Any 'best' varieties of sunflowers for animal feed?

Does anyone know, from experience or reading, which sunflower varieties are best for growing for animal feed?  Do they have different levels of nutrients or should I just go for the largest flower heads I can find?  Or would you actually get more seeds from a multi-flower-head plant than one that grows 1 huge head??

What animals are you feeding, and in what form do you plan to make the feed available?

We have fully gone over to the multi-head black oil "field sunflowers." This is the stuff we buy as bird seed in 40 lb. sacks. The bird pick through, in early fall and in deep winter, discarding the smaller seeds and replant the entire patch. They are visually gorgeous, bloom endlessly, feed my bees for months, and are extremely resilient -- no watering or maintenance in a normal year.

There may be that other varieties beat these in terms of yield per plant. But in terms of value vs. effort, they are untouchable.

Like Douglas, I would recommend black oil seed sunflowers for feed.

Our deer loved them.  The deer ate a whole food plot of sunflowers overnight.

oh yes, what animals...well, we don't have any just yet, but hoping to have muscovy ducks soon, & chickens/sheep/cattle/even a couple of goats are also possibilities.  Just wondering if there were any that were more productive than others; but the resiliency of these black oil "field sunflowers" sounds like a good way to go... are they tall enough that they need staking?

Jonie said, " are they tall enough that they need staking?

If you only have a few though we had a whole food plot so there was no way to stake them.

The stalks are strong enough.

The plants get 5 to 7 feet tall:


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