Don't tell the wife, I'm growing fodder in the 2nd bathroom!

[Ketta_czarina]

Some of you may remember that this summer I experimented with growing barley fodder for my chickens (My $10 Inexpensive DIY Fodder Tower with Dollar Tree Dish Bins). My fodder tower was in my garage at that time. That was a successful experiment and I stated that I wanted to try growing fodder in the house this winter.

Well, it's October in Minnesota and the fresh green grass is no longer growing. Today I snuck in my fodder tower while the wife was in town. I put the fodder tower in the bathtub of our second (mostly unused) bathroom. I pulled the shower curtain across the rod so she cannot see the fodder tower if she walks past the second bathroom. Problem is, sooner or later, I know my wife will find out.

So, if anyone wants to offer a list of excuses I can use on that occasion, I'd like to hear your suggestions so I can keep peace in the family. I am kicking around a few ideas, but don't know how well they will go over when I get found out.

1) Fodder tower? What fodder tower? I don't see no fodder tower.

2) Oh yeah, I meant to tell you about that, but you were so busy that I just didn't want to bother you at the time and then I just forgot about it, I guess.

3) The chickens seemed less happy and a little less perky without fresh grass to eat, so I thought I would grow some fresh greens in the other bathroom, which we really don't use much, and you probably won't even think about it, really.

4) I got a request from the good people at BYC forums to update my article on the fodder tower and they wanted to know if I was having any success growing fodder in the house during the winter.

Any help in advance appreciated. Obviously, this is a limited time request.....

BTW, first batch of barley seeds is soaking in the first bin tonight. So I am already committed.

This is HILARIOUS. Good luck... by some miracle I made it home from the ranch today without any new birds. I’m gonna have to look up your original article, sounds like a cool idea!

 

[Ketta_czarina]

@MROO oh my gosh I love this story too. Hehehe

 

[gtaus]

I’m gonna have to look up your original article, sounds like a cool idea!

Living in northern Minnesota, I thought it might be nice to learn how to grow fresh greens for my chickens during the winter. Growing fodder is very easy, is more nutritious than the dry grain, and you expand your feed because 1# of dry grain turns into about 5# of fresh green fodder. There are lots of reasons to try growing fodder so I would encourage you to consider it.

I posted my article on the $10 fodder tower to let people know you don't need to invest much money to try it out. Also, I made my tower using Dollar Tree dish bins, which I also use as nest boxes inside the coop. Those cheap dish bins are useful for lots of things around the house, garage, and now for the chickens. If the fodder tower was a bust, I still could use those dish bins for any number of projects.

 

[Kiwibird]

Inspired by this thread, I have made a small scale fodder tower from punctured 1 litre yoghurt cartons. It's living in the laundry tub for now. I have been soaking grain in single containers, but thought I would get trickle down watering on my side, even though trickle down economics doesn't work!

 

[gtaus]

Inspired by this thread, I have made a small scale fodder tower from punctured 1 litre yoghurt cartons. It's living in the laundry tub for now. I have been soaking grain in single containers, but thought I would get trickle down watering on my side, even though trickle down economics doesn't work!

Trickle down watering in a fodder tower does work. All I have to do is fill the top bin and everything below is also watered as each bin floods and fills and then drains into the bin below. I honestly spend less than 5 minutes per day total watering my bins in the tower twice a day.

Let me know how your fodder experiment works for you. I have had great success with barley. I am also growing oat fodder, but so far, it does not seem to germinate and grow as well. I am trying a number of oat bins, and some barley/oat bins, this week. But if the oat seeds don't sprout and grow very well, I'll just end up mixing my bag of oats into the chicken scratch, so no loss. If the oats don't work out, I might try wheat seeds. But they are more expensive than either barley or oats. Sunflower seeds are very expensive, but I have read they can be sprouted. According to my local mill, most people just grow barley fodder because it's the cheapest grain and people just have more success growing it as fodder.

 

[Kiwibird]

I'm using wheat, because it's most readily available. My system will have the newest at the bottom, where the tub below will soak it. No woodwork, just nested tubs. I'll keep you posted.

 

[gtaus]

Hmmm shower curtain left open and she didn’t notice... you are a lucky man... or perhaps we should say.... well played wife!!! Maybe she is on a blog this very minute...ha, he thinks I don’t know his secret(followed by a mildly sinister cackle).....

No, the wife did not see the bathroom curtain open. In our house, the second bathroom is on the "other" side of the house along with our guest bedroom and my home office. She really does not have much need to go to that side of the house on a daily basis. She does have some things stored in the closets on that end of the house, but mostly seasonal bedding and bed spreads. Where I am concerned that I will get caught is if the fodder starts to smell or if she goes into the second bathroom to clean it (she cleans the bathroom even though it does not get used!) and opens up that curtain.

If she found the fodder tower, I would know about it from her. You would probably read about it in the obituary pages after you notice I am no longer posting to BYC forums!

 

[gtaus]

I'm using wheat, because it's most readily available. My system will have the newest at the bottom, where the tub below will soak it. No woodwork, just nested tubs. I'll keep you posted.

Yes, please let me know how wheat works for you. If you have nested tubs, that's really cool. Please post a picture of the tubs if you can.

I will tell you that by Day 8, I think my barley fodder was about 9 inches tall. The fodder does not need sunlight as it grows these first days, but around Day 9 or Day 10 I noticed that the grass was about 10.5 inches tall and starting to turn yellow.

 

[Kiwibird]

I'll post pics when the I reach the green stage.

 

[gtaus]

I can't really tell you how long the little buggers live, because ours have been inconsistent from the get-go. To explain that, I have to tell you a story:

Loved the story.

An aquarium would work, but it's probably a bit of overkill. You only need a few inches of oatmeal to keep your buggies happy. If you put much more in there, you'll never find 'em until they fully morph into beetles.

I was talking about using the aquarium as the container because I think I have a nice screen cover for it. I was thinking about only putting a couple inches of oatmeal in the bottom, not filling the entire tank to the top.

I watched a few YouTube videos on growing meal worms and understand the process better. They used carrots, but the concept was the same in that they eat the oatmeal but "drink" the carrot.

For harvesting meal worms, one guy showed how he used a series of sorting screens made to fit on a 5 gallon bucket. He had a pretty big operation and stated he had about 5000 meal worms. Sounds like a lot to me. But he was able to sort out the mealies from the eggs from the beetles with those screens in just a couple of minutes. He had a number of trays going at one time. It looked like a lot of work to me, but he stated that it only takes a few minutes to set up a tray, and then it basically sits for 2 weeks before you need to sort and sift the meal worms and start new trays.

At any rate, you got me interested in trying this someday. Thanks.