sprouting grains is pointless unless for greens?

[CanadaEh]

It appears that if I have access to other greens for chickens during the winter time, I should not grow fodder from grains as it results in a net loss of nutritional value of the feed? And better nutrients availability and savings on feed is a gimmick?

But isn’t the nutritional quality better? There is little doubt that sprouts are highly palatable to livestock—witness the relish with which animals consume it in web photos and videos. High moisture feeds are frequently quite palatable. However, we do not have data to suggest that barley ‘forage’ is superior to feeding other forages with similar analyses, or even better than feeding barley directly. The feeding value of the shoot/seed/root mixture may not be better than the initial barley seeds themselves. Fazaeli et al. (2012) found that true protein decreased, and the non-fiber carbohydrate, Metabolic Energy, and in-vitro gas production decreased in sprouted barley compared with the raw seed, and there were losses in DM yield. The lack of improvement in either quantity or quality let them to recommend against feeding sprouted seed vs. raw seed. Since stored starches have been used to grow the seedlings (loss of DM), the crop is likely to lose energy (also known as TDN or NEL), and may have actually lowered its feeding value compared with the seeds themselves. Barley sprouts should probably still be classified as a ‘seed-type-feed’ rather than a true forage, since the NDF and ADF (fiber) levels are relatively low.

complete article at University of California website:
https://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=11721

 

[Kayla's Lunch]

Well, that article is several years old. Microgreens for people are pretty popular and there seem to be a lot of research done on those. So, I would think that is true for the fodder "microgreens." Plus I have read, can't say where right now, a number of different articles talking about the nutritional benefits of fodder, such as the nutrients being more available. And a farmer that I know, has been doing barley fodder for quite awhile and says its great.

 

[FnWeirdo]

ill try and find the links later but. fodder is a bit of a split opinion subject. they have done the nutritional studies on each stage of the sprout. Barley is by far the most studied and cited. now certain values drop a bit at stages and certain values are a gain at certain stages. day 6 and day 7 seems to have the best nutritional value. plain seeds actually has alot of their nutrition hiding and the chickens can not really absorb alot of it. during the fodder process the nutrition becomes easier to absorb.
what fodder is very useful for is winter forage. we have very long cold winters here where i live. fodder gives me the ability to give my birds food they would normally only be able to forage in the warm season.

I personally believe all that water in the fodder is a very good thing especially in this below zero weather. my fodder is room temp when they get it. while the water is cold. so it helps keep them hydrated and warm. may not make the biggest difference in that area but it does help.

overall fodder is extremely cheap, provides good easy to process nutrition, and takes very little time and effort. well worth it in my opinion.

 

[FnWeirdo]

oh and tbh here when you see university of california ... its not too trust worthy IMHO. ive seen them put out all kinds of wrong information. cali has terrible schools and the universities out there only really care about stuff like gender studies and other socialogical stuff. if you want good studies on farm related information look at sources in the states known for farming. Wisconsin university's for example has alot of great agricultural information.