Sprouting Fodder Grains: Day 0

Hi all! It is the beginning of my fodder system experiment and I'm very excited! If you haven't checked out my other blog posts about this, you can find them here:

What The Fudge Is Fodder?

My DIY Fodder System Set-Up
                                                 
The first thing you have to do before you even begin sprouting the grains is to soak them. Like many other seeds, soaking helps the grains germinate so that they will sprout and grow.

First, you must decide how much barley (or whatever you are using) you will need. The sources I have used both suggest that when sprouting you want about a half inch depth in your container. Now, to achieve that depth after soaking, you actually want to pour in enough in the pan to measure 1/2 inch then cut that in half. Once again, soak half of what you think you need. The barley will plump up during soaking and will be twice the size of the original grain. I use a plastic tumbler to scoop mine out of the grain sack, as it is the perfect amount once it has been soaked.

Soak the grains in a clean container. I use a large plastic deli container. You really can use pretty much anything. Pour the grains into the container and cover completely with water. I like to use about twice as much water, so the water to barley ratio is 2:1. I like to use lukewarm water.

Finally, you just want to allow the grains to soak for 12-18 hours in a room where it won't be bothered and that is 50-70º (which is most ideal for germination). They don't require sun.

That's it until tomorrow! Thanks for reading!

My DIY Fodder System Set-Up

Hi all! In my last post, What The Fudge Is Fodder?, I talked about what fodder is and why you would want to use it for animal feed. Remember that when I say fodder, I'm actually referring to sprouted fodder, or sprouted grains.

This time I want to share some information about getting started with a homemade, small-scale fodder system. Most fodder systems currently available for purchase usually produce a minimum of 50-60lb of fodder daily, and cost upwards of $1000. That's a bit much for the homestead farm, but don't despair. A homemade fodder system is easy to put together and comes at a small price.

I first became interested in fodder systems while following my favorite YouTube Channel, Michigansnowpony. I've talked about this channel in other posts. This channel has been a driving force of inspiration for my homestead endeavors, so why should fodder be any different? I followed her source links to Sarah Cuthill's YouTube channel and blog (which are also phenomenal). I will be putting their links at the bottom of this post. If you're truly interested in pursuing or learning about these DIY fodder systems, I would check them out.

My DIY Fodder System Set-Up

Materials Needed:
    * Wire shelving
    * 7-9 Sturdy plastic containers
    * A drip pan/catcher
    * Soldering iron or nail & pliers or meat fork
   
1. Starting out, you need some wire or mesh shelving to hold your fodder containers. You can use anything as long as it fits your containers, has enough shelves and can drain water from shelf to shelf.  I've seen people use cooling racks, industrial shelving, garage shelving and more. I'm using the greenhouse shelving we bought earlier this spring with the greenhouse plastic taken off.

2. The next thing you'll need is sturdy plastic containers to hold and sprout your grains in. You can use basically anything. The preference seems to lie with square/rectangular containers, but if you have success using something round (like a butter bowl) I'd love to hear about it. I'm using some plastic casserole containers I bought at Wal-Mart.

3. Now, you need to poke some holes in one end of each container. (The woman at Wal-Mart balked when she found out what we were doing with the containers. She thought I was making some large meal for a get-together. Hehe. Well it is for a meal of sorts.) I started out using a nail that I held inside a pair of pliers. I only had a small nail on hand and was not terribly impressed with the size of the hole that it made. You want your holes to be large enough to drain water without being so large that the grains will slip through. You're looking for a happy medium. I ended up ditching the nail in favor of my kitchen meat fork. I have a cheap one that I rarely use and it was perfect. At any rate, you need to heat up the tool you use, whether it is a nail or a meat fork. I performed the operation next to my stove and it went along quickly. 

     Some Tips
       * be sure to heat up your tool completely. I heated mine for about 20-30 seconds and I was able to puncture 2-3 rows of holes.
       * the meat fork worked perfectly because I was able to poke two evenly spaced holes at a time.
       * don't force down on the plastic too hard. If it doesn't slide through like butter, it needs to be reheated. Trust me on this one. If your tool is too cold and you force it, you will crack your plastic. (Voice of experience!)
       * I made 5 closely spaced rows on mine. I'd say you want anywhere from 3-5 rows depending on the spacing. They don't have to cover half the container.

