After a time, the crop I thought was corn sent up a shoot with a head on it and I knew immediately that the mystery crop was grain sorghum or milo.
Corn? Nope. |
The doves are tearing the sorghum up! |
I can remember as a kid on the farm, we planted sorghum a year or two as an alternative to soybeans. The variety we planted was more of a red-colored grain. I can remember that it was a really heavy crop and you couldn't fill your storage bins very full. I also remember that unloading the sorghum into the bins kicked up some wicked dust.
So what am I going to do with this 'gift' growing in the garden? I've decided that I'm going to save the seed off of it and plant it next year to produce at least some of our chicken feed on our little homestead. I researched and read HERE that sorghum is an excellent protein source for poultry, exceeding that of corn. It would be nice to be self sufficient for at least a portion of our chicken feed that they don't get by foraging for bugs, worms, grasses on our pasture.
Sorghum Head |
As I was surveying the sorghum, I noticed a bunch of ants climbing the stalks and surmised that sorghum must really be a sweet crop. Then I remembered that sorghum is not only used for grain and forage, but for making syrup. I'm going to manually harvest and dry the sorghum soon and save the seed for next year to see if we can be successful in giving the hens a little variety in their diet. We'll let you know if our experiment is successful!
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