Thursday, December 25, 2008

Feeding goats and sheep sprouts

Winter is always hard on livestock around here, and I am always looking for something to make the stock healthier through the winter. Recently I came up with the idea of growing sprouts in the house to bring out to the herd.

I grow them the regular way you grow sprouts, except I use grain--- corn or oats--- for the seed. Not seed corn or oats, but the kind you feed to the animals. I just had my first 'crop' mature and I fed most to the goats, with a little extra to the six ram lambs that I just removed from the buck yard into a stall in the shed. (Two of their comrade lambs had died, and I caught the dog pulling wool off their backs--- the dog can hop in through the gate into the buck yard, unlike other areas of the farm. So I felt they'd be safe indoors.)

Tomorrow I'm going to set up some regular sprout production. I've got a book on wheatgrass, which people grow in trays in their home. I bought similar trays and am going to start growing 'oatgrass' and 'corngrass' in them. I also have a new sprouter to try out. I need to get some shelving to put my trays on, and then I'm in business.

I'll take some pictures of the setups when I have them in order, and will give updates on the results here.

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Ritchie watering systems

5 comments:

Linda Foley said...

Did you ever set the sprouter up?

Nissa Annakindt said...

Yes, but it was too prone to getting moldy and so I discontinued using it. I've never been good at growing sprouts.

Linda Foley said...

Bummer! But another question. Did you let the grain sprout and turn green before you fed it to them? I am trying to sprout grain for my goats, but they don't seem to like it.

Nissa Annakindt said...

Yeah, I tried to follow the instructions for growing wheat grass and so let it get green (and my goats did like it that way.)

Linda Foley said...

Thanks!