sprouted grains

[dominiquer60]

Our local Ag paper Country Folks has a regular column called “Crop Comments” Paris Reidhead, a field crop consultant writes the weekly feature. Quite often the articles barely relates to what you would think that a field crop consultant would write about. Sometimes it is about carbon footprints, his biodiesel adventures, questioning how valid scientific papers funded by big businesses are and feeding sprouted barley.

The sprouted barley article was so interesting that I cut it out and tried to save it, however I can’t seem to find it since I moved last January. The gist of it was that barley is a great and often under utilized cereal grain. I believe that he summarized it as being a better energy feed than corn if you need to supplement a forage with a concentrate feed. One of the problems is that it is a tough grain to digest, it is dense and hard to breakdown if fed as a dry grain.

His suggestion was to soak it and let it sit to sprout for a day or two. It made the barley much easier to digest and absorb as well as making it more palatable for the animals that he fed it to. I think that he was feeding calves and goats at a local vocational learning center and they did very well on a quality hay and sprouted barley. I know that barley is an acceptable grain for horses. I have an international eventer friend that cooks barley and whole flax seed every evening for her horses. Cooking the barley seems to be similar to sprouting it, as far as making it easier to eat and digest, but if I had to wager, sprouting may have more benefits. I have read in some old books and SFJ about sprouting oats as green feed for chickens in the winter months. This involves a whole week of sprout care for green leaves, whereas Paris was just trying to get the barley seed coat to crack open.

Has anyone tried sprouting any kind of grains for any type of livestock or poultry? I would be interested to see if anyone else has had success with such feeding techniques. In the mean time I am going to see if Mr. Reidhead will send me the article.

Erika

[jen judkins]

Erika, I have not triied this (nor even thought about it:rolleyes:), but sure sounds like it would work. Problem for me is that Barley is so hard to find in our area without it being in a pre-made mix. It makes alot of sense for flax and the like as this is impossible to digest by horses otherwise. I like the the sprouted oat idea for chickens! I will definately try that this winter for our girls. Thanks. Jennifer.

[Kristin]

Hi Erika –

We have sprouted grains for our stock in the past, but always run up against scale/infrastructure issues. In short, it’s a pain in the butt to find a place to soak — but not freeze — large quantities of grains for about six months of the year, and then there’s also the problem of transporting said soaked/sprouted grain (which is now very heavy) to the stock. Maybe someday we’ll get smart enough to figure out how to do it easily. We have not grown or fed barley but it sounds intriguing.

all best,
Kristin

[chestnutmare]

I have only read about this and they say that the sprouts are more nutritious and a good feed for all foraging animals including horses. These links do provide some information about nutrition of sprouted grains versus whole grains as well as some growing recommendations which I gather are crucial to the success of such a feeding program. It is quite easy for the sprouts to become moldy which would be dangerous to feed to an animal. If correctly sprouted, the grain increases its nutritional benefits many times over plus increases weight by as much as seven times. I would love to hear if any of you have had personal experience with such a feeding regimen and what you saw as the benefits.
http://www.animalitch.com.au/Drought.htm
http://www.foddersolutions.org/equine_nutr.htm
http://agbiopubs.sdstate.edu/articles/ExEx2039.pdf.

[amanda07]

Hi, I’ve been using germinated barley for a few years now, I love it but i’m not dealing with large numbers of beasts. It cuts my grain bill in half, the horses do well on it, it non heating so the mule gets some too. It can be a bit of a pain in the bottom as it MUST be washed daily to take off any toxins associated with fermentation. it takes 4 days to germ so I keep4 buckets with holes in the bottoms, to make life easier. Cheers A
PS I started to add a little (40ml) of veg oil to help with protein assimilation, interested to hears what people think…

[manesntails]

I think this would be great but can you do the same with Oats? I can’t seem to find anyone carrying crimped oats here where I live. Whole oats seem to go right through so I had wanted to give my mule crimped oats.

Would I just soak and rinse it the same as you would barley? I could easily handle doing it with just one mule. I have her with a Percheron who gets a high protein feed not suitable for a mule so I’m searching for something to feed. Right now I give her just a handful of 10% pelet.

[near horse]

Hi All,

I worked in beef cattle nutrition for many years and some of what we worked with was utilizing barley (big crop in dryland farming in the west) in place of corn. The major issue we had was in processing tha barley (dry rolling) to increase digestibility. BTW – corn needs to processed as well (cracked, rolled or whatever) or else you get a lot of whole kernels passing through the gut intact. Some species (usually the smaller ruminants like sheep and goats) will chew whole fed grains more completely or regurg and rechew them. Larger animals tend to take bigger bites (duh) and swallow a lot of grain whole. That’s why people process grain. When barley is rolled dry it tends to shatter and create a lot of fine material (like flour) which is fermented too rapidly in the rumens of cattle, sheep etc and can increase the incidence of bloat. To remedy this problem, some folks tried “tempering” their barley which entailed soaking the next day’s grain in a small amount of water to soften it and then run it through roller mill – no shattering, just nice smooshed barley. Just a lot of daily work to treat the feed each day so kind of impractical.

With horses I think the concern w/ dry rolled barley would be that the fines could create blockage trouble.

I don’t know if there’s any “nutritional benefit” from a grain being sprouted vs not sprouted. Brewers do this all the time (usually w/ an enezyme additive but water will do the same thing). They “trick” the grain into “thinking” it’s time to grow and the kernel converts the stored starch into sugars ready to use for germination. The brewer then ferments those sugars into alcohol using yeast. The point is both the starch and the sugars are digestible by horses (and people) so I see no real gain by sprouting.

