My adventures with sprouting chicken food.

[AMKuska]

This week my husband and I experimented with growing food for our chickens in the form of sprouts. We have been talking for the past few weeks about joining the "self sufficient" band wagon to try and save a little money and be less dependent on the world. Sprouting chicken food seemed like a good choice.

The chickens loved it, and I loved turning 1 pound of feed into 4 pounds of feed! Anyone else sprouting their food?

 

[Nyboy]

Your chickens seem to enjoy it !! Good going

 

[canesisters]

I've thought about doing it as a treat. How would you set up to use that as their main feed??

 

[Smart Red]

Chickens are omnivores. They need animal protein as well as plant materials for a good diet. I suspect the high levels of plant protein, vitamins, and minerals in sprouts would make it a good addition to, but not total substitute for a balanced feed.

 

[AMKuska]

Smart Red is correct. Chickens were designed to eat a wide variety of plants, seeds, and insects, so feeding sprouts wouldn't work out as their only source of nutrition. My chickens are on pasture and have access to layer pellets, but we are hoping to completely switch over to natural foods that we grow ourselves, but it's one step at a time. Sprouts were our first step.

You can look at other ideas for home made feed on this thread here:

http://www.backyardchickens.com/t/615228/home-feeding-ideas-and-solutions-discussion-thread

And you can see how we sprouted our whole wheat here:

http://roccoshouse.com/how-to-sprout-your-chicken-feed-with-pictures/

I'm pretty proud of this effort, and the impact it has had on our feed bill has been enormous so far. I'm hoping to start sprouting other grains besides oats and wheat, and go from there. I'll keep you guys updated!

 

[baymule]

Great work! I have read the sprouting thread and it makes a lot of sense. Keep us posted on this.