Growing Food for Animals All Year Long

Finding fresh, nutritious food for our animals during the cold, winter months can be difficult. You could go to the store and spend $50/week on just some lettuce, carrots, apples, and herbs. A cheaper and easier solution you can do right at home is to grow your own fodder. Fodder can be fed to livestock such as cattle, goats, horses, chicken, rabbits, sheep, and even cats. Our cats love to nibble on wheat grass fodder and it helps with digestion. Fodder can be made using a wide variety of grains, such as barley, wheat grass, maze, oats, etc. I also mix some microgreens in for our rabbits and chickens. They love it! Microgreens naturally grow without soil in hydroponic systems, so you can also use your fodder trays as a way to grow microgreens.

Steps on growing your fodder

What you will need before you start:

• 7 Trays with holes drilled in the bottom

• Wood to create a sliding drawer system

• An under-the-bed box

• Seeds

There are also systems you can buy for an easy setup. We used Sproutman's Multi-Level Wheatgrass grower kit and have just added on to it.

Step #1 : Soak your seeds that you wish to sprout in water for about 12-24 hours. Seeds should have absorbed the water and will appear plump.

Step #2: Get some shallow trays with drain holes, spread seeds and drain the water. You can create your own rain tower system or buy your own. With the bottom box system, you can keep the trays moist enough and cover with the plastic lid to hold moisture in, so you don't need a pump for an automatic watering system.

Step #3: Make sure the seeds are moist. Using the system we have, we just spray water on the seeds until the roots are long enough to reach the water in the bottom of the tray. Temperature range should be 65-70 degrees, to keep mold off.

Step #4: Watch the shoots grow and harvest when you get the desired length of plants.

Fodder will usually take 6-7 days to grow from seeds to 6-7 inches. With multiple trays, it is possible to produce a good supply of fodder for your animals in a very short time. This system doesn’t require much space and needs very little water. This is also a very cost effective way for growing fodder compared to hay and other alternatives.

Find the system that works best for you and you and your animals can reap all of these benefits:

• Loaded with vitamins that could help eliminate the use of synthetic vitamin packs.

• Having a constant high-grade feed source provides stability in a farm’s feed ration. The amount of proteins, vitamins, energy do not vary as they do with hay, especially if you are sourcing your hay from multiple producers or regions.

• Having a consistent feed reduces stress on livestock, especially a feed that is packed with enzymes that aid in digestion.

• Studies have shown, for example, significantly less heat stress in cows fed fresh fodder. It seems the cows are not spending as much energy digesting their feed, and are thus able to maintain a cooler core body temperature during extremely hot weather.

• The feed is clean and eco-friendly, as there is absolutely no dirt, fertilizer, or pesticides used in the cultivation process.

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