Fodder solutions
 

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Has anyone seen or tried this. I know most of you have good available fodder but being from the desert I don't. My biggest lament is that my babies don't get green food as often as I'd like. I cut stuff out of the yard but nothing grows quickly here so it doesn't replenish itself as fast as I need it.

I took a quick look-see. With my budget, I'm picturing used patio doors or windows to make a low green house and growing trays of greens. Neccessity IS the mother of invention.

It says that the nutrition content in the barley sprouts is so high that you can feed straw or grass or poor quality hay as roughage. With the hay situation like it is I'm definitely interested in sprouting. If you use this system the growing mat is edible too. hmm. I wonder what you could use instead of the mats if they're too expensive?

I have now read most of the site. From what I can glean, that they *don't* give you the specs for:

The trays are basically 4'x7.5'. I think the same effect could be achieved with a piece of plywood framed with 2"x2"s, and covered with pond plastic.

The "mats" they are talking about is not a growing medium. The specifically state that there is NO growing medium, that it is completely hydroponics. That means that the edible mat they are discussing is the root mat. So no need to buy anything.

You can get the sprayers in the irrigation section of your local Big Box Home Improvement store. Pretty simple to set up. The timer will be the most expensive thing, costing about $20 depending on quality.

If you were to build this in stacking trays, like they show, in a big box, then light would be an issue. To avoid the cost of artificial lighting, I think I would set it up more open, in a larger greenhouse. Although, sprouts don't need a LOT of light, just continuous light. Flourescents in a high kelvin range (5000 - 6500) should do the trick. If one had an open greenhouse, you could just run them during periods of darkness, so your sprouts would have the 24 hour growing cycle and could take advantage of higher carbon dioxide concentrates that happen at nigh.

I think this is a great idea, and I think it is doable on a DIY level. I crunched the numbers on my end, and to keep everyone in good fodder, I would need 70lbs per day. From the specs on their T24 and T32, the pounds per tray given depends upon the pounds per tray seeded. In the T24, they recommend seeding 4 trays with 10lbs of seed each, per day. 4 trays are harvested per day, which is 220lbs of green fodder, or 55lbs of fodder per tray, per day. In the T36, though, they tell you that you need to seed it with 15lbs of seed per tray, and the trays produce 82.5lbs of fodder per day.

Cost is going to be dependent upon the price of seed. For me, I am looking at using 15 lbs per day. That means if I am seeding rye, which costs me approximately $25 for 50 lbs, it will cost me about $7.50 a day to keep everyone in fresh, green fodder.

Bermuda grass, though, can run upwards to $225 for a 50lb bag.

I'll have to look into the cost of other things. There is also nutritional comparisons to make, also. The cereal grasses tend to be nutritionally similar, so if wheat is cheaper here, I would go with that....and if barley, or oats, are cheaper.....

At any rate, it would come out to about 1 tray per day, seeded with 15 lbs of seed, to keep 8 goats and 1 horse reasonably content.

I love you number crunchers. I'm like Justin Timberlake in Friends with Benefits. I was going to make DH crunch the numbers when he got home if he could find the time but you did it for me and I am SOOO appreciative.

And just so no one thinks I'm a complete idiot, I excelled in Algebra because I could wrap my head around the concept. It's just basic math I have problems with. Don't know why.

andabigmac, I have noticed that lots of people that can do differential equations in their head are, counter-intuitively, completely unable to balance their checkbook.

This is super interesting to me! I feel a project coming on...

Seriously though, I wonder if you could support goats "grain-free" this way and still get good health and production.

I have been experimenting with growing wheat fodder on a small scale. I am using foil pans that I got at a bbq cook off for free, 2 plastic shelf units at were cheap, I soak the wheat for about 24 hours and then put it in the pans and flood the pans with water at minimum of twice daily. I have this set up in my furnace room that has a drain in the floor and a window in the door. The fodder doesn't need much light but it does need some warmth. The fodder is ready on the 6th day. The kicker is I can't get my goats or my cows to touch it........they say ick! The hogs love it. So I will resort to drizzling molasses on it to make it more yummy.

