Some of Australia’s best Thoroughbreds are thriving on barley sprouts introduced to their diet by Chatswood Stud at Seymour.

Stud manager Kit Willick is pleased with the performance of the Fodder Solutions sprouting system which provides 250 kilos of fresh, nutritious feed every day. “There have been quite a lot of benefits since we introduced grain sprouts,” Mr Willick said.

The self-contained sprouting unit, manufactured locally under license by Peter Bailey, provides optimal growing conditions with controlled lighting, temperature and humidity transforming seed to feed in just six days.

It produces 36 dense mats or biscuits of feed weighing around seven kilos each which horses clean up roots and all with no wastage. “We have been feeding sprouts to about 70 dry mares. They get half a biscuit each daily with some supplementary pellets and access to grass hay for roughage,” Mr Willick said.

“We add a little bit of lupin seed to sweetens the ration up for horses being introduced to sprouts for the first time. Being a busy stud, horses are coming and going quite a lot.” Horses on the sprout diet have maintained an excellent plane of nutrition at considerably less cost than alternative dry feeds with sprouts costing 11 cents per kg.

Mr Willick said time was also saved on daily feeding. “We have been quite fastidious about hygiene and it only takes about an hour to clean the system and reload freshly seeded trays each day,”

The stud offers a full range of breeding services, typically standing up to six stallions with more than 200 mares and 100 yearlings on the 400ha Goulburn River property at any time.

“We have a lot more horses that we can introduce to a diet of barley sprouts in the future, including trying it in the diet of our yearlings” Mr Willick said. The installation of a higher throughput Fodder Solutions sprouting unit may make a fully automated system economically viable.

Chatswood Stud was established more than 30 years ago by Alan Willis and is now under the direction of his son Greg and wife Natalie. The stud has bred numerous group one race winners and has a national reputation with more than 90 yearlings destined for premium bloodstock sales around Australian in 2009.

Bill and Raylene Abraham faced a dilemma common to many rural producers.

How best to improve the viability of their small beef enterprise Mettingham, near Texas? With cash flow restricted by tough seasonal conditions, the prospect of increasing their 300ha land holding was a big call.

The couple have been delighted with their decision to instead invest in a system which gives them a guaranteed year-round supply of fresh green feed. Now their cattle are thriving with the addition of a daily ration of grain sprouts to their diet.

Taking the vagaries of the weather out of the equation has also brought them peace of mind. “It’s a great feeling knowing you have about 640 kilos of fresh feed ready for your stock each morning,” Mr Abraham said.

“We needed to do something to make our small block more profitable and this has proved very cost effective. You wouldn’t buy much land for the money we spent on our sprouting system and we are certainly ahead of the expense of setting up for irrigation.”

They purchased a grain sprouting system from Toowoomba company Fodder Solutions in April this year and quickly took advantage of an opportunity to install a bigger unit, effectively doubling their feed capacity.

The fodder system immediately proved its worth as crops have really struggled this year. One block was planted twice and still produced a disappointing result.

Mr Abraham said they aimed to grow about 40hectares of crop each year to supplement available pasture. They normally plant oats or barley or, if seasonal conditions permit, forage sorghum.

The property carries about 180 cattle and they have 20 horses which are also fed sprouts.

They had been breeding their own cattle, but have now switched their enterprise focus to finishing bought in steers.

“We select British breeds which we work with our horses in a stress free environment. The end result very much depends on what you buy and how you handle your stock,” said Mr Abraham.

The cattle get a daily ration of sprouts plus access to a grain mix and available pasture. They typically sell at 16 to 18 months of age, dressing out at 190 to 200 kilos with an 8mm fat cover.

“Most people in the area have had to sell weaners off early this season, but with our sprouts we’ve been able to keep turning off a regular supply of finished cattle for the local market.”

“Buying the spouting unit was the best decision we ever made,” Mr Abraham said.

Contact Bill and Raylene Abraham on 4653 6162 or Flavio Raccanello at Fodder Solutions on 4630 9929.

As seen in the Courier Mail, Tuesday 13th October 2009, Pages 1 & 4

BY PRODUCING A CONTINUOUS SUPPLY OF FODDER PRODUCT THAT IS GREEN, SWEET AND MOIST, THE FODDER SOLUTIONS SYSTEM IS WINNING MORE CONVERTS.

GREEN has been one of the scarcest colours on the largely parched Darling Downs over the past several years.

So when bright green, highly nutritious cattle feed appears, it may seem like some sort of illusionary miracle.

No miracle this – it’s just sound science to produce a rich green feed source that is not only keeping drought stricken cattle alive but also fattening cattle for profit. The name is the Fodder Solutions system and the game is to germinate barley seeds in trays for six days, then feed out the mats – or biscuits – of dense seed and root material with green plant sprouts at the top.

The system has been developed and refined by partners Flavio Raccenello and former professional livestock and human and foods sprouter Terry Colless. The basic principle is to sprout barley in trays in a temperature-controlled environment that minimises mould growth. Each tray is divided into three compartments so its contents are fed out as three mats or ‘biscuits’ by simply throwing the material into troughs or onto a hard standing or bare ground. Authenticated tests confirm that the sprouted barley ‘biscuits’ contain 23 percent protein and 11 megajoules of energy.

One of the growing band of Fodder Solutions enthusiasts is Rod McNamara, who, with his wife Sharon and her sister Christine Schimke, own the 32-hectare Elelyon Park farm near Nobby on the eastern Darling Downs After hearing about the system, Rob installed one of the portable Fodder Solutions about six months ago to grow young weaner cattle, principally bought-in steers, for the feed-on market, either direct sold through agents or at saleyards.

