Greens to grow

[rjohns39]

I sprout during the winter. Have done wheat, barley, BOSS, millet, popcorn, and deer forage mix, including the one that is heavy on the brassicas.

My favorites are a mix of barley and BOSS.

I find it cheapest to simply buy a bag of feed grain. You need to be sure that it is not heat treated, and that it is intended for feed, not for planting.

For myself, I sprout lentils, and alfalfa or a seed mix from the health food store.

Your chickens would be in heaven if you shared some of your alfalfa sprouts The one compromise I make in winter is to feed my kids alfalfa hay. I can't find it without preservatives and I'm sure it's a GMO variety—but the nutritional value outweighs the bad IMO.

Ben, dunno it's my first try. I have learned a lot from others here and that photo shows one of my mistakes, putting more than one layer of seed in the tray. I guess once I get it right a 12" x 12" tray one seed layer deep will be a good snack for one day. As I understand you only want to provide a portion of their diet as greens.

JT

It only takes 8 days to grow sprouts, I'm hoping to get setup to do it this winter.

 

[lazy gardener]

So if i put a screen on top to keep the sprouts going it would not last?

Well, they might last for a while before they got rancid, or before the nutrient level dropped. The purpose of sprouts is so that you can have a constant supply of fresh, high nutrient, green sprouts for your birds. If you want to have a cut and come again crop for them, I suggest that you simply make some frames out of 2 x 4's covered with hdw. cloth. This will allow the plants to grow up through the hardware cloth where the birds can nibble them off. By growing them in soil, which you could amend with any type of fertilizer, they will maintain a higher nutrient level than if you tried growing them in trays on coconut mats or what ever.

Sprouts are entirely different. You simply sprout the grains, feed that batch of sprouts to the birds, then sprout a new batch. There is no such thing as "trying to make them last". Older sprouts are not as nutritious as sprouts which are used at the right stage in their growth. Ever go to a salad bar, and see the alfalfa sprouts that you can put on your salad? YUMMY. However, if those alfalfa sprouts were grown on a cocoa mat so they could repeatedly be cut, the nutrient level, and palatability of them would be poor.

Your chickens would be in heaven if you shared some of your alfalfa sprouts The one compromise I make in winter is to feed my kids alfalfa hay. I can't find it without preservatives and I'm sure it's a GMO variety—but the nutritional value outweighs the bad IMO.
It only takes 8 days to grow sprouts, I'm hoping to get setup to do it this winter.

My birds won't ever get alfalfa sprouts from me b/c they are too pricey. I am a penny pincher at heart! I had considered using alfalfa cubes (meant for horses) or rabbit alfalfa pellets, but a number of folks told me their birds really didn't care for them, so it's back to sprouting. I have millet, barley, BOSS ready to go, and may pick up some whole corn.

A neat video posted last year showed a guy who did deep litter for his birds. He had massive piles of leaves. He put his sprouting grains in the leaf piles, where they sprouted well. The birds then could flip through the leaves and harvest the sprouts. It's a nice concept when the weather is warm enough.

Have you considered growing your own alfalfa?

 

[Benschickenfarm]

Thats pretty much what i plan to build too!looks great JT