Growing fodder for chickens

[MageofMist]

Can I use scratch grains to sprout for my small flock of silkies? It has corn, wheat, milo, barley and sunflower?

I use wild bird seed which is practically the same for my silkies, alongside the finch seed mix which is really a big combo of grass seeds too.

 

[Kusanar]

Can I use scratch grains to sprout for my small flock of silkies? It has corn, wheat, milo, barley and sunflower?

I wouldn't. Reason being, Scratch generally has cracked corn, any cracked grain will not sprout but will ferment or mold instead. I don't know what the grain fermenting would do to the sprouting grain, but I know you certainly don't want it molding before you feed it out.

 

[NNYchick]

Thank you. I will have to check with my whole foods store and see if they carry wheat and non pearl barley. Good to know I can use wild bird seed and finch seed mix. My only concern with that is it is not readily available here in the winter, when I would like to do my sprouted grains.

 

[The Golden Egg5]

I would like to try growing fodder for my chickens, and I was thinking of mixing milo, white millet, wheat, and black sunflower seed. I have these already and I didn't want to have to pick out just the wheat. Would this mix work well?

 

[Kusanar]

I would like to try growing fodder for my chickens, and I was thinking of mixing milo, white millet, wheat, and black sunflower seed. I have these already and I didn't want to have to pick out just the wheat. Would this mix work well?

I haven't tried it, but I would imagine that it might work ok. Only way to find out is to try it. Set up a tray and see how it does, worst thing that will happen is you will lose 1 tray of the mix.

 

[The Golden Egg5]

I haven't tried it, but I would imagine that it might work ok. Only way to find out is to try it. Set up a tray and see how it does, worst thing that will happen is you will lose 1 tray of the mix.

True. Thanks! I have it set up right now. I let it soak for 24 hrs and I will update when it starts to grow

 

[moomoodiddy]

All of my wheat is molding no matter how much drainage I have. I spread out the seeds as thin as I could without being able to see the bottom.

 

[The Golden Egg5]

All of my wheat is molding no matter how much drainage I have. I spread out the seeds as thin as I could without being able to see the bottom.

Mabye try putting it in a cooler area if you have access?

 

[Fire Ant Farm]

All of my wheat is molding no matter how much drainage I have. I spread out the seeds as thin as I could without being able to see the bottom.

Not to bum you out, but I know there was one blog that I read where everything was fine until they hit summer, and the mold was so persistent they just had to stop.

 

[Kusanar]

All of my wheat is molding no matter how much drainage I have. I spread out the seeds as thin as I could without being able to see the bottom.

Ok, first thing, are you sure it's mold? Some seeds put out really fine white "hairs" that are actually roots and will look like they have fuzzy white mold on them.

If it really is mold, try doing a diluted bleach or peroxide rinse. Or, I have even seen that apparently it is recommended to actually put the seeds in 3% peroxide and "cook" them on the stove for 5 minutes at 140 degrees F. Use a candy thermometer to be sure you don't go over this temperature. This should kill just about everything but the seed it's self. Also, try washing your trays in a 10% bleach mixture and let them air dry, preferably in sunlight. This will give the seeds the very best chance of growing without molding. If that doesn't help, you just don't have good conditions where you are growing. Probably have a lot of mold spores in the air.

Personally, I would try disinfecting a batch of seeds in the peroxide and bleaching all containers used on them for a batch and see what happens. If they grow great, then try leaving the trays alone next time and disinfecting the seeds to see if it's the trays or the seeds themselves.

Check out this link: https://www.botanicalinterests.com/...Home-Disinfecting-Growing-and-Harvesting-Tips

They are trying to sell a specific sprouting tray, but it has disinfecting info as well as a good image of the root hairs that look like mold so you can see what that looks like.