The picture on the bottom right is my original hole poked with a nail. 

4. On the opposite end of the holes you need to add something to keep the containers at an angle. It seems that 10º is suggested, but as Mitch points out, 10º is barely measurable. I think that as long as you don't have some drastic angle and everything is consistent, then any slight angle will do.  Michigansnowpony used shims for her set-up (awesome idea). Since I forgot to buy some and I was eager to get started I just used some glue sticks I had handy. I will be changing this very soon though.

5. You want to place your containers in a zig-zag like pattern on the shelving. This will aid in proper draining of the system.

For example:
The first container on the first shelf has its holes facing forward. The container directly below that will have its holes facing to the rear. The container below that one will have its holes facing front and so on.

6. The last shelf or the bottom of the shelving should have some kind of drip pan/catch basin for all of the water that will be draining off. I have a long shallow container that fits I under my shelving.

So, that's it. That is your basic set-up. To learn more you can check out the links below!  Thanks for reading.

Michigansnowpony

Sarah Cuthill

Sarah Cuthill's page and blog

What The Fudge is Fodder?

Hi all. I have developed an intetest (obsession) in fodder feeding systems for the livestock animals on our farm. I'm itching to try it out and I feel the need to share the enthusiasm. Some of you may be wondering, "What the fudge is fodder?" I hope to answer that question and more with this post.

What is fodder?
Fodder is defined as food for domestic livestock. The technical term for the object of my obsession is actually sprouted fodder. But, for the sake of simplification I (and most everyone else) simply say fodder. I just don't want to confuse anyone because in my own experience, researching fodder has oftentimes been misleading and contradictory. I think this is mostly because it is an old concept that is gaining new popularity and praise.

Fodder is a sprouted grain (usually barley, but can also be wheat, oats, or legumes) that's been grown and sprouted to form a grassy mat anywhere from 1-10 days. It is fed as a substitute/supplement for grain feed in livestock diets. It is said to contain a higher percentage of nutrients than plain (unsprouted) grains. It is also said to have a higher rate of ingestability.

Fodder is grown to form a grassy root mat that is cut apart and fed whole. Most feeding instructions/suggestions say to feed at a rate of 2% of an animal's weight. So a 100lb animal would recieve a daily ration of 2lbs of sprouted fodder. This means each animal has its own individual feeding needs.

From most of the sources I've used to gather info, it seems that the weight of the sprouted grain yields are 4-6x higher than the plain unsprouted grain. Put more simply, 1lb of dry grains typically develop into 4-6lb of sprouted grain. Theoretically, one could get 200-300lb of sprouted grain from a 50lb bag of dry grain. Pretty incredible, right?

Fodder as a complete feed?
Many people ponder whether fodder is suitable to be fed as a complete feed. This is actually not really advocated, even by people selling commercial grade/scale fodder systems (and they would stand to gain the most by such a claim). The main suggestion is to feed at a rate of  2% of the weight for the grain ration. Then, supplement this with 1% of the weight in roughage (hay) for fiber (particularly in rabbits and ruminants-horses, goats, cows). This ratio may be the complete diet you are searching for, but as one source put it "Variety is the spice of life." It is ok (probably better) if you keep a ration of grain as back-up and/or the occasional supplemental feeding. Treats, too, are acceptable. 

All of this is important to me because I want to introduce sprouted fodder into our animals' diets. I hope to elaborate more on the topic later. I will be beginning a sprouted fodder experiment of my own, right here on Edgington Farm. Stay tuned for updates and info!

Thanks for reading. Hopefully I didn't bore ya too much being too wordy or too jargon-y. Below is a link to a commercial fodder system from Farm-Tek. I wanted to include this link with my introduction because it can help you "get your feet wet" so to say, in regards to learning about fodder systems and how they work.

http://www.foddersystems.com/

All images were gathered from Google images.

Reusing Fall/Halloween Decorations for The Farm

Hi all! It is November now and time for us to begin taking down some of our fall/Halloween decorations. I decided it was time to move our straw bales out of the front yard since 2 out of 3 were beginning to grow grass. Eeeek! Not so cute when that happens. Our jack o'lanterns were sunken in and rotten and our scarecrow had a moldy butt. Time to go!

I decided that we could use the rotten pumpkins in the compost pile, so in they went. I got a twisted sort of glee tossing them in and watching them splatter. Probably good for relieving stress! Just keep your mouth closed to avoid yucky pumpkin gloop.

