guildfordcycads

I’ve seen many methods of sprouting barley t9 produce feed for animals, but I have a few questions l hope people might answer.

One, has anyone experience with anything besides barley? Ive seen reports that this is one of the better grains to do this with, mostly due to growing speed and vigor.

Two, could this be done in a self sustaining manner? Could one grow enough to sustain say 5 or 6 cows over the winter of zone 6b/7? I saw a post where a guy did this for several cows and a few other animals, and it didnt seem too intensive.

Third, wouldn’t it make more sense to just have a hay plot? I dont see why the sporuting is done unless you just want the animals to have fresh feed.

Fourth, what would the nutrient profile of sprouts versus say the grains themselves? Wondering how this plays.

Any thoughts or experience would be appreciated, thank you!

TLDR don’t bury tamarix in the garden. It’s okay as a light mulch, but if buried it alters the soil. I’ve used mulch with tamarix before, so I just assumed it was okay to bury the wood.

Some recent reading states that tamarix decays slowly and releases allelopathic ooze very slowly, so it makes sense that I only started noticing new stress after 3 years. Furthermore, I already have significant salinity issues in water and soil here, so salt was probably building up fast in that pit.

When I dried out a soil sample it was super crusty with minerals and the texture was non-existant.

Only this one bed had tamarix. Other beds have some mesquite and cactus burried underneath and those are awesome.

I guess I’ll fill it and plant some halophytes over top…

Yay learning the hard way!

I have 6 laying hens in my backyard, they are rescue hens – In France, breeders get rid of them at 18 months and some NGOs take them and sell them to people who want to rescue them. They lay very little at first as I first had to get them healthy again. The conditions in which they were kept previously were terrible.

Recently I simultaneously made two changes to their environment:

I made a nest out of tall grass in their coop. The idea was to get them laying their eggs in a specific corner that is easier for me to access and pick them up.

Around the same time, I began raising little chickens right beside them, in a separate park but very close.

After both these things the laying hens’ production went crazy. They went from 1 egg every 2 days to 2 to 3 eggs per day. I do want to note 100% of the eggs are now laid in the nest.

Is the nest the only thing responsible for the increase in production or does the presence of the little chickens stimulate some sort of instinct?

I searched the literature but most articles I could find about the conditions/environment of laying hens do not mention the presence of chickens.

Thanks in advance for any interest/replies!

-Matt