Grow Sprouts for Fowl - PEP BB animal.sand.sprouts

I've been growing sprouts year round to feed my chickens for a couple of years now.

The formula that I use for their feed is
  1 part sunflower seed
  1 part oats
  1 part peas
  5 parts barley

I double the recipe for my 24 chickens and add 1 cup of meal worms.

They also free range 1/2 the day if it's not raining.

I have 2 sets of wire racks with spray emitters at the top on timers to run 3 times a day. Each pan has holes poked in one end and each shelf has a 1x1 board at the front or back of the shelf that the trays rest on. This way when it waters, the water runs from one tray to the next and everything is watered.

I cover the shelves with aluminum screen and Avery wire to keep the mice out and drape a sheet of plastic over it in the winter to keep it warmer.

There's quite a few mats of sprouts in the last picture in their coop as they've been doing a lot of free ranging and were only "cherry picking" the sprouts. Nice thing is that the sprouts don't go bad, they just keep growing, when they're in mats like that so eventually they get eaten up

And chickens actually eating the sprouts !

Here is my BB attempts

I do a lot of grain sprouting for my critters, but I usually feed them at about 1/2 inch in length. This was the first time I let them grow into fodder.

Mix of wheat, oats, and sunflower seeds. They've been soaked over night and put into an old nursery tray to sprout.

Sprouts after about 8 or 9 days.

Feeding clumps of sprouted grains to the chickens.

New here. Could I earn this BB for quail? I do this on a rolling basis as PEA.

Oops grabbed wrong day 3 file!

Barley sprouts for 9 chickens in the winter.

Although it may be spring in most of the Northern Hemisphere,  it is still winter here in Alaska! Several inches of snow expected over the next few days.

I am sprouting alfalfa seeds for my quail. I rotate between these and mung beans, they like those a lot too. I try to give them something other than layer pellets every day. They also love dried mealworms.

Small animal fodder system. Shown seeds are mung beans, wheat, and quinoa. I like having each tray be a different sprout goodness for verity and nutrition.

I grew oat sprouts for some chickens. I couldn't get them to come towards me for a picture of them eating the spouts. Silly, unphotogenic chickens! But they did eat them. All gone! Super healthy birds.

I have only used barley for sprouting so far. I’ve ordered several 45 pound bags from Azure standard which I first freeze for two weeks to make sure that bugs aren’t eating it first. I now have it in my mobile rabbit tractor so that I’m able to water and rotate them, in one place.  This protects them from birds and other animals that could potentially devour the fodder.

I sprouted wheatgrass to feed to the chickens.

I decided to grow Mung beans from Mountain Rose Herbs.
It took a little longer but they eventually grew after 10 days.

Here is a short video show the process as well.
https://youtube.com/shorts/dvHGM5Jk90s?feature=share

To complete this BB, the minimum requirements are:
- you must grow sprouts to feed chickens or other appropriate fowl in the Winter

To show you've completed this Badge Bit, you must:
- post a picture of the unsprouted seeds
- post a picture of the sprouted seeds
- post a picture of chickens or other appropriate fowl eating your sprouts in the winter

I was gifted these large mouth sprouter lids that were printed to have legs and stand up off the table and be stable while upside down. It has a stainless steel mesh lid so the plastic doesn't ever come in contact with the grain. He process took a few days but was pretty straight forward. Soak for 24hrs to start and then rinse the peas every 8-12hrs.  This was the first time for the Chooks to receive sprouts but after initial shyness they tore into them.

Hello PEP-folks,
We've been having fun with sprouts, so imagine my delight to see a Badge Bit for growing some for the flock!

Right now we have 4 hens and 1 rooster in a chicken tractor that we scoot around the yard every other day or so. They also have a feeder, but they were delighted with some sprouted wheat berries today! But they don't get my broccoli sprouts. Yum. The sprouting takes 3-4 days or so, we prop the jar up so it drains into the sink through a mesh lid, and rinse daily until the seeds are looking like they're ready.

Sometimes, if you get a little generous with the seeds, especially with the wheat as shown, you end up with a reverse ship-in-a-bottle problem, but the mat of wheatgrass tugs apart pretty easily.

Happy Homesteading!
Mark

I loved this idea so much I implemented it! I started growing sprouts in the summer to dial in the process and amounts. We had the first day of winter last week and it was snowing. Too bad the snow has mostly melted already! Usually by winter we'll already be a month into the snow.

To complete this BB, the minimum requirements are:
- you must grow sprouts to feed chickens or other appropriate fowl in the Winter

To show you've completed this Badge Bit, you must:
- post a picture of the unsprouted seeds
- post a picture of the sprouted seeds
- post a picture of chickens or other appropriate fowl eating your sprouts in the winter

I have been sprouting hard red wheat with a little bit of black sunflower seed mixed in. Other things I tried to sprout with no success include oats, peas, and barley. After experimenting with type of grain and amounts for my flock, I settled on 2.5 cups of wheat with sunflower mixed in per tray, fed twice a day and sprouted for five days each. At first I was sprouting for eight days to get a nice tall grass and fed them to the chickens once a day, but I definitely needed more sprouts and the chickens also would eat the roots and grains first and would leave a bunch of the green stuff on the ground so I determined that five days was the minimum amount of time for the grains to get a good sprout and was also the number of shelves I have for my setup. I have 26 birds (3 of them are ducks).

Here is my unsprouted wheat. I put a 50 lb bag in the container and mix 10 cups of sunflower seed.



Here is my rack with the trays on the left being their breakfast and the trays on the right being their dinner. You'll see date labels on all the trays but I was only using those for the first month or so as I was experimenting with this setup. The trays drain into 5-gallon buckets that I fill with 2.5 cups of oat groats and split peas. I water the whole system twice a day with a gallon of water (half a gallon for each side) and the water drains into the buckets and soaks the oats and peas.



Here's what the sprouts look like after five days. Some small amount of green grass but quite a bit of roots. I also add a half a cup of supplement in the morning that I make with flax, kelp, and DE.



Here's the bucket of peas and oats. When the chickens are fed inside, I strain out the water before feeding them so I don't get the floor of the barn all wet.



This is the chickens' winter home. It's snowing!



I don't have a feeder for the sprouts - I tried putting them in a feeder but the chickens don't always eat all the sprouts and then I end up with a buildup of sprout-cicles. So I just throw them on the ground. I have found that they love the fermented peas and oats a lot more than the wheat sprouts.



Yummy sprouts. Sorry the picture is fairly dark. There is not a lot of sunlight this morning with the snow.