Azolla (water fern) as protein-rich animal feed!

Azolla is a native water plant with some seriously exciting attributes for anyone looking to develop closed-loop cycles for organic animal feed. It’s high in protein and minerals, fixes nitrogen, is palatable to chickens, pigs, goats, ducks and cows, and can be grown on any closed body of water.

At Milk wood Farm we have many emerging animal production systems, and we’re looking for cost and energy effective ways to produce organic feed for them, using passive and regenerative techniques. Azolla looks like a great tool for us.

Pastured pullets getting into Azolla for breakfast – photo via solraya.blogspot.com Azolla growing on the pond at Milkwood, ignored until now but quite happy regardless Azolla in mid-winter at Milkwood Farm. We get hard frosts, which causes the Azolla to die back and retreat to the edges, but doesn’t seem to kill it altogether, which is great.