To reduce waste, Samantha and Jen devised this manger by cutting a pipe in half.
A barley “biscuit” as this mat of sprouts is called weighs more than 20 lbs and is quite moist, water that livestock will ingest and therefore require less water overall.
Imagine never again having to worry if you will have enough hay to over-winter your livestock, or that a bad hay year will leave you scrambling to not only find winter feed, but to afford the higher prices that comes with its scarcity. Imagine if you had all the feed you needed for your livestock, and you never had to leave the farm to get it.
For Funny Duck Farms co-owners, Samantha and Aaron Klinck and Jen Hart, these aren’t worries they need to deal with anymore. These three intrepid Eastern Ontario farmers have found a way to eliminate the middle man and make their own feed on-farm, year-round.
Funny Duck Farms is a certified organic farm made up of two farm properties; one 95-acre property farmed by Samantha and Aaron, and another 130-acre property farmed by Samantha’s sister, Jen. Hay and grains are staple feeds at Funny Duck Farms where they raise 35 head of cattle, 30 sheep, 40 pigs and a multitude of poultry, while operating a 35-share CSA.
Samantha explained that finding good quality hay has become more and more challenging in recent years, and after struggling through a severe drought in 2016, the three farmers began to search for solutions to feed instability.
That solution came in the form of fodder: sprouted seed grown for less than a week that can be used as a partial substitute for hay and grains. Fodder offers livestock what Aaron calls “forever grass”— fresh, green, nutrient-packed sprouted grains, every single day, rain or shine, winter or summer. Even better, the sprouts can also be fed to poultry and pigs.
“Adding fodder was key for us in coping with climate change,” Samantha explained, “We’ve had drought every four years now and flooding in spring and fall . . . it’s getting harder and harder to do traditional grazing management.”
Fodder isn’t necessarily a new concept, but one that is experiencing a resurgence in popularity thanks to increasing land and grain costs, along with changing weather patterns. Fodder can be produced organically or non-organically in a small space, and with no chemicals, using nothing more than a large container, some trays, a light or two, a watering system and a heating and cooling system.
Funny Duck Farms boasts two fodder systems purchased in early 2017, one for each farm location. Jen’s system has a daily fodder production capacity of 320 lbs, while Samantha and Aaron’s system has a capacity of 220 lbs. With price tags of $18,950 (220 lb system) and $22,950 (320 lb system), purchasing a fodder system is no small financial undertaking.
To pay for their systems, Funny Duck Farms raised 20 per cent of the purchase price through pre-payments from their CSA members, while the remainder came from Farm Credit Canada. According to Samantha, the systems arrived “in the nick of time,” when they were on the cusp of running out of the little hay they’d been able to source the previous year.
This fodder is at about the three or four-day point, not quite ready for sheep or cattle, but ready to go for pigs and chickens.
Only a few months into fodder production, Samantha explained they are already using 40 to 50 per cent per cent less hay, and their grain consumption which had previously amounted to four tonnes every month, has been cut in half.
“We’re looking at a substantial savings over 10 years,”
Trays of fodder at various stages in the growth cycle. From left to right: Front row, Day One and Day Two; middle row Day Three and Day Four; back row Day Five and Day Six.
Samantha said, allowing that all the numbers aren’t in quite yet. “We still have to factor in hydro, seed costs . . . we’re not sure what that will be yet.”
As feed for ruminants, fodder isn’t intended as a sole source of nutrition, and must be supplemented with a dry feed like hay for roughage. By using fodder, Samantha said the pressure is off for sourcing the highest quality hay, because livestock are already receiving the necessary nutrients from fodder.
“Fodder allows us to manage our farm differently, we can protect our fields, and cut hay later in the season to safeguard the bobolinks nesting in them while still getting good quality hay,” Samantha explained, “If we fall behind on grazing rotation or harvesting it doesn’t matter as much, and we’ll have nice, lush fodder for the winter to supplement the hay.”
For Funny Duck Farms, fodder has the potential to offer more than just financial gain as an incentive for production. Samantha noted that the ability to recreate the same lush, nutrient-dense grass that’s produced in spring can equate to healthier livestock, increased digestibility for other feeds, quicker weight gains and greater resistance to illness and disease. And because fodder has a higher moisture content than hay it can also mean less water consumption by livestock.
