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In years past, many poultry nutritionists would typically discount the nutritional value of grain sorghum compared to corn or wheat. The nutritional value of sorghum was assumed to be 85 to 90 percent of the total feeding value of corn. For sorghum to replace corn in a lower-cost feed formulation, this meant that sorghum had to trade at prices much lower than corn before it would be included in the formulation. Today’s sorghum varieties compare more favorable to corn in lower-cost feed formulations. Old varieties of grain sorghum contained relatively high amounts of an anti-nutritional compound called tannin. The presence of tannin in poultry feeds is well known to suppress growth and performance of all types of poultry (Nyachoti et. al, 1996). Tannins bind to proteins and render them less available for metabolism. Although tannin reduces bird damage in fields of sorghum, poultry are birds, too, and are also affected by the anti-nutritional properties of tannin.
