Fodder Question?

[seuferer]

Hello! I have been reading some of the fodder articles and blogs and would like to try this for my chickens. I live in Iowa and there will be no greenery for my free-range hens for several months! It seems fairly straight forward - but how much fodder should I try to grow for twenty-six chickens? I see people using cake-pan-sized trays or standard dish-pan sized trays, but I can't find any reference to how many hens that would feed or how often that amount should be provided per hen per week or whatever? I do realize the fodder should not be their only food by any means, but how much should I provide as a supplement?

I'm excited to try this! Please advise me as to what has been beneficial for your flock?

 

[BDutch]

@gtaus has an article on growing fodder (barley). Did you read that?
Bet he can give you all the right answers.

 

[DiYMama540]

Also @WannaBeHillBilly is a fodder grower!

 

[gtaus]

@BDutch, thanks for the shout out.

how much fodder should I try to grow for twenty-six chickens? I see people using cake-pan-sized trays or standard dish-pan sized trays, but I can't find any reference to how many hens that would feed or how often that amount should be provided per hen per week or whatever? I do realize the fodder should not be their only food by any means, but how much should I provide as a supplement?

I grow my barley fodder in Dollar Tree plastic dish bins. I have 10 chickens. Each morning, I give my 10 chickens a half bin of fodder as a treat in addition to their commercial layer feed. They eat it all and there is no waste. It's the only green feed my chickens get during the long northern Minnesota winter.

I started out first giving my chickens a whole bin of barley fodder in the morning, but I found that in our sub-freezing temps that the barley fodder was freezing before it was all eaten. I have read that fodder is as much as 95% water, so you can see that it would freeze in our temps that at the time were -10F outside. So I cut the amount back to half a bin, and since then, the chickens eat all of the fodder up before it has a chance to freeze.

Another change I have made for my winter barley fodder feeding is that I take the fodder bin off the fodder tower for the last day or so and let it sit in the sunshine on a south facing window. During that time, I let the bin dry out a bit so the root mat is no longer damp like on the tower. I do not water those bins sitting in the sunshine at the window. The barley grass turns a darker green and still continues to grow for those couple of days. Thanks to @WannaBeHillBilly for that suggestion which has proven to work well for me with the winter feeding. A wet fodder just freezes too fast in my Minnesota winter. Allowing the barley fodder to dry out and grow in the sunshine at the window for a couple days is now my routine for winter feedings.

In case you have not seen my article on this issue:
My $10 Inexpensive DIY Fodder Tower with Dollar Tree Dish Bins

 

[ColoradoPip]

Great looking system!

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

I can't talk about chickens, but for my 29 ducks a bin of fodder lasts 2 days. - Not because they would not eat more of that stuff, but because they don't get more.
If i had a second fodder tower (planning to build one!) they would eat a full bin of greens a day - and still ask for more…
I tried to grow fodder several times and mostly failed due to mold development. @gtaus fodder tower system works really great! I spend about 10 minutes every day to grow the fodder, but most of that time is due to the extensive fodder statistics i create.
The fodder tower is located in my garage, which sits at an almost constant temperature of 10°C (50F), so i just have to water the tower once a day for now. Raising temperatures in spring may require a more frequent application of DHMO, but we'll see.

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

BTW: I gave some fresh fodder to the ducks for lunch today:

 

[gtaus]

Great looking system!

Well, I just used some scrap lumber I had sitting out behind the garage. I left the fodder tower unpainted just to be sure people would look at the functionality of the design. I am sure one could paint the tower and make it look more presentable. My goal at that time was to make something that was inexpensive to build and worked.

 

[gtaus]

I can't talk about chickens, but for my 29 ducks a bin of fodder lasts 2 days. - Not because they would not eat more of that stuff, but because they don't get more.

I do realize the fodder should not be their only food by any means, but how much should I provide as a supplement?

Yes, my 10 chickens would eat more than half a bin per day, but I was limited to that amount because the fodder would freeze into a green ice block in our winter temps. Still, I consider fodder as a supplement to the commercial layer feed and not a replacement.

BTW, I put about 1 pound of dry barley seeds into each fodder bin. So the dry weight of the fodder seed is about 1/2 pound per day for a half bin. The actual weight of the fodder is about 2 1/2 pounds fora a half bin, but as I mentioned, fodder is as much as 95% water weight. I think if you want to consider fodder as a treat, then you might want to consider the dry weight of the seeds used to make the fodder.

If you decide to make fodder for your 26 chickens, then I would start out with maybe a bin per day and see how long it takes for the chickens to eat it up. Like any change in feed, it may take your chickens a few days to decide if they are going to eat the new food. My chickens were raised on fresh lawn grass in the summer, and when I introduced barley fodder to them, it took a few days for them to warm up to the new taste. Now, in winter, they tear into the barley fodder and actually prefer it to the chicken scratch I throw out.

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

Well, I just used some scrap lumber I had sitting out behind the garage. I left the fodder tower unpainted just to be sure people would look at the functionality of the design. I am sure one could paint the tower and make it look more presentable. My goal at that time was to make something that was inexpensive to build and worked.

I would have left it unpainted too, but my wife insisted that she did not want to have those »lumps of dirty ol' wood« in "her" garage, so i had the red fence paint sitting around …