What is a fodder system?
Basically, it’s allowing grains to sprout and grow into their respective grasses for feed supplementation for poultry.
My friend Susie grows fodder for her chickens and ducks. It’s a great supplement for them, and has really reduced the amount of feed they need. Fodder is basically sprouted grains that are allowed to grow into grass for the poultry to eat. They then get greens with chlorophyll, as well as the proteins from the grains and the sprouts.
What Susie did to grow her barley and corn fodder was to grab some aluminum roasting pans from the store. They are the cheaper disposable kind that usually run about $2 each. And, they are placed on the racks in her greenhouse, which you can get here from my affiliate partner.
The grains were soaked overnight in water to cover by an inch with a capful of bleach to help retard mold. The next day, they are rinsed off well, and the put into the pans. These pans were on a greenhouse shelf, and she simply sprayed the grains with a water bottle daily, and covered them again.
Here they are around day 4.
And the chickens went crazy for it! This isn’t a full replacement for the feed requirements, but it has cut her feed bill considerably. And, in the long winter, getting some greens is great for the chickens!
Some things she would do differently next time are:
- instead of spraying the sprouts with water, she will drill some holes in the pan for proper drainage and water daily. She found a little bit of mold in one pan, and doesn’t want that to be an issue in the future
- Corn takes a bit longer to sprout, so having more barley to supplement between corn will be helpful
Have you ever grown fodder? What was your experience?
Here is a couple places online that you can get barley from (all are affiliate links, which won’t cost you extra, but I do get a commission off of)