The 2 grassy straw bales presented a bit of a problem since the twine had rotted and split immediately upon use. So, unfortunately I had the task of picking them up in 2-3 large (wet, stinky) clumps. I toted them to the garden where I split them up into flakes (where they naturally divide into sections upon splitting apart) and tossed them in all around. These will (and already have begun to be) split up further by our curious, yard roaming flock of chickens. This will break down somewhat during winter and will be tilled into the soil in the spring. Hopefully helping to create a straw "mulch" that will slowly breakdown in the soil, keeping things moist and amending it little by little. *Fingers crossed*

Some straw in the garden before and after the chickens flattened it out.

The bale of straw that was still wet, but not rotten was used in the chicken run. It was too wet to be used in the confinement of the coop, but I thought it would provide some entertainment, bedding, bugs, and grains for them. I split it up into flakes and tossed it sporadically throughout the run and left the rest up to the birds. Within no time their curiosity was piqued and they had it spread out beautifully.

One more chore marked off our winter prep to-do list. I'd love to hear how you reuse/recycle your fall/Halloween decorations! Good luck with your winter prep. I know we need the luck!

Thanks for reading!

Stocked Up On Hay

Hi all! Fall is upon us. Our trees here in Southern Ohio are covered in beautiful shades of red, orange, yellow, green, and brown. It is quite a sight to behold, and fall is my favorite season. I love the way the leaves smell and the smell in the air. I love the "crunch" of dry leaves under foot. I love the fanfare of Halloween. I love apple cider, hooded sweatshirts, pumpkin flavored food and drinks, Indian corn, fall foliage, and the sound of leaves rustling in trees during a light breeze. Ahhhh... I told you it was my favorite!

Unfortunately, we all know that fall is also the harbinger of winter. We all know that once the splendor of fall is over, Jack Frost will be nipping at our noses. For procrastinators like me, fall also means that you're quickly running out of time to make those oh so important winter preparations.

I'm also the type that tends to put the cart before the horse. It doesn't make sense and it usually results in hurried preparation (I do not recommend this behavior, but I'm thinking it's more of a disease for me! :D ), but all the same it is what it is. This "illness" caused me to buy some very cute little goats without much forethought into winter prep. Heck it was spring when we brought these guys home, so winter was quickly becoming a bad dream. Well, uh-hmm, it's a reality now. And as vampires say, reality bites.

Among the many activities we must partake in to prepare for winter, is buying and storing hay for our goats. Like most ruminants, the goat requires daily hay in its diet. This is partly for nutrition, but mostly for fiber/roughage to aid in digestion.

Our two goats consume roughly one bale of hay every 2 weeks. Sometimes they will eat one in one week. Keep in mind my goats are small. At any rate, it is an essential part of their diet and it is important to try to stock up on hay when feeding any hay eating animal during cold weather months. For this time around we purchased 20 bales of hay.  It is a timothy, clover, orchard grass mix. It smells so nice and it still has plenty of nice green pieces in it. We are hoping this will get us through until people begin cutting hay again next year. We may buy 5-10 more in December based on our useage rate of our current stockpile. This hay is a bit loosely baled compared to what we normally get, which may mean we will go through it faster.

We have it stored in our garage right now (which is less than ideal because hay is messy!), but we are hoping to get it better situated once we complete a barn. (Ha ha)

At any rate, wish us luck this winter! We'll do the same for you! Thanks for reading!

Pallet Goat Stand

Hi all! We're not as busy here on the farm as we were during growing/hatching season, but that doesn't mean work is at a standstill. In fact, the cooler weather means fewer hours at Mitch's job. He prefers to work on our projects during these months. Since he's our primary project builder, (let's face it, I scare myself with power tools!) it is game on during the fall and winter.

It is time to be preparing our home, barn and garage, and animals for winter. One of the tasks on our list is hoof trimming for our goats. I may elaborate on this maintenance chore in another post, but for now suffice it to say it is something we must do. This chore is made easier with the use of a goat stand with a head latch. While varieties of stands are available for purchase, we chose a simple DIY construction project. We chose this option due to cost and efficiency. Our goats are dwarf size and most options available are for standard sized animals.

We began with a few pallets Mitch can get free from work and a couple of 2"x4" boards we had leftover from a previous project. A couple of screws, nuts, bolts, and a screen door latch made the project complete.

