangerous for them to fly around wires.

sunflowers I grow different varieties here in Florida pick it up when I feed my chickens I buy by the bag but now that I see that I can grow them that's why I started doing it cuz if I even do it more now I think it's important each other people

I love when it's time to harvest pumpkins we are having pumpking chili or soup atleast twice a week now :) Also can't wait to turn some of them into lovely jelly

Stanley is so cute.

Great presentation thank . Congratulations on your wonderful speaking voice - I would suggest that if you ever needed to , an audio job would just fall into your lap . God Bless your family and farm.

i wonder how a crop of winter wheat at the sunflower/millet location would do. Perhaps there are two crops to be had there each year.

Great treats for the girls and you! Question! What is the pink blooming shrub mid frame at 5:40? It's beautiful. Love what you guys do! Blessings Abound!

i grew some of those black seeded sunflowers (like you, from the chicken seeds) in our new hoophouse, half as a joke, to "see what happens." HUGE. The girls LOVED picking at the heads. We have plans to grow a lot more next year. we just need to find a way to protect the seedlings from the deer out in the field. no, there are not enough hours in the day, but we persevere, right? cheers!

I see that you have some squash on trays in your greenhouse. Are you curing them? If so, what kinds need cured and for home long? In the sun? in the shade? Thank you so much!

Looks like your gonna have to build a drying shed specifically for next year.

👍

Squirrels get my sunflower heads before I can use them as winter feed. Good luck.

So Much Virtue Signalling , OMG !

Rodents probably enjoying too

Thank you for this video! At what point did you pick the sunflowers? We’re they still looking fresh or had they dried out quite a bit?

Is the rope on the greenhouse post a scratcher for Stanley?

That's an awesome idea. I don't have a lot of experience with any of this, but I'm curious to know what your thoughts are over doing sunflowers over field corn. With the amount of Labor that you've done you may as well throw some corn through a grinder. Potato potaato?

Just curious 'cause I love how your mind works....What are the tree stump sections along the fenceline?

That's nearly a 1000/1 ROI! Nothing gives that, even crack😂

Hang upside down in rafters keeps them from getting moldy

Do you get a mice problem doing this system?

Beautiful You don’t have any weasel, possum or raccoons?

Id be interested to know how you will process your corn. I grew an abundance of Indian corn and tried grinding it in a coffee grinder and broke it. A grinding/milling machine is so expensive.

Stanley!

Would you say that sunflowers are the easiest and most productive food to grow for chickens ? I have a clear 1 acre lot I want to use to grow chicken feed..but I want the least amount of work involved.

the only diffrences i see that deal with the sun flowers is the number of flower "heads" you put in a bundle, as ror millet i never grew that before so i can not comment on that, my problems with drying sun flowers are chip munks, squriels, and mice, no matter what i do them fury little buggers seem to get to the sun flower heads,, great looking flock of hens

I find it difficult to dry the sunflower seeds on the heads where I live. Its too humid I guess. So I need to remove the seeds before the heads are dry.