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

[gtaus]

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.

I tried to grow some wheat fodder, but the seed was left over from last year. It had a very poor germination rate and was full of mold. So I went and bought some barley seed a few weeks ago, but that seed is not germinating well either. The barley seed also has some mold issues, but not as much as the wheat.

I talked to the feed mill and they only state they sell "feed" quality grain and maybe I need to get "seed" quality grain for better germination and growth. Evidently, "seed" quality grain is for planting and would be fresher, have better germination, and free from mold. The "feed" quality grain they sell just comes from a farmer's bin, and there is no guarantee that it is this year's harvest, or a previous year's harvest. That's too bad. Last year the barley seed I got from them was just great.

I am experimenting with my fodder growing system. Since I have poor germination seeds this year, I am finding I also have a mold issue. I suspect that since fewer seeds are germinating and growing, they just sit there in the dish bin and don't really dry out as well as when the plants were growing well and drinking up the water. In response, I have cut my twice a day watering down to once a day. That gives the seeds more time to dry out and retard the mold growth. So far, I am seeing better results in terms of less mold. The germination rate is just not there with this batch of seeds and unless I get better growth, I may have to punt on this batch of seeds.

I thought I had this growing fodder stuff down to a science. Last year I could not fail no matter what I did. This year, however, the seed quality I am working with is not very good, and I am back to treating the process more as trial and error. I have learned that the quality of the seed is perhaps the most important variable in growing fodder.

Unfortunately for me, I really don't know how to judge a good, viable, grain seed from a poor quality seed. It takes me about 1 week of growing fodder to see if the seeds will be any good. Oh well, at least chickens will eat feed seed as well as anything. So, it's not wasted.

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

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

The first time i fed fodder to my ducks was kind of disappointing: Middle of winter, nothing green around and i was expecting to see a pack of duck-wolfs…
They were not impressed at all, nibbled here, nibbled there, looked at me as if i wanted to poison them, but overnight ate everything.
Today, if the see me coming up with one of those white dish-bins, they all come running - even if it is the dish-bin with my nail-collection...

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

I tried to grow some wheat fodder, but the seed was left over from last year. It had a very poor germination rate and was full of mold. So I went and bought some barley seed a few weeks ago, but that seed is not germinating well either. The barley seed also has some mold issues, but not as much as the wheat.

I talked to the feed mill and they only state they sell "feed" quality grain and maybe I need to get "seed" quality grain for better germination and growth. Evidently, "seed" quality grain is for planting and would be fresher, have better germination, and free from mold. The "feed" quality grain they sell just comes from a farmer's bin, and there is no guarantee that it is this year's harvest, or a previous year's harvest. That's too bad. Last year the barley seed I got from them was just great.

I am experimenting with my fodder growing system. Since I have poor germination seeds this year, I am finding I also have a mold issue. I suspect that since fewer seeds are germinating and growing, they just sit there in the dish bin and don't really dry out as well as when the plants were growing well and drinking up the water. In response, I have cut my twice a day watering down to once a day. That gives the seeds more time to dry out and retard the mold growth. So far, I am seeing better results in terms of less mold. The germination rate is just not there with this batch of seeds and unless I get better growth, I may have to punt on this batch of seeds.

I thought I had this growing fodder stuff down to a science. Last year I could not fail no matter what I did. This year, however, the seed quality I am working with is not very good, and I am back to treating the process more as trial and error. I have learned that the quality of the seed is perhaps the most important variable in growing fodder.

Unfortunately for me, I really don't know how to judge a good, viable, grain seed from a poor quality seed. It takes me about 1 week of growing fodder to see if the seeds will be any good. Oh well, at least chickens will eat feed seed as well as anything. So, it's not wasted.

When routine kicks in, mother nature throws you a curve-ball!
There is a direct relation between germination rate and mold: The lower the germination rate of the seeds, the higher the probability to grow mold instead of fodder. I have opened my second 50lbs bag of winter wheat over the weekend (i am already through 50lbs!) and, even though i bought that bag at the same store on the same day the germination rate is lousy. This wheat germinates best if i don't soak it at all! I just wash it, then put it in a bin and do the daily flooding. Germination rate a little bit over 50%...

 

[Sally PB]

I'm working on rice fodder. It's sprouted well; let's see if it grows or molds. I had more sprouted than I had room for, so I put some of it on a half squash for the chickens. They cleaned it up!

Just for information: The rice is from a bag of organic, short grain rice I got at Costco last summer. I eat a lot of rice, and I sprout it before I cook it. I've never really looked at it to see what kind of percentage is sprouting. Soak it for a couple days, yup, some little bits of sprouts are showing, so it's done enough.

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

I have a second fodder tower!​

Raided the closest Dollar Tree last week and bought ten of their green, stackable bins to build a mini fodder tower. First i took a piece of scrap wood and created a template for drilling:

Fortunately the drill was long enough to drill two stacked bins at the same time, so i had to poke through all 30 holes (5x6) only five times, the first bin i drilled "solo". This is the template applied to a bin (left) and the result (right):

​

I started to assemble the new tower by adding a new bin with BOSS every day at the bottom, then flooding everything with fresh water and after three days the first sprouts are visible:

​

After five days, however i noticed that the bathroom started to smell really, really bad. BOSS sprouts are producing really nasty run-off water for days, here i placed the whole tower into the bathtub to rinse it with the showerhead:

BOSS sprouts in the bathroom is not a good idea! - I will try something else next time.

 

[RLockhart68]

I really need to get some of those bins! The seed starter trays are almost too big for the amount of seed I'm sprouting. Plus there is no stacking them. Good news is, now that they have a taste for the sprouts they are eating more of it.

 

[BirdsBeesTrees]

I've done fodder in all sorts of ways. Right now I'm loving my newest invention.

I got a couple of these plastic feeder pans and my husband drilled some drainage holes.

The chicks pecked at the tops, and when they were eaten down I removed it from the pans so they could eat the rest. Before they were pulling out the long grasses and it would get stuck half down their throat. This way they don't choke on it and can eat it all.
This is winter wheat, it grows great in my unheated garage.

 

[BirdsBeesTrees]

I usually do Barley but I ended up needing to put a little heat in my garage to really get it going. The Winter Wheat doesn't mind the cold so it's good for me to try out.
I like to add in some sprouting peas and radish etc. sometimes too.
We used to have a 1000 pound a day fodder system for our cows but got rid of it. I'll do it small scale though because it makes me happy. I'll say this because I didn't see it mentioned but different fodder seeds need soaked for different amounts of time.
Barley needs to soak for 12 hours and the Winter Wheat seemed to do better at 8 or less.

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

I really need to get some of those bins! The seed starter trays are almost too big for the amount of seed I'm sprouting. Plus there is no stacking them. Good news is, now that they have a taste for the sprouts they are eating more of it.

They are just one dollar per bin! But careful, if you stack more than 6-8 on top of each other the whole thing can easy topple over. I wish they had larger stackable bins, 40 ducks eat a lot of fodder…

 

[WannaBeHillBilly]

I've done fodder in all sorts of ways. Right now I'm loving my newest invention.
View attachment 2453944
I got a couple of these plastic feeder pans and my husband drilled some drainage holes.
View attachment 2453945
The chicks pecked at the tops, and when they were eaten down I removed it from the pans so they could eat the rest. Before they were pulling out the long grasses and it would get stuck half down their throat. This way they don't choke on it and can eat it all.
This is winter wheat, it grows great in my unheated garage.

Cool idea! That is like those grazing beds for chickens but on a small scale.