Barley is very nutrious but so far I haven't been able to get it here in my part of MO. Wheat is not very expensive,,,,13.50 for 50lbs..it sprouts well.

Make sure whatever you use to grow your sprouts in drains well so you don't get mold growing in your sprouts.

Another forum I am on has a huge thread about fodder going in their pasture management section and there is definitely a learning curve with it.

Carla

What forum? I would love to learn more from people who have tried it.

Glad this thread came up. I have been looking into this for a week now. I can get oats and sunflower seeds but I have not been able to find barley. . . wheat. . .hmmm

I wonder how the oats would be nutritionally? I can get oats from a farmer here for dirt cheap. I don't have a grinder so I've never bought from him before. It would be great if everything had the same sprouting times so you could make a blend.

Someone on facebook tried this. I believe it was start to finish only like 7 days to grow it. I will try later to find their facebook page. I have to get back to putting down my floor so it will be tonight or tomorrow before I can look.

I wonder if you could use those rectangular trays that you put the Jiffy peat pellets in. I have a stack of those. Even if you didn't use this as your sole means of nutrition for your goats and used it as a hay supplement this could potentially cut hay prices exponentially.

andabigmac, you can use those trays, you can use just about anything as long as the drainage holes aren't too big so that the seed doesn't wash out.

Keeping a Family Cow has a huge thread going on under Pasture Management and Feed. It is 4 threads long and growing by the day. Most of the people are just people making do with homemade systems like me. Trial and error.

I was really frustrated when it came time to feed it. The goats didn't like it because 1. it's grass 2. it's wet. The cows wanted to eat it but wouldn't because they are programed to not eat roots and they couldn't figure it out.....so we are gonna try a little molasses.

If I knew that my animals would really eat this stuff, I would invest in the growing trays that you see in green houses. They are more sturdy than the foil trays.

Barley is from what I understand the most nutritious and a great source of protein. Wheat is a close second.

I'm mean. I would probably feed them this until they were so hungry they ate it.

I'll have to go over there and check it out. My feed bill is astronomical so I need to find a way to save some money without skimping on nutrition.

If you do hydroponics, you have to buy food for the plants. You cannot stick them in rocks and expect them to grow (not that I'm implying you were going to do that). I haven't read the whole thread, but I just thought I would throw that out there.

HF, these are actually sprouts, not fully hydroponic plants. They are only grown for 6 days before being fed, so you don't actually need nutrient solution. Just water, light, and carbon dioxide.

You don't have to add anything to the water. The goal is to sprout the seeds and to grow the grass to about 6" tall and then it is finished. If you were expecting it to survive a long time, yes it would need more than just water to survive.

We have been looking into this for some time now. Mostly for the dairy cow herd(who can afford to buy hay AND grain these days!), but for the goats as well. Its looking quite promising.....but expensive on the scale we will need.
Start-up is high, but savings in the long run could really save our butts!
Not to mention that cows are healthier without all the crap that is in our commercial feed mixes these days! But keeping a cow milking on no grain can be difficult. This could be the answer.
A couple dairy farmers in our area are already doing it successfully.

Emily, my question is how did those farmers get their animals to eat the fodder. Mine really want the grass but when they realize the roots are coming too they drop it. The goats totally turn their nose up at it. I really want this to work!

Carla

Have you tried mixing in alfalfa seed with your other grains? Maybe a little fresh alfalfa would change their minds.

Carla- Are the roots a hardish mat when you feed it to them? I glanced at a display at the fair and I thought the root system was some sort of cellulose mat system. It looked like an air conditioner filter. If you were feeding loose sprouts could that be your problem? I'm wondering because I also thought about starting it in big jars like you would for home sprouts. If I pulled out loose handfuls though and they wouldn't eat them that would drive me crazy. They were feeding goats using the system they had at the fair. It looked like they slid whole trays into a v-shaped feeder and the goats pulled the sprouts out.