The base of the stand is a skid cut down to approximately 3' wide and 4' long (standard pallet length). Mitch pryed boards from a separate pallet to fill in the gaps. This was done with a pry bar, a claw hammer, and patience. You have to be careful when ripping off the boards since they are prone to breaking and splitting.

Mitch managed to hammer the nails in the reverse direction so that he could reuse most of them. This is also a delicate procedure as the nails like to bend. But, it helped us use less materials because recycling is fun!

We cut a 2x4 down to about 18" for legs. (Make 4) This makes the stand low enough for the goats to hop up and down to get on and off, but still high enough to adequately allow me to milk and perform maintenance duties on the goats. Since the stand was still pretty wobbly at this point, Mitch added a brace to each long (4') side. He accomplished this by prying up 2 more skid boards and screwing them into the legs. You wouldn't believe the difference it made. The front of the stand has additional braces to stabilize the head latch. These connect the front legs to the body under the stand.

The head latch is a frame made of 3 2x4 boards screwed to the base in a rectangular formation. Additional 2x4s are sandwiched in the frame to form the latch. This is done with 1x1 boards and 2x4s. The frame is also braced with 2x4s on each side, securing it further to the base.

One of the 2x4s sandwiched in the frame moves somewhat freely to open and close the latch. This is made to secure the goat's head to keep it steady.  We still have to add something in the front to attach a feeder to so the goats can happily munch while we work on them. Mitch added a bolt to the top of the moving latch board as a handle.

If everything goes as planned, our doe will be successfully bred by this winter and we'll be having a goat kid next spring. This stand will come in pretty handy when I'm using it everyday to milk with.

The goats can't wait to see the new stand. 

If anyone would like to know specific stand dimensions or has any questions, please feel free to ask. I'll do my best to answer them. 

Thanks for reading!

2013 Growing Season Summary

Hi all! I know it's been a long time. I'll be the first to admit I'm not so great at long term consistency, but I'm trying! I tend to tire of things quickly, but seeing as how this journey is important and dear to my heart, I want to try to continue documenting it. Try to be patient with me as I usually make all my posts with nothing more than my cell phone!

We've put the garden to bed for the year and it is time for me to write up a summary of our attempts. To summarize our first real attempt at growing a garden, I want to begin by saying that it was a real pleasure. Despite our joy, there were some things we weren't too impressed with, but we're sure we can improve with time and practice.

Good Garden Turnouts
1. Most of our plants grew very well and produced nicely.
2. Our sweet corn was stellar and we even had crossing of our two corn varieties, resulting in a lovely bi-color corn.
3. Our green beans were so productive, we were begging people to come and pick some for themselves!
4. Our peppers really put out the fruit at the end of the season, something we did not anticipate at all.
5. Our first attempt at growing potatoes was very pleasing with small, but plentiful and delicious potatoes. 
6. I realized how truly hardy brassicas can be!
7. We were so impressed with how the compost improved our soil and our plants.

Some Things We Wish To Improve
1. Weeding was so tedious and occupied much of our time early on. We will be trying a few new things next year to improve this.
2. Our corn rows were spaced too far apart to provide ample protection and support from winds and rains.
3. We didn't plant enough of anything (except beans!) to allow me to can or pickle properly.
4. Our biggest mistake was not planting early enough. Hopefully with having the established beds and our knowledge gained this year, we will be getting things out to follow the Farmer's Almanac.
5. We may have over fertilized some of our plants. Too much of a good thing and all.
6. We're going to improve our seed starting capabilities so that we can save money, have a better growing season, and have more heirloom plants.
7. We are going to try to save more seed of our own next year.
8. We are going to support our plants with better techniques and more attentiveness.
9. I'm waging war on cabbage moths next year. Dedpite the hardiness of our brassicas, I know they did not reach their full potential because of the cabbage moths/worms.
10. I want to be more prepared for the fruit and veggie harvests next year with more canning/freezing supplies on hand.

These are our main gripes for our first year. I'm positive we'll always have something to learn, but I'm hopeful the list won't be so dramatic and long in the coming years. In January of 2014 I want to compile a list of goals for our 2014 homestead endeavors. I've got a long list, but I think any homesteader will tell you there's always work to be done on the farm.

Thanks for reading!