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STOP TRYING TO GROW ALL YOUR ANIMAL FEED

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I get asked all the time how to grow animal feed.

Lots of homesteaders are trying to feed themselves and their animals off the land. That is awesome. Feeding yourself and growing livestock off your land is what homesteading is all about.

So if that is what homesteading is all about, why do I think you should stop trying to grow all your animals feed from your land?

Supplementing Your Animals Feed From Your Land By Allowing Them to Forage is Awesome.

All your livestock should be foraging from your woods, fields, and pastures. Chickens and pigs can eat bugs, seeds, weeds. Cows and sheep can eat grass. Goats… they will try to eat everything.

Allowing your animals to forage will save you money, create a better product, and make everyone happier.

There is a Big Difference Between Supplementing Your Animals Feed and Growing ALL Of It. 

I get it. Feed is expensive. Every year I literally spend THOUSANDS of dollars on feed. I would LOVE to stop spending so much money on feed.

But growing all your animals feed is not as easy as supplementing their diet. Supplementing their diet is as easy as setting up some electric fencing and letting them go free. Growing all their feed is a whole different kind of farming. It requires Time, Money and Energy.

The internet is full of blog posts, videos and infographics about fodder, growing grains, and how it can all save you money. So why don’t I do it?

The Real Reason I Don’t Grow My Animals Feed Is That I Don’t Want To.

I like to spend time on my homestead doing things I LIKE to do, like working with livestock, hunting and fishing,
I am not a big gardener. I am not really into growing plants in a garden or even in a field on a larger scale. I DON’T LIKE THE IDEA OF DOING HAY, FODDER, or growing and Making Feed. It doesn’t excite me or interest me. So I choose not to do it.
Your thinking… AUST, YOU SHOVEL PIG POOP! Sometimes we have to do things on our homestead that we don’t like to do.
That is true. I do lot’s of things weekly here that I would rather not spend my time doing. But there is a very good reason I do those things.
There are 3 reasons I will do something I don’t really want to on my homestead.
  1. IF IT IS BETTER NUTRITIONALLY
  2. IF IT IS CHEAPER TO DIY
  3. IF IT IS MORE SELF SUFFICIENT
If I am considering doing something that I don’t really love, I ask my self if it is any or all of these three.
If I answer yes to a few of these it is worth doing.
Dairy animals are a good example of this. I personally don’t like wintering animals. Wintering animals is a whole lot of additional stress and worry. But I believe its better nutritionally and more self sufficient, and cheaper for us to do our own family’s raw milk, and so I happily do it.
SO WHAT ABOUT GROWING ALL OUR ANIMALS FEED? Is it more nutritious, cheaper or more self sufficient?
Let us first look a fodder.

Fodder is hydroponically grown forage, usually barley. Many people claim you can save money and feed better quality food to your livestock by doing fodder.

What do the facts show?
Here are some excerpts from a great article…from UC Cooperative Extension
IS IT BETTER NUTRITIONALLY? The Jury is Out…
But isn’t the nutritional quality better?  “There is little doubt that sprouts are highly palatable to livestock—witness the relish with which animals consume it in web photos and videos. High moisture feeds are frequently quite palatable.  However, we do not have data to suggest that barley ‘forage’ is superior to feeding other forages with similar analyses, or even better than feeding barley directly. “
IS IT CHEAPER TO DIY? Not any more so than anything else…
Can hydroponic fodder production be profitable? “If you have animals, you have a choice whether to 1) graze, pasture, or grow your own hay or silage, 2) purchase hay or other forages, or 3) grow the feed hydroponically. Alternatively, feed grains like barley can be fed directly to livestock.  So which makes most sense?  We calculate that one ‘pod’ starting with 104 lbs. seed (52 weeks x 2 lbs./week) would produce about 60-80 lbs. DM per year.  This is approximately 2/3 of a 125 lb. bale of hay (alfalfa, grain, or grass) per pod, which (these days) goes for between $12 and $18/bale.  So a hydroponic system at a minimum must beat that cost (e.g. be cheaper than about $8-$12/pod/year), including infrastructure, seed, and labor.  Another way to look at it, considering only the cost of seed at 18 cents/pound (not the infrastructure of lights, box, trays, greenhouse, etc. or labor), the hydroponic cost of production would equal about $461/ton hay (90%DM). If one includes the cost of the infrastructure, energy inputs and labor, the real cost might be double that.”
IS IT MORE SELF SUFFICIENT? Not Really
Sustainability? “Is this system easier on our natural resources?  It would be hard to argue that a completely artificial system with a requirement for electrical energy (lights or fans) and a structure such as a box or greenhouse is superior to field grown forages with regards to sustainability. “
Fodder is not the miracle animal feed it seems to be on pinterest. Like everything in farming there is a time, place and reason to do it, I just don’t see one for me to spend time doing it.
What about growing my own animals Hay and Grain?
IS IT BETTER NUTRITIONALLY? Not really. We have really good hay around here that we can have delivered. At best I could match the product.
IS IT CHEAPER TO DIY? NO
I already have a tractor. So you would think it would save me money to do my own grains and hay. But when you look at the cost for the equipment to do so it looks different…
“For harvesting 4-foot-by-5-foot round bales, estimated new equipment costs are $25,000 for a rotary mower/conditioner, $5,500 for a 10-foot rake, $35,000 for the baler and $55,000 for an adequate-sized tractor. The total is an investment of $120,500.”
If you take away the cost of the tractor it would still cost me around $70,000 to buy what I needed. It would take me 70 YEARS at our current hay consumption to pay that off.
Now I know I could buy used equipment. I could sell excess hay. BUT I DON’T WANT TO RUN A HAY BUSINESS. So yeah, again not really seeming like something I should be forcing myself to do.
IS IT MORE SELF SUFFICIENT? NOT EXATLY
Tractors need diesel, replacement parts, etc. NO. If the world as we know it ended, a tractor would not be much help very long.
There are some people watching this video, reading this article, who think I am crazy to not do this stuff. If you are one of those people, GO FOR IT! If you get excited by the idea of growing hay, crops, fodder, then I think YOU should do it. I do things on my homestead that are not cheaper, not more nutritious and not self sufficient all the time, because I WANT TO DO THOSE THINGS.
I believe homesteading can really only be truly sustainable if we focus on things we want to do, and so for me, growing all my animals feed is not going to happen. 

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    • Interesting read. I don’t have my homestead yet, but have been contemplating growing my own feed. You make many great points!

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