The other day after reading the article in the link I went to check how to translate sorghum in italian and I was so surprised! We call it "saggina" and it's grown mainly to manufacture brooms with it (I believe the production is exclusively artigianal). Sometimes translating to italian is the only way for me to put things in context, as you can imagine
Anyway, I don't think I ever heard of it as animal food so I did a bit of googling around, and found out two interesting facts.

The first one is that bunnies love munching on those brooms, basically the long ramifications of the sorghum. I was wondering if our birds can play with them too.
Tielfan you said that sorghum is safe at most stages; is the ramification a safe stage? Usually it's cut from the plant when the grain is mature.

Fact two is that while many italian people get confused between "saggina" (sorghum vulgare) and "sagina" (sagina subulata), apparently birds love both. The sagina is Irish Moss, or Heath Pearlwort (this second name I never heard before), do we know anything about it being safe for tiels? Apparently some birds really go mad for it.



How old the plant must be to be safe? and when you say "unripe sorghum seed" you mean that we can only give them the seeds growing from the plant?
I am sorry I am a bit confused about what is safe and what is not.

There are several types of sorghum, which I didn't know until just now. The one that's commonly used as a food crop and has the alternate name of milo is Sorghum bicolor. Sorghum vulgare is called broomcorn and is used for making brooms (just like you said!) according to http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/afcm/broomcorn.html According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorghum there are almost 30 sorghum species.

The website at http://forages.oregonstate.edu/fi/topic ... dpoisening seems to be talking about all sorghum species in general. It says there are some stages where the leaves and stems are toxic and other stages where it is safe. It says that old dry stalks will usually be safe, and this is the stage where the bunnies are eating it. It still makes me nervous though and my personal preference would be to not give it to birds.

Here's the research on the seeds and sprouting: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 798.f02t02 They're talking about Sorghum bicolor. It says the seeds are OK before they are sprouted but become toxic after sprouting. They are talking about This website also says that toxicity to animals is related to eating the leaves not the seeds: http://cal.vet.upenn.edu/projects/poiso ... psorgh.htm

So in other words, the seeds are OK when they're growing on the 'mother' plant and when they are ripe but not doing anything. The trouble begins when a seed germinates and starts to grow into a new plant. This is specifically for Sorghum bicolor and I don't know whether it's true for the other species. I couldn't find any specific information about the seeds of Sorghum vulgare.

I'll go looking for information on Sagina subulata next.

Sagina subulata seems to be completely safe. There was one site that even said it was a good ground cover for human babies to play on.

Good news! Even if (and I don't know that yet) it has no nutritional value, I can use it to mix it with the good stuff that they usually discard
I have seen the pictures and it's very pretty, they sell it in small living pots.


About the sorghum branches you are right, it's not worth the risk.
Those brooms are very nice though, I still remember when every household had one that was used regularly... Yes, I am that old LOL
I think I will make one with safe twigs and branches, and add it to the bird room revamp project.
I might also use it to shoo the tiels away from the curtain rod

I have an ordinary store-bought broom that I use for that purpose. Vlad likes to fly up on a very high curtain that I can't reach any other way, and it's not an acceptable place for him to poop.