Fodder

Hello Farm Friends, 

We've taken on another endeavor, ever learning, changing and revamping.  We seem to be the forever rethinking things.  Our budget shrinking, pig feed ever increasing, we decided we needed a better plan.  We heard some talk about fodder back in September at the North American Devon Conference.  We did some research, visited with someone actually making fodder and then found a great system.  We purchased a slightly used hydroponic microgreen growing system.  We then sourced barley seed which will be our fodder base.  We (I used the term loosely, Andy) built the fodder bunk and the enclosure for the system.  We also purchased a timer, the one that came with the system didn't work.  We had lights, a small space heater, a water tub for the water system and we were on go.  We've had cool days and nights, no sun and lots of learning with more to come!  We had an incident with our cheaper timer which cost us about 3 days.  We've also had some variation in results because we are playing around with depth of seed to see which is the best.  It seems like only about 2-3 seeds deep is the best.  Here are a few pics of what's been going on!