Growing and harvesting your own bird seed

[Crazy Bird Lady]

Has anyone tried growing their own bird seed to maturity, and feeding that to their birds? I have only had limited success, but its something i would like to learn more about.
The easiest thing to grow was sunflowers, which they loved but i could only let them have small amounts at a time so it was a little frustrating for them, getting given a massive sunflower head to pick at, and then have it taken away!
I would really like to grow my own millets, but havent had any luck as yet. I grow mustard seeds, and have also let some of my veggies in the garden go to seed, like silverbeet and radishes, which they love to eat the buds and ripe seeds from.

[triplebbirds]

This year we did sunflower seeds for them. instead of giving them the whole head you could let it ripen all the way on the flower. Cut the head and hang it upside down. Then after about a week of letting it dry you could take two sunflower heads and rub them togeather and the seeds should fall off.
We also did peppers for the birds. Its very winter now and they are still getting the peppers from the garden. They went in the dehydrater of course. The pumpkins didnt grow well this year. During the summer my birds ate out of the garden a lot. I will probably make an attempt at growing millet this year.

[Crazy Bird Lady]

Most of my sunflowers did ripen on the plant, due to the size of them, i couldnt possibly feed all of those to them fresh... but i was most motivated to grow these so that they could eat fresh kernels - and i must say i loved seeing Mulga's face all wet from sunflower seeds - i could tell he loved them even more when they were fresh and moist!
I liked giving them the heads because they would eat the petals and the pollen etc that covered the top of the seeds, and it was good foraging for them to pluck the seeds out... but i could always see them get frustrated when i took it away after 5 minutes....
I grew too many, so i took a few around the corner to a cockatoo, and he made a quick meal from them!