For about a month now we’ve been experimenting with a fodder system for feed. It’s still in the experimentation phase, but I thought I’d share our results so far.
After some research, we decided to play around with growing barley fodder. It could lower our feed costs, plus we really like the idea of having green, fresh feed for the livestock in the winter months.
Silver Fox Rabbit Enjoying Fodder
We bought organic barley, plastic fodder trays, and setup some wire racks. We soaked some barley for a day, then poured it out into a tray. Twice daily watering was all it needed to sprout and grow. When the sprouts were a few inches tall, I pulled the fodder out of the tray, tore it into chunks, and gave it to the livestock. We fed it to the chickens, rabbits, and hogs. The chickens and hogs seemed to like it, but the rabbits seemed to really love it! They immediately started chowing down on the fodder once it was it put in each rabbit’s cage.
We decided to keep going with fodder, repeating the processing of soaking, pouring into a tray, and watering twice daily. The setup is in our garage, which is pretty cold for growing fodder. That means the process is progressing a lot slower than it would in warmer temperatures, but we haven’t observed any other adverse effects. We plan on continuing with this for now, and will post updates.
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