Jerusalem Artichoke for General Animal Feed?

Sitting here talking with my wife, I had an idea. If I took mostly mature but not dried out Jerusalem Artichokes (tubers, leaves, and mature blossoms) ground them together, and extruded them as pellets, how decent of a general use complete feed would that be? I know, there's probably too much water from fresh tubers to pellet well, let's say I dried them first. One plant produces me around 10 pounds fresh, 1 ish pounds dry tubers that's around 3,000 calories a dry pound of I estimate right. Mostly starch, some sugar. Add all the green leafs and leaf stems (a pretty stout handful) for fiber, vitamins, and chlorophyll.  Add to that the filled out seed heads for protein and fat.

Not sure on the amount of leaves or seeds produced per plant, but if it's enough, I sorta bet it is, that could make a functional one-crop source for an all-stock feed. I could see something like that used as a base feed for goats, cattle, and pigs. Then add your classic kitchen waste, fallen apples, and/or decent pasture. Now that I'm thinking about it, I want to play around. I will see if I can run some better estimates on the nutritional numbers this year. Sounds quite interesting to me . I know the tuber can make up to 50 percent of our animals' diets without problem. I wonder how they'd do with a pelleted, version with added feedstuffs.

I don’t know but when I was researching it I found this “recipe” for supposedly alleviating some of the gastrointestinal discomfort.

slice the artichokes and cover them with water and salt. (About 2 quarts of water to one teaspoon of salt.)  
Let sit overnight. rinse.
Put them in a pot, cover with water and bring to a boil.  
pour off the water and stir-fry the artichokes.
They are still quite crispy with good flavor, but without causing gas.

Mike Philips wrote:I don’t know but when I was researching it I found this “recipe” for supposedly alleviating some of the gastrointestinal discomfort.

slice the artichokes and cover them with water and salt. (About 2 quarts of water to one teaspoon of salt.)  
Let sit overnight. rinse.
Put them in a pot, cover with water and bring to a boil.  
pour off the water and stir-fry the artichokes.
They are still quite crispy with good flavor, but without causing gas.

Cooking well, vinegar pickling, and fermenting al help break down the inulin.

I found this article that gives the Nutritional attributes for different animals:

https://www.feedipedia.org/node/544

Anne Miller wrote:I found this article that gives the Nutritional attributes for different animals:

https://www.feedipedia.org/node/544

I have that saved in my info file.

I was thinking of making silage from sunchokes. I would love to know how this worked out and what you are feeding. I'm feeding milk goats.

I love this idea. I hope you keep us updated.

I take a lazier approach. I raise jerusalem artichokes in one of my goat pastures. I run the goats through in Sept/October and they strip the leaves and knock the stalks to the ground. I come in behind them and harvest the tubers, eating some, and giving the rest to the chickens and goats as winter feed supplement.

Mine rarely flower however so I don't get the benefit of seeds.