Sprouts - viable?

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alisonb

alisonb

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Was wondering the other day whether sprouted grains and legumes fed to cattle is viable. When I was growing up my parents had a dairy and had to get through a drought period. My dad set up a sprouting system and the animals were fed sprouts with their morning and afternoon rations. Bales were put out as well. The only problems that I recall was some mould at times which was solved by disinfecting frames between each batch of sprouts and it was quite labour intensive. 1kg of dry grain will apparently make between 6-10kg of sprouts.....It seemed to work very well, they stopped using the system when the rains arrived.
Think I will search the web a bit but if anyone has some experience with this please share it with me.
 
Here is a link to a system that is being used in America.
As you will read the initial cost are high and I wonder if it's necessary to have such a complicated system. As I recall my dad made a stucture similar to the old standing filing cabinets (that didn't have drawers), the metal frame was probably(these are guestimates as my dad is no longer around to confirm) about 6 feet tall, 6 feet deep(shelves) and 30ft long, there would have been 5 or 6 shelves. The strucure had a fibre glass roof with about 2ft overhang and piping fitted with jet sprays on each level. He had plastic trays that fitted back to back on the shelves, they would have been apprx 3 ft long and with a width of about 1.5ft. The structure was placed so that the full length and all the front trays would get the morning sun and the back trays the afternoon sun. One of the most important things to do is water the sprouts regularly to cut down on humidity and possible mould. My dad sprouted a variety of seeds of which wheat was by far the most successful.
If one is interested in something like this I would suggest trying it on small scale first ;-) . Anyway, hope I'm making sense and not wasting your time by not making sense :P .
http://www.grazegreen.com/pricing500.html
http://www.foddertech.com/nutrition/beef-cows
 

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