feeding duckweed and azolla to chickens

I have grown duckweed for many years.  Each time I move house I bring some with me.  I like the little plants floating happily on water.  I have heard how great it is as a poultry feed, but have never been able to get poultry to eat much of it.

I have tried floating duckweed on water in a container in their yard, they sometimes nibble a little but really don't eat much of it and not deliberately.  I have tried giving duck weed to them in a heap fresh, or dry, or fresh mixed with normal feed, or dry mixed with normal feed.  Usually they would peck around it and eat very little of it.

This was rather frustrating as everyone says how great duckweed is as a poultry feed.  Oh well, I keep growing it as I still like it.  Duckweed has other uses apart from poultry feed so this isn't a great loss.

This last summer I gave the chickens some azolla, and they ate it all quickly.  I gave it to them floating on water and they ate every last piece.  Every time I gave them more azolla they ate it all pretty fast.

Azolla in a container of water, it doubles each few days so I scoop it out to feed to chickens

I wondered if my chickens had just never learned to eat duck weed, perhaps after learning to eat azolla they would then know how to eat duck weed.  So I gave them some duckweed floating on water, they slowly ate some of it but did not seem overly interested in eating it.

I then gave them some duckweed and azolla mixed together floating in a container of water, the chickens picked out all of the azolla, and ignored the duckweed.  Perhaps azolla is more palatable, or maybe chickens just find it easier to eat azolla as it is larger?  I don't know why but my chickens just seem to enjoy eating azolla and dislike eating duckweed.  I am fine with this as azolla is also a great (and free) poultry feed.

After trying this a few times the chickens started to eat the duckweed.  First they quickly eat all of the azolla, then they slowly finish off the duckweed.  This is fantastic, it means that over summer they have another source of free, high protein food.

Duckweed and Vietnamese coriander

Both azolla and duckweed grow floating on water and thrive under similar conditions, both double their biomass every few days or so under ideal conditions, neither particularly likes direct sun or excessive heat, neither seems to grow during cold weather or survive well being frozen, both are harvested by scooping out hand fulls every day or so during the warmer months.

For me it takes no extra effort to grow one as opposed to the other, and being able to feed both is even better.  Azolla sequesters nitrogen from the air, which is nice when used as mulch or compost.  Both azolla and duckweed can be used to suppress algae and mosquitoes in stagnant water such as around aquatic plants.  I grow them separately in different containers, but they can just as easily grow together.

After looking on the internet I found the following:

Azolla
Fresh azolla contains:
18% to 35% protein depending on growing conditions
15% fibre
It seems to contain a bunch of minerals and other things

Duckweed  
Fresh duckweed contains:
About 92-94% water
15% to 43% protein depending on growing conditions
5% to 30% fibre (most references state 5%, the higher number was for slow growing duckweed)
5% lipids
It appears to contain a lot of minerals and other things
Little or no indigestible matter even for monogastric animals

So now I have both duckweed and azolla to feed the poultry over the warmer months.  Winter started today and neither azolla or duckweed are growing very fast.  As long as I keep a little somewhere that doesn't get too frozen too often they should survive winter and I should always have both growing for me.

I sell both azolla and duckweed through my for sale page along with various perennial vegetables, heirloom vegetable seeds, and herbs.