We feed fodder to our rabbits and chickens.
As a rule of thumb chickens should get about 5% of their body weight and rabbits should get about 6% of their body weight of fodder after it has grown out.
We make 9x13 pan sizes and divide it into 12 slices. One slice for each of our grown rabbits and depending on how many growout bunnies we have in the cage they get a couple slices.
The rest we toss in with the 5 chickens we have and the chickens will get whatever the rabbits don't eat by the end of the night.
So here is how we make the fodder.
You need to start with seeds. We use wheat or barley. The rabbits prefer the wheat over the barley.
In the evening we start a new batch of fodder.
For our animals we are targeting 5 pounds of fodder.
When using wheat, we measure out 2 1/2 cups of dry seed.
When using barley, we use 3 cups.
We put it in a half gallon mason jar, rinse well, and remove chaff.
Add water to cover seeds and we add a splash of bleach.
Some do not add bleach but it helps to eliminate mold.
We don't use vinegar because we were told it reduces the fodder from growing.
Cover and soak overnight or about 8 to 12 hours.
For draining, we made the lid by cutting plastic canvas to the size of the wide mouth jar.
This lid makes draining easier without having to remove the lid.
In the morning we replace the normal jar lid with this slotted lid.
We drain the bleach water off and run water through the slotted lid and drain a few times.
We turn the jar upside down in our draining rack until the evening.
From the first morning rinse until the fodder is fed to the animals we rinse each morning and each evening.
The next two evenings we rinse the jar we started last night and start a new jar.
Seeds start to sprout.
Night 3 we have our rack full.
One jar that is soaking, and two that have been rinsed in the morning and evening.
Including the soaking time, seeds spend 3 1/2 days in jars before being transferred to trays.
We use 9x13" pans that I melted holes on one side for rinsing and draining.
The seeds have spent 3 nights in the jars.
On the 3rd morning you will dump the seeds from the first jar made into the container of your choice.
It is best if it has drainage holes in the bottom that let the water flow through with out dumping seeds.
The trays get rinsed every morning and every evening right along with the jars.
Just keep repeating the processes.
1. Every night start a new jar and rinse all jars and trays.
2. Every morning, dump seeds into new tray, rinse bleach water off new seeds, and rinse all jars and trays.
Watch the seeds sprout and grow!
5 pounds is pretty good weight to end with.
We cut the tray into 12 slices. Each adult rabbit gets one slice in the morning.
In the grow out pen we give an average of half a slice per youth.
The rest we give to the chickens.
Using the quarter to show how thick the seed mat is before feeding to the animals.
If the rabbits do not finish eating the seeds and mat we give the leftovers to the chickens.
Side note: This is how we started in the winter. I am hoping when summer comes that we can start doing this outside and just use buckets with drainage holes and go from start to finish in the buckets. So no jars and no transferring other then from the first bleach water soak into a bucket then just water the buckets in the morning and evening.
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leesbunny
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