Raising Barley Fodder for Animals

In an effort to feed our rabbits for less money and more nutritional diversity, I have followed the trend of growing barley fodder for them, but here's how I have mine set up in a tiny, unused extra shower:

I had found the metal wine racks at a thrift store quite a long time ago and began figuring out how to best use them for this. When it finally dawned on me to use the shower that we never used because it's just too small (and not needed now that there's only two of us), things got a lot better than when I'd had it set up on large Jimmy Johns bread trays on a table. 

I put about 2 cups of barley seed into a 2 quart wide-mouthed jar.  After rinsing a couple of time to get rid of the floating hulls that won't sprout, I put in a little medicine dropper squirt of bleach to keep mold from growing, and fill the jar (or nearly so) with water to sit on the counter for a few hours or for the day if I get busy and forget. 😀

Then it goes into the shower, turned upside-down to drain on the milk crates that hold up the whole system.

I keep the seeds in the sprouting jars for two days to get a good start. I used to do three days, but then the sprouts had grown so much that they were hard to remove from the jar.

So, on Day 3, I spread the jar's worth of sprouts onto two 9x13 disposable pans into which I'd poked drainage holes. I also added some bits of foam tape to the ends of the pans just to help keep them from sliding off the racks.

After four days in the trays, they look something like the second level down, and after five days, like the top layer. I flip the trays end-to-end so that the lower, more watered part gets traded daily as I also move them up the racks daily. So I'll feed the rabbits off the top trays when they're about six to seven days grown.

Every morning and evening, the trays get watered with a simple shower hose attachment, and I've discovered that I can use it for rinsing the jar sprouts, too.

(For the curious, the tattoo is the Hebrew word hesed 
which means "steadfast love, loving-kindness, mercy" as in Psalm 136.)

Since fodder doesn't need to green up till the tail end of the process, I only have a simple full-spectrum light hanging from a nail toward the top of the set-up.

I divide each tray into thirds and spread them between our six cages.

Excessively happy rabbits!

Now that I have my system set up and running smoothly and consistently, I'm backing off on the store-bought feed and saving money that way. I won't completely eliminate it because there are vitamins and minerals in it that the barley doesn't contain and because when we go on vacation, it will be easier on our nephew who rabbit-sits if he can just use regular feed.

I hope to be able to also produce enough fodder for our quails when we get them soon.

So, get creative with what might work for you to feed your animals more frugally with more nutrition and see what you can do!