There are fermentation byproducts available (brewer’s grains and distiller’s dry grains) that are used as protein supplements because fermentation uses up the starch/sugars (carbs) but leaves the proteins behind.

[near horse]

Hi Amanda,

I’m interested to hear how adding oil helps with protein digestion. I’m not clear on this.
All the best.

[dominiquer60]

It is my understanding that cooking or sprouting barley has a few advantages over dry. It is more palatable, easier to chew, and easier to digest in this more succulent form. Dry barley is very dense and hard, it takes a lot of moisture and digestive fluids to break it down in this form. Cooking/soaking gives digestion a head start, and it is chewed better to begin with, giving more surface area for digestive enzymes to do their job.

As far a oats go, 80 years ago it was common practice to sprout whole oats in trays for 7 days to feed chickens as green/fresh feed. I don’t think that it could hurt to try a little with the mule, they say that sprout water can be recycled by using it to water plants, they can benefit from the few nutrients that are in the water. Just remember to rinse well and often, and don’t hang on to any extra, make just what you need to use.

Erika

[manesntails]

@dominiquer60 5323 wrote:

As far a oats go, 80 years ago it was common practice to sprout whole oats in trays for 7 days to feed chickens as green/fresh feed. I don’t think that it could hurt to try a little with the mule, they say that sprout water can be recycled by using it to water plants, they can benefit from the few nutrients that are in the water. Just remember to rinse well and often, and don’t hang on to any extra, make just what you need to use.

Erika

Thank You Erika!! How many times a day do you recommend rinsing oats? Is twice enough?

[dominiquer60]

Just from my experience of making sprouts for my table, twice should suffice.

More detail, most seeds/grains for sprouting should be soaked for 6 to 48 hours in initially warm water 100 degrees F or less. Sprouts should be kept moist at 60 to 75 degrees F. The Lippincotts Farm Manual; Productive Poultry Husbandry suggests sprinkling the oats a few times a day, but they also recommend using formalin in the soaking water to prevent mold. So perhaps treat them like people sprouts and give them a quick rinse 2x a day instead of relying on formalin to control microbes. I haven’t looked it up online yet there could be some good info out there, I have no real experience sprouting livestock feed, so you will have to experiment, if it looks questionable just feed the sprouts to the chickens, they have iron stomachs.

[amanda07]

@near horse 5319 wrote:

Hi Amanda,

I’m interested to hear how adding oil helps with protein digestion. I’m not clear on this.
All the best.

My thinking has been informed by by reading some of the work of belgian vet nutritionists, writing in french and borrowed from my old farrier, so I can’t quote with exactitude, But the idea was, broadly, the vitamines in the oil helped with the absorbtion of proteins left undigested higher in the gut. This meant that the horse can profit from the feed without feeding larger amounts proteins (associated with overheating).
Further that essential fatty acids available in veg oil, increase energy, performance, stamina, cell development and repair, etc; etc; All that going with what we already know about a good vitamine intake…
However, their work went in to the details re: the germinated barley, suggesting that the nutritional quality of the feed changed when the seeds germinated (optimally 0.5cm) with the result that it is necessary to feed only half the amount for more than twice the benefit. What do you think?
BTW Wheat and oat were highly critisized in these studies (There is virtually a taboo in G.B. and France, associated with giving oats – I know of noone who does) so they can’t be getting it all right can they?!!

[dominiquer60]

That is interesting because here in the states oats have been an important staple of equine diets. I was taught that processed oats are the safest concentrate to feed due to the good Ca:P ratio. If you start with a good forage and need a little more energy you can use oats safely without additional supplements or worries about too much Phosphorous. Both schools that I went to stress the simplicity of oats, but their word is not the end all and be all. Despite what GB and France feel are faults with oats, they have worked well for many a horse owner here. I know that there is no perfect food they all have flaws, but that is why diets should be diverse, to over come imperfections. Why are oats taboo over there?

Oil is an easy enough supplement to add, I know a few people that add oil to many a ration already. I had the feeling that the sprout should be short to feed livestock (0.5cm) compared to the old trick of sprouting oats for chickens, it took 7 to 10 days for a mat of green sprouts.

[chestnutmare]

@amanda07 5291 wrote:

It cuts my grain bill in half, the horses do well on it, it non heating so the mule gets some too. It can be a bit of a pain in the bottom as it MUST be washed daily to take off any toxins associated with fermentation. it takes 4 days to germ so I keep4 buckets with holes in the bottoms, to make life easier. Cheers A
PS I started to add a little (40ml) of veg oil to help with protein assimilation, interested to hears what people think…

Wow, so it cuts grain costs in half. Now do you feed by weight or volume. The sprouted grains would weigh more because of the water absorption and plant growth so I would think that one might end up feeding less of the grain overall. I also wondered if the chlorophyll (if these grains are exposed to light) might have some additional benefit.

Thank you all for this interesting feed back. Has anybody had a colic or a bad experience feeding this to horses?

[amanda07]

The feeling is that oats turn manageable horses into hot headed beasts, that they are too heating.
The tide is changing but as with all things we take time change our ideas. Do you feed them throughout the year, if working and when not? Pehaps I should give them a try before other catch on and the price goes up!!
As for the sprouts, the’re given just as germination becomes visible, so no chlophyll:)
ps fed by volume

[Author]

Posts