Chicken’s choice – Update on the sprouting/fodder system

Our girls are fussy. Very fussy. They will kill for fermented grain and devour the freshest seedlings in the garden but they stopped eating the fodder that I was growing in the DIY fodder system.

Those luxuriously green and soft young blades of Wheat and Barley just weren’t enough for them, even after I broke the mats into pieces and handed the pieces to them. I even restricted the flock’s food for a few days to encourage the chickens to eat them. No luck with that either. What had started as a love affair between chooks and green grass is headed for the divorce courts!.

They do love it if I leave the sprouts to sprout just that little bit longer though, there must be a compromise of taste and texture that they like. They also eat the field peas at this stage, they wouldn’t touch the fodder sized shoots for some chooky rerason.

It all means an easier time for me though. I don’t need to lay the seed and grain out on the trays to grow tall and green and that saves both time and water. I can keep the grain and seeds in the little buckets to soak and then put it in the buckets that have drainage holes to sprout. The smaller footprint of the buckets when compared to the trays means that I can fit 3 per shelf of the greenhouse. They then fit nicely under the sprayers which can then be used at a lower pressure – larger drops over a smaller area work better to rinse the seeds. Another benefit is that the quicker turn over time means that I don’t need to use bleach except to rinse the buckets when a batch is finished.

Less time, less effort, less resources – this way is a winner! Thank you chooks!

If you’d like to find out how to grow Fodder, Sprouts or how to Ferment your grains for your chickens, click here to be transported to the right page.