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Friday, September 28, 2012

Fodder Ahoy!

Time to start sprouting grains again and feeding fodder to the ruminants! Hay is downright expensive this year, my pasture is bare, and the animals are eating a bale of hay a day! Eeek! Time to start giving them a second choice to hay, and see about cutting the ol' feed bill. 

I think I'll pick up some more trays at Wilco tomorrow and some whole barley or wheat too... With luck I'll get those sprouts a'sproutin by nightfall! 

And maybe I'll actually remember to take pictures this time?!?!


6 comments:

Wendy said...

Nice...any advice on doing this for chickens? I've been doing research into sprouting grains for the birds and I love the idea. But I'm confused about what type of whole grains I can use and the local feed store just gives me a blank, you've got a purple horn coming out of your forehead type of look, when I've asked questions. It's also hard for me to find whole grains that are for animal use and not treated for growing. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Wendy said...

Nice...I'm very interested to learn more.

Goat Song said...

Wendy, the best grains for sprouting are whole barley and whole wheat. :) Both are extremely high in digestable nutrients and they grow like gangbusters. Whole oats do moderately okay, but they sprout really sporadically and are finicky if the weather is too hot or cold. I keep my sprouts out in the barn and my barley/wheat still plugs away in 30 degree weather and 90+ degree weather.

I would just go to your local feed store and ask for a bag of whole grain (wheat or barley; whichever they have. Whole barley is VERY hard to find in most areas) and just make sure that it's safe to feed to livestock. If you're at a feed store then there's a pretty high chance that all grain there will be safe for livestock use. Unless you live in the grain belt of the mid-west that is...

Let me know if I can answer any more questions for you! :) I've been meaning to take pictures of my setup and how I do my stuff but it takes at least a week to do that since I want to photograph the sprouts in each daily stage. Sigh.

Wendy said...

Thanks so much for your help. Also sorry about posting twice, I figured blogger ate my first post. ;)

Goat Song said...

You're welcome and no worries. ;) Both of your first comments went into my blog's spam folder, although I have NO IDEA why! So I just had to pull them out and verify on my dashboard that your comments can be accepted. Normally I don't have to do that, but every now and again my spam filter acts up. [rolls eyes]

Anonymous said...

I too have been thinking about doing sprouts, but have no idea how to get started. Do you use trays? potting soil? Looking forward to your post and pictures about it. Love how you are always trying new things. Thank you!
Heather in PA