Feeding whole sunflower seeds.

[Medic24]

Ok folks, here is a new one for ya.......................

I plant about 22 acres of dent corn every year, but this year I have agreed to side plant some heirloom greasy beans on contract for a large seed mail order company. The beans will use my field corn as a trellis, so, I plant, they contract some one to pick seed before I pick or cut the corn...............they pay a good bit toward the fertilizers etc. The rep has offered to ship me some several pounds of field sunflower seeds, as well as a few other seeds that he swears I can 'side plant' inside of my corn rows...........including some squashes, punpkins, gourds, etc, anything that won't cross polluntate with those high dollar beans, FREE!!,! so........anyway, thinking about planting some mammoth,sunbrite oil, or at least larger sunflowers among the corn, and although I have done some home work that shows me the seeds are super feed nutrition wise, and can be fed whole, my thought was to keep it simple and incorporate it in both greenchop silage, as well as drying the heads and grinding them along with my whole corn later in the winter for a dry feed...................the fat, and protein is supposed to be comparable to cotton seed meal, and the mix should not include more then 25% sunflower seeds due to high fat content causing scours etc........ok, so thats what research has told me....but I am a real world kinda guy, and would love to know if anyone here has or does feed sunflower seeds or meal to their livestock, and what experiences, good or bad that they had?.......Anyone?????????

Seem's as tho sunflower is mostly a Kansas, and Dakota crop.....................So this will be a first for our area I suppose. :cboy:

 

[somn]

This is maybe off the subject but it is something to think about. Many years ago when we still had a golden sun store here in the area. I bought a protien pellet from them that apparently used sunflower shells or maybe even the seeds for filler. Well needless to say we had one heck of a mess the next year in our fields. Everywhere that we hauled manure out of those 2 pens we had volunteer sunflowers growing. Worst part was being kids we didn't drive real straight when we hauled manure so we had to spray the entire field. If I remember right the spray didn't kill them real good as we always had some big pretty yellow flowers looking at us everyday.

 

[mnmtranching]

I have often mixed black oil sunflowers [the bird seed] with oats and millet. Everything loves the sunflowers, deer, turkeys, doves etc. Cattle to. I have grazed this mixture and sometimes baled it.
Sunflowers can be planted with corn and the other stuff you mentioned, makes great silage. You might have a hard time controlling weeds.

 

[TexasBred]

Nutritionally the sunflower seeds would be a great ingredient, BUT, like Somn said you will have quite a few pass thru the cow and end up on the ground just as you have with whole cottonseed. Probably in the neighborhood of 30-40%. (That's a guess) I don't know of anyone personally feeding them except a few goat farms. Grazon P&D should kill any that come up in your pastures. Sorry i can't be more help.

 

[dun]

Grazon P&D should kill any that come up in your pastures.

I can't say about in pastures, but the folks around here that planted them years ago are still trying to figure out how to get rid of the darn things.

 

[TexasBred]

They can always do them like thistles and dig them up. Pure hell on the old back tho. Or mix the herbicide a little stronger. I've had a few wild sunflowers as well as bull nettles come up on some new ground I cleared last year and just used a pump up hand sprayer and Remedy to spot spray and get rid of them. Worked great.