|
|
Sprouting Seeds and Beans-Free Range Chicken Diet:
| Reduce the amount of grains you need to feed by
sprouting grains. Pick up our 12X12 coop heater and set your sprouts on top. The warmth will have your sprouts sprouting in half the time!
Sprouting seeds and beans for your chickens is an easy way to supplement their diet. If you are a homesteader, you will be relying less on crop erosive farming, and allow you to reduce feed and grain consumption.
Pictured here are some mung
beans, which take only 2 days to sprout. Simply take mung beans and rinse them. I set them somewhere warm or under a lamp, and in a few days they will be extremely nutritious protein packed sprouts.
|
 |
Some helpful ideas, to help you sprout from a very good article titled, "Feeding the Homestead Flock."
This feeds around 75 chickens, so you may want to adjust accordingly.
You will need the following:
6 Buckets
Seeds and grains to sprout (peas, whole wheat etc)
Use six, 5 gallon plastic food grade buckets, two of them are for soaking, and the other four are drain sprout buckets. You can drill some holes in the drain/sprout buckets, in the bottoms or half way up the sides. (small small holes)
Day 1 Soak 3-4 lbs whole wheat grains and 1-2 lbs whole oats in one of the soak buckets.
Day 2 Pour the small grains into one of the drain sprout buckets, and rinse thoroughly, allowing them to drain through the holes in the bucket, before returning. Set the same amounts of small grains to soak in the soak bucket. In a second soak bucket, set 3-4 lbs of whole peas to soak.
 Day 3 Pout the small grains into a drain sprout bucket. Pour yesterdays soaked peas into the grains from day 1. It takes different grains different
lengths of time to sprout. Both drain buckets get rinsed before returning.
Day 4 Repeat this time putting soaked peas into the bucket containing grains started day 2.
Day 5 Again Repeat- all contents ar in all four drain/sprout buckets
Day 6 The most advanced bucket of sprouts is not ready to feed. Note that the grains are five day sprouts and the peas are four day sprouts.
Scatter around the pasture and you are set to go. Put yesterdays soaked grain into the bucket you just emptied, and the cycle goes on. Every day the buckets get rinsed or the sprouting grains get bacteria and smell.
Birds will be eager to eat these sprouts, and will not put on excessive fat this way.
Do you have free range pet chickens? Let us know if you have had any success sprouting beans, or what you feed your chickens. We would like to know if you have any suggestions for organic free range chicken feed additions. Thanks! |
|