Fodder production at a glance
Fodder production is a fairly simple process; a turnkey fodder system is essentially a large insulated box that holds trays of seeds and uses a heating and cooling system to keep them cool and moist while they sprout and grow over a six-to-seven-day period.
A farmer’s job is to prepare the trays of seeds, wait for them to grow and then distribute to livestock. It’s pretty much as simple as that.
Samantha and Jen say they spend an average of half an hour each day preparing the fodder and feeding it to livestock. After removing the fodder mats, called “biscuits,” to distribute to livestock, the trays are rinsed down and a new batch of fodder is immediately started.
The point at which fodder is ready for consumption varies depending on the type of livestock it will be feeding. Poultry can be fed fodder grown for three days, pigs prefer fodder at the four-day point, while cattle and other ruminants eat six-day fodder. Just before the blade of grass starts to open is the best time to harvest for grazing livestock.
The industry standard is one pound of barley grain produces six pounds of fodder in six-to-seven-days. Seed-quality barley seed is the recommended grain of choice for fodder production, although it’s technically possible to produce fodder from feed-grade seeds, there is less reliability for germination rates.
Is fodder worth it?
As with anything that seems too good to be true, there’s always a catch: Critics of fodder point to a low dry matter (DM) content, susceptibility to mould and labour intensiveness of production. Purchasing a complete fodder system can be expensive, and it can take years to repay the equipment costs.
The dry matter argument can be troubling at first glance. In their first week of growth, sprouted grains use stored starch which reduces dry matter content significantly. Although a six-day fodder biscuit can weigh more than 20 lbs, up to 80 per cent of that can be water.
On the flip side, dry matter measure is not necessarily the gold standard. Some would argue that fresh grass can’t be measured solely by dry matter content while overlooking the benefits of fresh feed sources, such as higher digestibility and vitamin and mineral content.
The difference between rye and barley fodder is evident in this picture. The left-hand side of the rack is rye fodder while the right is barley fodder.
One study undertaken by California State University focused on dairy cows disputed the low dry matter argument and found that: “Rumen dynamics change under the influence of fodder and do not appear to hold to the 6:1 conversion as implied by the DM analysis.” The study also noted that comparable milk production was established with 2 lbs fodder to 1 lb of grain.
From a purely financial perspective, fodder production becomes more attractive and economically viable as grain prices increase. For a small farmer on a limited acreage, fodder can be a solution that will allow for expansion, with a 200-square foot system replacing between 30-to-40 acres of farmland.
A recent study on the impact of fodder consumption by dairy cows conducted by the University of Minnesota concluded that fodder systems may have better application for small-scale operations, or where land values are high and where drought is a consideration.
Samantha checks the stages of growth for her fodder. Because fodder is on a six-day rotation, farmers need to be making a new batch of fodder every day to ensure they have a continuous supply of fresh feed. There’s no taking a day off from fodder production.
For a farmer contemplating purchasing a fodder system, determining the cost of production can be challenging; farmers need to factor in seed costs, electricity, time and labour and the depreciated cost of the fodder system itself.
Kyle Chittock, general manager from Fodder Works, the company from which Funny Duck Farms sourced their fodder system, stressed that despite the financial savings the benefits of fodder doesn’t always come down to cost. One example of this is that fodder allows organic farms like Funny Duck Farms to produce more expensive organic feed on-farm, at a fraction of the cost.
“The biggest benefit is not always cost savings, it’s the health and performance of a farmer’s animals,” Chittock explained.
Innovation can pay off in more ways than one; Funny Duck Farms was recognized provincially for their innovation in adding fodder to their farm, receiving the Premier's Award for Agri-Food Innovation Excellence in 2017.
Samantha agrees with Chittock, stressing that the benefits of fodder can’t easily be quantified. Because of their new fodder system, Funny Duck Farms now has the capacity to increase livestock numbers and accommodate more families from their CSA, earning more income and furthering the financial benefit of their fodder system.
“It’s cheaper than buying new land and haying equipment,” Samantha said, “This wasn’t just about the money, it’s about things that are harder to measure, like herd health, market weight and peace of mind.”
For more information:
Complete the Return on Investment (ROI) chart from Simply Country (FodderWorks): www.fodderworks.net/pages/roi-calculator
University of Minnesota study: www.wcroc.cfans.umn.edu/fodder
- Amy Hogue