Millet

[Betty nancy bee]

I understand that the erm “millet” is used for a number of kinds of seeds. 

Is the millet sold as human food in a coop or natural food store good for birds? Digestability? Protein quality?

I like. That I can buy in small quantities when I do my regular food shopping. 

It looks like it would be white millet. 

https://www.wbu.com/products/straight-seeds/millet/

Humans and nature can co-exist, and both can thrive.

Travel and nature blog: https://nancybird375.wordpress.com/

[Lisa Millbank]

I believe the millet typically sold as human food and as birdseed in the US is almost always white proso millet, even though there are a lot of different species of grain called "millet" in cultivation worldwide.  For human food, it's typically sold in the hulled form.  As birdseed, you can buy it as whole grain millet, or hulled.  Small birds (such as juncos and other sparrows) shell each seed of the whole grain form, leaving behind the hulls, but bigger birds like doves just swallow them hull and all.  The advantage of the hulled type is that messy hulls are not left behind, and I'm pretty sure that hulled millet won't germinate either.

Birds like either type just fine, and it's a nutritious food that's comparable to wheat in protein content.  It's best to spread millet on the ground or on a platform-type feeder rather than in a tube feeder.  Finches aren't fond of it, but many ground-feeding birds love it.

Lisa Millbank

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[Joel Geier]

Hi Nancy,

This is a little off-topic, but regarding human consumption of millet:

In college I took a class in Old English Poetry from one Dr. Alain Renoir (yes, the grandson of Pierre-August Renoir, the painter, and the son of Jean Renoir, the film director, neither of whom I met, but also the father of John Renoir, the plumber, who I did meet). Dr. Renoir was a true classicist, and a born actor who would dramatize his lectures and frequently wander off-topic, in unforgettable ways.

I can't remember now how one day he jumped topics from Beowulf to millet, but Julius Caesar was somehow involved. As a young student reading Caesar's "The Civil War," in which Caesar describes long marches all around the Mediterranean fueled mainly by millet, the young Dr. Renoir was so inspired that he went out, bought a bag of millet, and tried to eat it dry.

Apparently that's not the best way for humans to eat millet, and I trust that you've found better recipes. After Dr. Renoir's description of his experience, I've never been interested. But apparently birds don't mind.

Joel

On Mon, Jan 23, 2023 at 3:21 PM Betty nancy bee <bee....@gmail.com> wrote:

I understand that the erm “millet” is used for a number of kinds of seeds. 

Is the millet sold as human food in a coop or natural food store good for birds? Digestability? Protein quality?

I like. That I can buy in small quantities when I do my regular food shopping. 

It looks like it would be white millet. 

https://www.wbu.com/products/straight-seeds/millet/

Humans and nature can co-exist, and both can thrive.

Travel and nature blog: https://nancybird375.wordpress.com/

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