“We have photographs showing bony, drought-stricken cattle with no hair when we started giving them sprouted fodder, contrasting with later pictures of sleek, smooth cattle produced with the system,” Rob said. This unit now produces a cycle that feeds out 18 trays (or 36 biscuits) a day, in two separate feedings, to a batch of 40 weaner steers. Rob breaks up each biscuit to give more cattle access to the feed at one time and feeds early in the morning and late in the evening to emulate the normal grazing pattern of cattle that like to graze in the cool parts of the day.

This volume of spouted barley biscuits translates to about 200kg a day, giving each animal about 5kg of the product. He estimates costs at from $42/head/tonne for the three months program. From this he can gain a dual benefit in weight combined with more money per kg. He quoted the example of buying young weaners for $1.50/kg, gaining better than 1kg/day over three months and selling the cattle for $1.90 to $2/kg.

So successful has been the system on the McNamara farm that even Terry Colless says what they are doing should be nutritionally impossible - but it’s working. Mats ready for feeding are simply slid out of trays and onto hand wagons or the back of ute to be delivered to specially designed troughs. These have drainage holes in the bottom to let out moisture, keeping them clean and preventing any souring or fermenting of stale fluids.

“We put in the feed, they (the cattle) put out the manure and we use the manure on our garden,” he said. “Success with this system depends on how much you want it to work. You can adjust feeding volumes all the way from just keeping drought stricken cattle alive to fattening with good weight gains.”

In his own location and climate Rob has found that British and European cross cattle achieve better weight gains and adapt more quickly to the Fodder Solutions system, but acknowledges that there could be variations depending on climate and cattle available. In areas with dominant numbers of Brahman cattle, that breed would perform equally well with the system.

Because of his relatively small area, Rob rotates about 40 cattle through the system over a three months period. This gives him time to bring forward another 40 cattle ready for the system before the first 40 are sold, then buying in another 40 to keep total cattle on the property at around 80.

He says good cattle care is essential. This means drenching all his cattle to remove internal parasites and erecting shade cloth covers to avoid heat stress in the animals.

A guaranteed supply of fresh nutritious green feed daily has transformed a small goat enterprise near Tamworth from drought survival to expansion planning mode.

Lynda Coffey has faced a challenging string of dry seasons since moving from the Singleton region to the small 20ha property in the Daruka, district four years ago.

“It was really hard to keep going buying in expensive feed, particularly through the long dry winters,” she said.

“Now I am growing my own grain sprouts the change has been just amazing,” said Mrs Coffey who operates Nannytime Dairy Goats.

Mrs Coffey saw the feeding system manufactured by Toowoomba company Fodder Solutions at the AgQuip field day and invested in a unit in October last year.

It produces more than 144 kilos of sprouts each day, grown from 22 kg of barley for twice daily feeding to her goats, nine crossbred beef calves and six horses kept by her daughter Caitlin, an eventing enthusiast.

The climate-controlled growing chamber has given feed security regardless of seasonal conditions, bringing her dream of establishing a small cheese-making enterprise closer to reality.

She has been experimenting with the production of specialty cheeses for her own use and believes from her experience in the food industry there would be a ready local market.

“Without the economical fodder supply it would have been just impossible to build up my herd numbers enough to consider cheese making,” Mrs Coffey said.

She currently has 25 pedigree goats, mostly Saanen with some British Alpine and Anglo Nubians and would like to build up to 40 milkers.

Her goats have been successfully exhibited at shows including Sydney Royal this year and she has exported young stock to Indonesia.

“The goats took to the sprouts straight away and I just feed them with some cheap oat hay for roughage. They get about 2.5 kilos of sprouts each a day and are really thriving on their new diet.”

“It is costing me a lot less money and milk production has also gone up with some of my goats giving as much as half a litre a day more when they went onto the sprouts,” Mrs Coffey said.

“The calves have done really well on the sprouts and the horses now just get a few pellets and a bit of roughage with their sprouts.”

“Our feed bill has gone way down and the fodder unit has been a really great investment,” Mrs Coffey said.

Cattle on a diet with barley sprouts are gaining an extra half a kilogram weight daily while consuming 16 percent less grain mix in a Darling Downs feeding trial.

Mr Coverdale is intensively feeding 250 cattle on 32 hectares at Cambooya with the aid of a Fodder Solutions grain sprouting unit which produces 240 kilos of fresh green feed daily.

Fodder Solutions manufactures portable and fixed sprouting units in a range of sizes for use by livestock enterprises all over Australia.

Mr Coverdale said the independently monitored feeding trial was verifying the outstanding results he has been achieving finishing young cattle for the local trade market. “I’m getting a lot more beef production at less cost, Mr Coverdale said.

Data from the first 30 days of a 90 day trial using Angus heifers on diets with and without barley fodder were presented. A pen of 10 Angus heifers getting nine biscuits of fodder, equivalent to 2.5 percent of liveweight, gained an average 1.8 kilos a day compared to 10 heifers without fodder which gained an average 1.3 kilos.

All cattle had free access to a mix based on grain sorghum, a commercial feedlot blend, soybean meal, linseed and hominy, a cornflower by-product. Both groups of cattle were also fed sorghum stubble and lucerne hay.

The cattle fed barley sprouts achieved their superior performance consuming an average 8.28 kilos of grain mix daily while the cattle without access to sprouts ate an average 9.7 kilos.

Another group of 18 heifers fed 12 biscuits of fodder, equivalent to 1.1 percent bodyweight, gained 1.6 kilos daily over the first 30 days. Mr Coverdale said these cattle had since been averaging 2.82 kilos daily gain in the last week of February.

“The addition of barley sprouts is clearly helping to improve the feed conversion efficiency of my cattle,” Mr Coverdale said.

“Given the tremendous performance with the smaller amount of sprouts in their diet I want to do another trial reducing the sprout component even further,” Mr Coverdale said.