CJ, feed it to them when they are REALLY hungry. Like anything, it may take a while for them to get used to it.

If you have full mats, with a grass side and a root side, you might try spraying a sweet water on the root side, either really weak molasses water, syrup water, or even sugar water. Then they might start thinking of the root side as a "treat".

If you go that route, every two days, add less of the sweetened to your water spray, until you are adding none at all.

When hungry enough, your goats WILL eat it. And no matter how finicky and "Her Royal Highness" disapproves goats get, no otherwise healthy goat ever starved itself to death when food was available.:)

andabigmac, that mat you saw is the roots and it's all innertwined together. It pulls apart easily. On the underside there will be some seeds that haven't sprouted, I really thought that would get the goats attention but noooooooo, picky things.

I will keep trying different things. I so badly want Dora to be eating this fodder. My jersey, Ellie wants to eat it. I just need to go get some molasses and she will be easily tricked. That girl would do anything for a little bit of molasses. I bet this fodder makes for some yummy milk!

I am going to try it out with oat seeds. Oats are pretty cheap right now, and it won't cost me much to get started.

It will be pretty simple to get my girls to eat it. All I'll have to do is, one day when I am heading to my mothers for the day, just put this in the feeder when I lock them up in the corral instead of alfalfa pellets, which is what I normally put in the corral if I am going to lock them up while I am gone.

Tomorrow, I will pick up seed an plastic covering. Saturday, I will put it all together have stuff started...which means the following Saturday I will post on how well it works.:)

Caliann, I hope your goats aren't fodder snobs like mine are.......lol.

I have wheat right now, the study brought up in KFC said that barley was most nutritious but I would sprout just about anything to see if they would eat it. Caliann, I do know one lady that tried with oats and the number of oats that actually sprouted was pretty low, could just be her supply. Truely, the sky and your wallet is the limit on what you can sprout but I understand that milo is not a good one to sprout because in the first few days of spouting it produces a toxin. I think if you wait till like day 7 or 8 it is safe but who wants to find out.

Happy sprouting!
Carla

Hmmmm....I could likely get it tested to see if it is toxic with a sample batch if I wanted to try Milo....but, there are other things to try first.:)

Oats, wheat, barley, etc., should all be available to me in 50lb bags for less than $15 a bag. Right now, I am mainly interested in it replacing *hay*. My calculations tell me that for equal dry matter, it would come to the equivilent of paying $2 a bale for quality hay. I can live with that.

If it replaces grain as well, that is just a bonus. But right now, I would like a good, space saving solution for hay. This looks to be it.

And mine WILL eat it. LOL I am a mean Mommy, and I will lock them up in the corral with ONLY this to graze on until they decide they LIKE it. And I will tell them that there are starving goats in China who would be GRATEFUL for the fodder I give them!

My understanding is that this doesn't replace hay but it does replace grain. You can get by with feeding a lower quality hay but they still need the long stems for proper digestion. I could be totally wrong...but I am gonna keep plugging away at it. :)

This guy posts almost every week on Idaho Craigslist offering consultations on the Fodder system. He doesn't have an Idaho area code so I don't know where he lives or if he's posting on every Craigslist he can find but I thought I would share.

Paying Too Much For Hay?

6" *is* long stem. :)

The display they had at the fair had the goats with the sprouts in one feeder and oat straw in the other. They used the straw for long stems and filler and the barley grass for nutrition.

Just like any new thing, said it took a few days for them to really cotton on to the idea. But they did start eating it, without doing anything special as far as I know.
One of the dairy famers also is a goat breeder. She lives a town away. Here is her post on the fodder system with cattle and goats.
She is a member of one of my Yahoo groups.

