Fodder????

[Jayzandra]

I'm getting ready to start up a fodder system. I have pigs, goats, chickens, ducks, turkeys, and rabbits. Maybe someday eventually, a cow. My base plan is to buy a variety of seed in bulk, then mix equal parts together as I start each day, and feed it to all the animals.
My question is this, what would be the best mix of sprouts for pigs? I'm still planning on supplementing with commercial hog food, but would like to take advantage of all the benefits of fodder for all of my animals.
Thank you in advance!

 

[micah wotring]

Not sure as I am just starting on this myself! I've tried barely and rye so-far. Only like 2 square feet of each though. I'm mostly feeding it to my chickens.

Hope you find out what you need!

~MW

 

[Jayzandra]

I did a trial experiment with bird seed and it sprouted beautifully.
I was thinking of a mixture of corn, which is super cheap and easy to find, wheat, some kind of legume, barely, maybe whole oats? I guess it would depend on what I can find.

 

[Bossroo]

According to the research done by several Zoos, your best bet for bang for your buck is barley. The other seed / crop fodder just do not produce enough in a short period of time to be a viable option. However, if you don't keep your growing medium and equipment very clean , you will have mold , etc. that will become quite a chore to keep clean and mold, etc. from causing digestive and/ or health issues. I know several people that have started this program ( one of them was a TB horse breeding farm ) then quiting it due to sanitation upkeep issues.

 

[Jayzandra]

Thank you

 

[misfitmorgan]

Avoid corn if you can it tends to go bad quite quickly and by go bad i mean ferment....and ladies and gentlemen what is made from fermented corn......yep whiskey. Admittedly you add sugar and other stuffs to the corn to ferment it for whiskey and then run it through a still but trust me you dont want it fermenting in your fodder pans cause it smells so so bad when it does it that way and attracts lots of bugs. Corn is also relatively hard to sprout in a noticeable manner in shorter periods of time.

The best sprouters we have found are whole oats with husks on, very low instance of mold, grows fast, grows in cold/cool weather and without sunlight. An added bonus is you can grow it in/on anything and it doesnt care it will sprout. Barely is easy to do as well, both take 7-9 days to sprout.

You can safely feed 2-3% of your pigs body weight to them in green fodder.

 

[Jayzandra]

Thank you!

 

[misfitmorgan]

Your welcome

 

[Harbisgirl]

I have been growing fodder for 4 years now. For my dairy goats and pigs I do a 4/1/1/1/0.5 ratio of barley/peas/oats/boss/flax. I did barley only for almost a year and they did fine but seemed a bit lackluster - this mix seems to be perfect.

For my poultry I do just barley and boss and harvest on day 5.

FYI - the feed store screwed up and gave me a bag of corn by accident one day. It did sprout but barely, since 5 days isn't long enough. Corn is not more likely to ferment than any other seed - it has to do with seed quality. Remember that not all seed is created equal. For example, I've tried ALL of the whole barley seeds from all 5 of my local feed stores and they were all crap except for one called "malting barley" (by Volkman Seeds), so if you have bad luck, try a different seed. If you can find seeds that are guaranteed to germinate then try that first. The Malting Barley I getd is NOT guaranteed but I've been using it for 4 years now so I know its good.

 

[misfitmorgan]

We tried several brands of yellow dent corn #2 harvested directly from the field, every batch fermented. Maybe cali climate works better for corn but michigan you can not reliably sprout corn and get it to any decent size without it fermenting. We dont use seeds to fodder as in going to the store and buying corn, barley, oat "seed" we just harvest it out of the fields after it has already been planted. For stuff we dont have we trade with other farmers.