My simple laundry sink fodder growing setup.

[myfivehens]

My 8 birds devour the sqft that I make for them in less than ten minutes.

I think that in the summer I'm going to go hog wild and basically reseed their whole run. They'll wake up one morning and the barren run will be all green again.

This is very helpful, thank you! Is that all the feed they get for the day or do you supplement it? I just have babies and some young chickens right now but we will eventually have 10-13 full grown chickens so I'm trying to plan ahead.

 

[pappy1264]

what are you using on them bottom to grow them in? Cool idea!

 

[Phottoman]

This is very helpful, thank you! Is that all the feed they get for the day or do you supplement it? I just have babies and some young chickens right now but we will eventually have 10-13 full grown chickens so I'm trying to plan ahead.

This question about what other feed given wasn't addressed to me, but I had to laugh when I thought of a quick answer. I really REALLY have to take pictures of this happening.

I have been feeding fodder now for close to three months or longer.

My flock (nine girls) free range all day, from early mid-morning (9:00 or so) until I get home from work. They have two giant waterers, and several free standing feeders I built last year. They consume about two pounds of food a day, PLUS all the free stuff they find in their wanderings through out the day, free ranging.

About 6:00 (ish) I will take the days fodder tray out to the run calling "Here chickey, chickey" and they come running from all over the yard, under the house, under the cars and trailer, from all directions. When I empty the tray (11.5" X 22") onto the floor of the run, they leap all over me to get me out of the way so they can get at the fodder. It takes them about ten minutes to devour every last thing I placed there. And as they are eating that, I back out and close the door, locking them in for the night.

It works for them.

It works for me.

It is really funny to watch them eat the fodder, making one think they have been starved all day and this is their only meal of the day.

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[myfivehens]

This question about what other feed given wasn't addressed to me, but I had to laugh when I thought of a quick answer. I really REALLY have to take pictures of this happening.

I have been feeding fodder now for close to three months or longer.

My flock (nine girls) free range all day, from early mid-morning (9:00 or so) until I get home from work. They have two giant waterers, and several free standing feeders I built last year. They consume about two pounds of food a day, PLUS all the free stuff they find in their wanderings through out the day, free ranging.

About 6:00 (ish) I will take the days fodder tray out to the run calling "Here chickey, chickey" and they come running from all over the yard, under the house, under the cars and trailer, from all directions. When I empty the tray (11.5" X 22") onto the floor of the run, they leap all over me to get me out of the way so they can get at the fodder. It takes them about ten minutes to devour every last thing I placed there. And as they are eating that, I back out and close the door, locking them in for the night.

It works for them.

It works for me.

It is really funny to watch them eat the fodder, making one think they have been starved all day and this is their only meal of the day.

Skip

Hahaha, that definitely is a funny picture! Sounds like something out of a movie

It seems like the percentage recommendations are always in percentage of pounds but everyone always talks about the size of their tray...would you by any chance know how much your tray of fodder weighs? I think I might aim for 4.5 pounds of fodder a day for 13 chickens but I'm trying to wrap my head around how much seed that will take. That's 5% of their estimated body weight and I figure I can always scale back from there if I need to. I think once I figure out how much seed I need a day I can figure out how many trays I will need, etc.

 

[Phottoman]

Hahaha, that definitely is a funny picture! Sounds like something out of a movie

It seems like the percentage recommendations are always in percentage of pounds but everyone always talks about the size of their tray...would you by any chance know how much your tray of fodder weighs? I think I might aim for 4.5 pounds of fodder a day for 13 chickens but I'm trying to wrap my head around how much seed that will take. That's 5% of their estimated body weight and I figure I can always scale back from there if I need to. I think once I figure out how much seed I need a day I can figure out how many trays I will need, etc.

The lady that got me started in fodder bought an access of trays with me in mind. She got them on line (I think it was on eBay) and I bought ten of them from her for $10 (ten dollars). I HAVE weighed the full trays, and they come in at about eight to ten pounds per tray after eight days of watering, and two days of soaking (one day in bleach and one day in plain water). The soaking is done in smallish two gallon plastic buckets I got from the local market(s), Smiths and Safeway.

I bought 50 pound bags of wheat, barley and oats, and I have a few pounds of Black Oil Sunflower Seeds (BOSS) that I bought at Walmart. I use a different seed each day so the girls have a variety of seeds to enjoy, wheat one day, barley the next and oats the next. I throw a hand full of BOSS in every other tray, only because I like the looks of the sunflower seeds as they grow. The amount of seeds I use varies from day to day because of the different weights of the seeds, but a rough estimate would be approx. 8 oz. of seeds will provide nearly 8 pounds of fodder.

I have several plastic cups that I brought home after enjoying (?) Carl's Jr. or McDonald's meals (about 16 oz, give or take) and I use about 3/4 of these cups of dry seeds per tray.