"Good morning to all. For those of you suffering through the drought and in short
supply of forages or looking for a good source I'd like to share this
information. We recently put in a hydroponic fodder production system. It is a
way to have a steady, high quality source of forage. The feed value of the
product is very high and we are at present able to eliminate grain feeding from
our dairy cattle herd and milking goats. The particular system we are using is
made by All Season Greens All Season Greens | Easily Produce Your Own Low Cost, Highly Nutritious, Living Feed, 365 Days a Year! . But there are many
other systems available. I'm not giving their web address as a promotion but as
a place for people to investigate these systems and see if hydroponics might
help their needs for feed. The goats and cows love them and after the initial
change in feed are now eagerly devouring the greens. You can see pictures of our
herds feeding on the greens at our farm's Facebook page

https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Ma...m/183977297948

The goats are doing very well with the change and actually took interest before
the cows the first day we introduced them all to the greens. Our nutritionist
,from the feed mill, after looking at the test results of the greens said that
one could completely eliminate grain feeding using the greens. Eventually we
hope to get our second pod so we can also replace most of our hay feeding as
well. Hope this information might be of help to some of you who are wondering
how you are going to feed your herds."

Was told by the fodder systems experienced farmers that oats sprout fine but don't seem to grow well unless mixed with other sprouts. But he does use them as they are such a good food. He reccomended mixing them with other seeds.

Yes, but it's soft and tender. Not enough fibrous material for good digestion. Like the difference between hay and that first spring grass. I'd like to try it too, but I can totally see this blowing right through their systems without any added roughage.

If you still have to buy roughage and you need the grain to make up for the poor quality of the roughage I really don't see why to add the extra step of sprouting the stuff.

We would not be buying roughage. We have plenty of ground to grow our own hay and graze for all the warmer months. We do this now.
With the fodder system you can cut out all grains, and the seed you buy goes much further than the same amount of grain, as you are sprouting and feeding it as greens, 6" long. The biggest advantage in my opinion is that you can more easily go non-GMO. Also, less concentrates makes for a healthier longer lived animal in the long run, lower sommatic cell, less feet issues, etc.
But this makes feeding no grain feasable, even during the winter. It will still maintain their weight, they milk well on it, etc. And no issues with toxic feed, as many dairy farmers have had issues with in the past few years.
Even in bad hay/crop years, we would have a steady supply. The seeds you buy go *much* further than the same amount of grain. Thus, it is cheaper.
Farmers are doing it successfully and it is saving them money. We went and visited one such dairy farmer on Monday. Very interesting.
I was very skeptical at first, but now I'm rather excited about the idea.

Thanks Emily for sharing that information.

I am beginning to think that right now the reason I am having difficulty getting my animals to eat this stuff is because we have had some pretty good rains lately and everything is growing and green again. I haven't been feeding hay so this additional "green stuff" doesn't look very appealing to them. DH and I drove down in to the pastures last evening and there is pretty good grass growth now. I also noticed that the goats are moving farther out to get to more browse.

Callahan, this comment I love!

--your quote--

""And mine WILL eat it. LOL I am a mean Mommy, and I will lock them up in the corral with ONLY this to graze on until they decide they LIKE it. And I will tell them that there are starving goats in China who would be GRATEFUL for the fodder I give them!"""

I agree totally. Ive only had goats for 2 years, so I'm quite new, but I've found they sure are picky critters! I have 2 of the so-called "calm and pleasant" LM does and a ND buck, but my does will scream at me when I have to change hay.

I'm all for 'eat it or go hungry'!!!

Me too. My goats are experiencing "tough love" right now as I changed hays. Its decent hay and they will eat it...but they sure grumbled that first day.

Exactly! My goats are on the grateful diet also. They'll eat what's in front of them or go hungry. I wouldn't feed them garbage and I'm trying to find the best way to feed them given my limited natural resources. My goats have eaten cubes and have done well on them. They were not happy about it either. Oh well though. There was no hay to be found. Some went on strike for a few days but they came around. I hated it worse than they did probably.