Trish and David Deakin - Rosewood QLD

Trish and Dave Deakin’s mixed farming property at Rosewood, 25 km west of Ipswich, runs on careful margins. And when they went looking for a reliable, inexpensive way to keep their goats – stud Boers and Anglo-Nubians – fed as they require the search ended at FodderSolutions.

“About five years ago I went looking for a system like this but couldn’t find on without problems. Goats are browsers – they actually prefer a variety of foods and need a variety to keep their rumens going. They have a very fast metabolism and need a higher turn over of nutrients. It is not true goats will thrive on just anything,” Trish says.

Trish likes her FodderSolutions system and says that they haven’t had any problems with it. A FodderSolutions system is a climate-controlled grain-germinating factory. Trays of seed go in one end and with the right conditions and watering sprout, then grow into lush mats of green shoots and matted roots, then slide out of the tray at the other end.

“With sprouts the nutrition is released from the seed.

“We use barely grain but are experimenting with adding in different types for the sprouts: garlic, fenugreek, sunflowers, to get the best levels of nutrients to keep the goats health and immunity up. Turning a grain to a sprout means the animals are getting the best of it. By the time the grain has become a sprout the grain is digestible. The animal has access to everything that was in the grain.

“The sprouts come out like a little mat. The dairy does get one-third of a mat per day. They are doing brilliantly. They look wonderful. The dairy goats don’t have a lot of room to move so this is almost all they eat.

“I’ve got does that were milking six litres a day on it. That is a very good amount for an animal that only weighs 60 kilograms. She’s milking 10 percent of her body weight per day.

“We bought a FodderSolutions machine about a year ago and five weeks later upgraded. Now we have the biggest one you can get. We are only a small property and we had to look at production costs and the fodder machine was a reliable, low cost option Using the sprouts we have cut down our feeding costs.

“We have to bring our whole enterprise in at a certain costing. This machine takes out all the variables. It has allowed us to not be influenced by fodder prices. It has given us the freedom to operate on steady costings. Everyday I take my 240 kg of feed out and I am happy.”