Growing Amaranth for Chickens

[beavis]

I'm going to post this up on BYC as well.

So I just bought some Amaranth seeds, think this would be a good grain to grow to supplement the diet of our chickens, they could even peck at them as they free-range at times.

Then I found this article on Amaranth:

Excerpt:

We phoned Dr. Cheeke to get his perspective on the seriousness of these negative results. He told us that there are
definitely toxins and/or anti-nutritional factors in the raw grain, and that it is less of a problem with cooked grain.
He said that a scientist in Australia had been feeding raw amaranth seed to poultry as the major component of the
diet. He found that chickens went into spasms, convulsions, and finally died. This unidentified factor causes liver
damage. Other problems are caused by saponins, including unpalatability. But to keep this in perspective, Dr.
Cheeke pointed out that there are few raw foodstuffs that do not have problems. Raw soybeans contain 10 kinds of
toxins. Raw kidney beans will kill rats, but cooking eliminates the problem. The key seems to be to use the grain
in moderate amounts, and to cook it. We asked whether we could say that there would be no problem unless people
had little other than amaranth to eat. He thought that this was probably a fair statement. It is our opinion that more
research needs to be done before we can recommend amaranth grain as a major ingredient in animal feed. To our
knowledge it has not been shown whether these factors decrease the value of amaranth in human nutrition. Until
more work is done, however, the feeding trial results must moderate our otherwise enthusiastic promotion of grain
amaranth.

Full article here: http://www.echotech.org/technical/technotes/amaranth.PDF

Any thoughts on this? Should Amaranth be cooked before it is fed to chickens if at all?

 

[sparks]

I grew a few Amaranth as flowers in the garden. They were red and grew anywhere from 2 feet to 6 feet tall. Very beautiful and showy. They are crazy reseeders! They are everywhere now. Composting did not kill the seeds. We really enjoy them and pull them out if they turn up in the wrong area (everywhere). The chickens have picked @ them but it is not their fav. Might be a different kind. No problems with our chickens and this will be their second year. Hope this helps some.:happy_flower

 

[rebbetzin]

I have Amaranth in my garden too... I haven't fed any to the chickens. I too read that it is toxic. I don't know if a few seeds would hurt them, but, I am not going to experiment with it.

It does reseed like crazy though... I wish it was safe to feed them that, it grows like mad here in the summer!!

 

[vfem]

I got these seeds to plant in my garden as well.... I assume if the chickens get into my garden and help themselves to whatever they want, it something is not highly toxic I don't feel occasional picking at products will hurt them.

It sounds as if making it a main part of their diet is a bad idea!

 

[ams3651]

thanks for posting, I also thought of them to plant for the chickens to find.