Grow Your Own Animal Feed (Luke, I Am Not Your Fodder)

We're back in action and talking all about a homemade, DIY fodder system to replace and/or add extra nutrition to your livestock feed. Eddy shows you how to take whole barley grain and sprout your own nutritious animal feed in as little as 7 days.

Welcome to Our Maine Homestead! We moved onto 200 + acres of raw land in northern Maine in September of 2018. We’re building our off-grid homestead, literally, from the ground up with our own four hands.

Our goals are to share our simple, self-sufficient, and sustainable lifestyle using traditional, old fashioned on purpose, and natural methods the same way our grandparents, great grandparents, and those who came before them did. Along the way we hope to pass on the best parts of this lifestyle to our daughters and to all of you.

We want to share the experience of how we live and the challenges we face as we build our dream homestead, raising animals, growing our own food, and working on the many projects required to live this lifestyle. We’ll show you, not necessarily how to do things, but how we do things. We’ll also share video series that go deeper into specific aspects of our lives and what it’s like to live the way we do in the 21st century.

There’s a saying, “There’s a first time for everything.” Here, there’s a first time for EVERYTHING, because almost everything we’re doing here, we’re doing for the first time. While our life is simple, it’s not always easier. It’s a lot of hard work, but we were raised knowing that nothing worthwhile comes easy and as you’ll see there are way more positives than negatives.

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[adrianevans]

The best one I've seen to date. I've just assembled a 5 tier wire rack and I'm just waiting on my trays to arrive from Amazoin to get my fodder system up and running. Can't waiti for the chickens to start digging in. Thanks for the briulliant explanation.

[sammirison]

Thank you so much for your time, preparing this wonderful video, technical explanations, and sharing your experience and knowledge.

[ellenlefavour]

This is awesome. I have goats and ducks and they will just love this. The cats too. Thank you so much. I live in Florida but my heart is in Maine, my all time favorite state.

[saifalislam]

i have watched quite a few of these videos and this is by far a no nonsense one very understandable leaving you feeling like you can go and do this Thankyou

[thecainer]

I noticed the feed bag right away! I'm one town over from Aroostook Milling just got some barely today and came across this video.

[facingfacts]

Awesome video and great info...thanks so much! Wanting to give my chickens real food. They love all my clippings and weeds I give them but this sounds better for them or in addition to.

[RabbiShalom-bv]

Thank you Great information /Joe from South Africa

[ridemerpagcay]

Thank you for sharing your ideas, I always view all your videos and I notice that very nice ideas you shared.

[nickob]

This is a gamechanger, very well explained, I am new to homesteading and thinking about chickens and rabbits, and was thinking about feeding them, so if I can put this in place before I start then I can hit the ground running. I already do microgreens for myself, I find sunflower shoots are very fast and seeds very cheap at least where I live.

[Hammer_]

I just started some for the first time. I was thinking of just supplementary at first. Great video Thanks for sharing.

[srossmiller]

Instead of using bleach I use about the same amount of vinegar. Does the same thing and I don't have to worry if I put to much in. Yes I know that bleach off gases but I just like the vinegar, It also adds minerals to the fodder.... through the vinegar.

[seamansj]

This is so great. Just heard about fodder today and you explained everything good. Thank you.

[hopehope]

I sold over ten dozen eggs I produced each week at the farmers market twice a week.
But I raised other things than barley, a few years ago in Western Canada barley prices spiked and became very expensive so I also experimented with other things like corn and cowpeas. Both could deal with extreme day time temperatures if were grown on a watering or misting schedule. Because at the time I lived in a high desert valley at night’s temperature could dip pop corn seed sprouts can deal with lower night time temperatures.
I think one area where sprouting green folder to feed livestock would be in a shade house air move and air curation it is very important to reduce mold and fungus. The nice thing about sprouting corn it gives a grower a longer harvest from four inches to four feet.
I wanted to buy a new never used cheap clement mixer to soak seeds in and to pour soaked seeds from and possibly reduce some of the extra labor.
I had chickens, goats, sheep both dairy and meat, cows beef and dairy Jersey’s.
I had a garden area that I produced vegetables and fruit (melons) for the farmers 12 months a year so I always had so extra fresh green items from my garden area that could be used for livestock feed. For example fava beans plants and their seed pods. I was always weekly planting some thing. I did all of this before the Covid Pandemic.
At that time period I knew if I wanted to expand my livestock operation I needed to expand my green fodder production and I was looking in to ways, techniques and technologies I did think of the possibilities of producing a ton of green fodder a week to feed as a top dressing on hay or other feed. In my location and set up at the time I was limited in the area that I was located in, in order to have my daily green fodder to feed each day I would need to plant two to four hundred pounds of seed each day to have constant green fodder to feed and I had to produce a little extra in case of mold or fungus out breaks.
Green Fodder production systems have to be designed and developed in their geological location to deal with their climate and other local environmental issues.
My over all goal was to produce 100% organic affordable green fodder that was cost effective and sustainable. With no high over head or expensive hidden costs. I wanted to do it at that time period 365 days a year. I was designing a 10 x20, 10x30, 12x20, or 13x30 shade house that was 100% powered by solar energy (for fans, and necessary lights and to pump water to recycle it over the seed bed as watering and/or misting.

[amandacurtis]

Thank you for the percentage body weight exercise. They was a lot more doable than I thought.

[familyplans]

an alternative to this might be to put a wire mesh grate over the top so the chickens can pick the tops but the plant keeps growing so producing more, love the channel and video

[dalepres]

Best video on the topic that I've seen. Thanks.

[maineiacacres]

Hey there Neighbor! I'm glad to see more YTers up this way.
We're near Newport and moving onto the homestead this June. Gonna start with some meat birds and go from there.
SUBBED!

[valerie]

"luke. I am not your Fodder" How could I NOT watch lol

[neoncatfish]

First time I watched your channel! But the start of the video, reminds me of Jim Varney that played Ernest (Hey Vern it's Ernest)!

[dustyflats]

Thanks for mentioning a bit of bleach. I’ve recently started seeing vids on sprouts and I think some are creating bacteria that can be deadly. I’ve known a small co that grew sprouts for human consumption and she had to use bleach water for rinsing to meet code.
I would think a thinner layer of grain would be better. I’ll have to try a few flats.