Guess what season it is in the Northern Hemisphere?! - Its FODDER Season! 🍀

[RLockhart68]

Lot's of sprouts, but also lot's of un-sprouted seeds. How many days are you planning for the green-up phase?

I'm going with 7 days as my goal. Will see what it looks like at that point.
As per the unsprouted seed. I don't think the picture did a good job showing the growth. A lot of seed casings (for lack of the right word, chaff?) are laying on the top of the root mat.
I can't remember if it says anything about the coating on the bag. Most of them have a see through spot on the bag. It's the itty bitty seeds you have to watch. I think they are coated to keep them from settling to the bottom of the bag.

 

[RLockhart68]

Also, pretty sure I'm going to reduce the amount of seed in each tray to about half what I have in these. We'll see what this looks like on day 7 first.

 

[RLockhart68]

@WannaBeHillBilly here is a pic of the root mat in the tray I shared the picture of yesterday. It's easily 1/2 to 3/4 inch thick.
And a pic of another tray on day one. The seeds just filled the grooves plus a decent layer on top of the grooves.
Still thinking about reducing the amount of seeds per tray.

 

[gtaus]

2020 is a sucker!

Yeah, can't even grow decent fodder this year. I am seeing my mold issues around day 7-8, so maybe I'll have to just feed the barley sprouts (not really fodder at that time) to the chickens around day 5-6 before the mold issue overcomes the poor germination of my seeds. Can't fight every issue. The local feed store says they will be getting a new supply of barley seed in a couple of weeks, and from a different farmer than the last batch, so I'll give that a try.

In the worse case, the barley seed will not germinate well and I'll just have to use it as feed grain in my chicken mix. Just feel disappointed that last year the seed was so good and my barley fodder was so very nice, and this year, not so much.

 

[RLockhart68]

Update
Fed fodder tray #1 today (day 6/7)
Pics of final product

Thoughts-
Germination/growth was ideal for this setup. Mat was thick enough to kinda hold together but also ripped apart easily. Chickens didn't attack it like I thought they would, but there is still a good amount of grass available so that could be why. Or they just weren't ready for breakfast yet.

 

[Nifty-Chicken]

hickens didn't attack it like I thought they would

Yup, same thing happened to me when I put out the greens from my experiment here:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...gs-sprouts-for-chickens.1426817/post-23518691

I thought for sure they would tear into it like they do with the same seeds that are unsprouted. I even came back an hour later and they were barely touched

I thought I either had the wrong seed mix, did something wrong, etc.

Fortunately, they seem to enjoy picking at the tops popping through the grazing frame, but I've been curious about their interest in whole entire seedling / fodder matts

 

[gtaus]

Chickens didn't attack [the fodder] like I thought they would, but there is still a good amount of grass available so that could be why.

Very nice pictures of your fodder. That's the quality of fodder I was able to grow last winter. This year I am having issues with poor seed quality, poor germination, and subsequent mold problems. I am trying to work with what I have available to see if I can at least grow something acceptable. So far, my fodder this year does look anyway near good as your fodder.

My chickens preferred natural grass that they grew up eating all summer long over eating the barley fodder I grew for them - at least when I first introduced fodder to them. However, my chickens take a while to warm up to any new food. That was OK with me. My main goal was to provide them some fresh green fodder in our winter months here in northern Minnesota when grass does not grow outside - which is about 6 months out the year here. So, when winter rolled around, and there was no more fresh grass growing in the chicken run, you bet my chickens went crazy for the barley fodder at that time.

I think you will find that a number of us, including @WannaBeHillBilly who started this thread, mainly grow fodder in the months when our chickens do not have access to fresh grass. But I will shout out to him for confirmation on that issue. I find the time I spent growing fodder to be minimal with (mostly) great positive outcomes. With the fodder tower system I use, I spend less than 5 minutes per day growing fodder. However, when the green grass is growing outside, I have no intention of growing fodder.

 

[gtaus]

Fortunately, they seem to enjoy picking at the tops popping through the grazing frame, but I've been curious about their interest in whole entire seedling / fodder matts

If I had the option of growing real grass or using a grazing frame where I live in northern Minnesota, I would do that instead of growing fodder. But our winters are long here and we don't have any grass growing outside for about 6 months out of the year. When I feed the fodder to my chickens in the winter, they eat everything including the root mat. In fact, some of my chickens prefer the mat, others eat the grass top.

Because my chicken run was eaten down to bare dirt, I started filling in the run with wood chips to prevent it from getting all muddy. Then I decided to turn it into a composting in place chicken run and started adding leaves, cut grass, etc... The chickens love digging in the compost and pulling out bugs and worms. The benefit I get is that the run is not muddy and does not smell bad. This fall I harvest about 50 cubic feet (about 50 bags) of chicken run compost that I added to my garden for next year.

I tried to use a grazing frame inside the chicken run, but the chickens would scratch all the leaves, wood chips, etc... on top of the grazing frame and nothing had much of a chance to grow. After a few weeks, I just gave up on the grazing frame idea. In my case, I mow the lawn with a bagger so I just give all the clippings to my chickens and let them eat what they want. They get more fresh grass then they can eat, but in my composting system, the uneaten grass gets mixed in with everything else and turns into compost.

From my experience this past summer, the more grass the chickens ate, the less commercial feed was consumed. My egg production fell throughout the summer as a result.

I am convinced that a well balanced commercial feed diet would probably result in a higher egg production. In my case, I get more eggs than we need anyway, so I decided to just let the chickens be chickens and watch them happily scratch and peck for their food in the chicken run compost. Having said that, I always have commercial feed available for them 24/7. They just prefer to forage most of the day for anything other than their commercial feed.

Point is, if egg production is your main goal, then feeding your birds natural grass and/or fodder should only be considered a supplement. I suspect that free range birds would also have lower egg production, but I can't let my birds free range due to predator concerns.

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

@WannaBeHillBilly here is a pic of the root mat in the tray I shared the picture of yesterday. It's easily 1/2 to 3/4 inch thick.
And a pic of another tray on day one. The seeds just filled the grooves plus a decent layer on top of the grooves.
Still thinking about reducing the amount of seeds per tray.
View attachment 2445467View attachment 2445471

That is looking awesome! - Sorry for my late answer, i got overwhelmed with duck-house winterizing last weekend.

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

Yeah, can't even grow decent fodder this year. I am seeing my mold issues around day 7-8, so maybe I'll have to just feed the barley sprouts (not really fodder at that time) to the chickens around day 5-6 before the mold issue overcomes the poor germination of my seeds. Can't fight every issue. The local feed store says they will be getting a new supply of barley seed in a couple of weeks, and from a different farmer than the last batch, so I'll give that a try.

In the worse case, the barley seed will not germinate well and I'll just have to use it as feed grain in my chicken mix. Just feel disappointed that last year the seed was so good and my barley fodder was so very nice, and this year, not so much.

Have you tried Winter Wheat yet? - I haven't tried barley, but out of the available choice of Wheat, Rye and Oats, the Wheat has worked best for me so far.