I would suggest 10 seed trays to start. I have had several that developed holes (punctures) on the wrong side of the drain holes simply from abuse when I turn the trays each day, bumping them in the wrong place as I move them up one "rung" of my "fodder tree." These have been easy to handle once empty, I just mark where the hole is with a sticky note, and once I empty and wash that tray, I use a hot glue gun to "fill in" that hole.

I didn't start out with the "Fodder Tree" I mentioned, for the first month or so I was stacking the fodder trays in the kitchen with pieces of 1" X 2" scrap lumber I had. I also started with several different trays looking for "The One I Wanted" before settling on these trays. I would stack the trays with holes on alternating sides so that water would drain from the one above to the one below and the water would go to the opposite side as it fed the seeds, then that would drain to the tray under it, all the way to the bottom. I had stacks of trays in the middle of the kitchen floor, but didn't move them until the second time I tipped over a nearly full tray of grown seeds or a nearly full tray of water. It took me a while to learn that all that moving was sure to cause accidents, and the mess wasn't worth the effort to clean up, but I did each time.

Now it takes less that fifteen minutes A DAY to keep this going, watering only in the morning, and at night I wash the days tray, and refill it, move all the seeds up one rung and water. Simple.




I have posted these photos before, possibly in this thread, but the lumber cost me about $5 for all I used, if that, and the time was about an hour to make this wrack, Your millage may differ.

Good luck

(edited to add) Your question about weight, I forgot to mention this is for nine birds, and they get fed daily one tray, so my guess would be ... just a tad over one pound per chicken per day finished fodder. Does that help?

 

[Phottoman]

I forgot to mention something about your birds. They will (or should) only eat as much as THEY NEED. If you put too much fodder out for them, they will eat and leave the rest. I never had that problem, they finish everything I give them.

(And I just HAD to add this so I could get to my one hundredth posts, and it took me a year to get to that .... BIG DEAL ... right?)

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[JanetS]

Phottoman: I love your set up. You may have already said, but I missed it, where do you store your growing trays? In the house, basement, garage? I don't have much
room in my house so I've been growing my fodder on my porch. I live in Florida and it's going to be getting very hot soon and I'm afraid I'm going to start having problems
with mold. You also said you use a little bleach. I've not done this. It doesn't hurt the chickens to use bleach? Thanks.

 

[Phottoman]

Phottoman: I love your set up. You may have already said, but I missed it, where do you store your growing trays? In the house, basement, garage? I don't have much
room in my house so I've been growing my fodder on my porch. I live in Florida and it's going to be getting very hot soon and I'm afraid I'm going to start having problems
with mold. You also said you use a little bleach. I've not done this. It doesn't hurt the chickens to use bleach? Thanks.

I have an "Office" of sorts. It's one room, in a three bedroom trailer, and after six years living here, we are still walking around boxes that we haven't even looked at since we moved in. The "Other" spare room is her office.

In my office, we have bookshelves with all manner of caned goods, my desk and computer, two 4' X 18" brooders, file cabinets, and the stacked trays for the fodder. This is INSIDE since we have no real covered porch outside to place the things we would love to get out of the house.

It gets quite warm here in Arizona in the summer time, and we have already had temps approaching 100F, but the heat hasn't yet hurt the fodder.

The bleach I use is in the first soak only (maybe two or three tablespoons, not measured, but a small 'glug, glug' as I pore it into the bucket), plus when I wash the trays after each use, soap and water, then get a final rinse of water and bleach. I haven't seen any damage done to the birds with this bleach, but then again, it gets rinsed thoroughly before putting it into the second water soak. The bleach is to kill anything bad living in the seeds, mildew, mold, etc.

I have used this method for several months, and as stated, the girls come running from EVERYWHERE when I take it out to them in the evening. Later this year when the sun starts setting earlier, I will take the fodder out earlier so it doesn't give them too full a belly before bed time.

I'll try to get a picture today or tomorrow when I take it out to the run.

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[Phottoman]

what are you using on them bottom to grow them in? Cool idea!

I'm not sure what you are asking here, can you be more specific? If you meant what is ON the bottom, a five gallon plastic bucket. Since I pore about a gallon and a half morning and night, when I empty the bucket it has maybe two gallons of water, not too heavy to handle. It used to smell terrible, but I started putting it back under the fodder ladder with a tablespoon or so of bleach, that cleared up the color (mostly from the wheat) and all the odor.

Your bottom tray must also have holes in it to drain, or it will soon overflow and THAT ain't good.

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[Phottoman]

Sheesh, if I could just remember everything i want to say in one posting ...

As far as Summer heat causing mold or mildew, I have already prepared myself that this probably won't work as well for Summer use. But then I will try fermenting feed, since I have also read that this will work in warmer temps that the fodder, then in the Fall I will go back to fodder again.

Here in this part of Arizona we get snow and cold freezing in the Winter, and 100 F to 120 F in a 'normal' Summer.

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