Micro greens and salad sprouts are a craze picking up popularity around the world. Because a few day old sprout has maximum energy and nutrition it is an incredible food to include in your diet. In fact the best form of food is living food!! You can sprout pretty much any seed, grain or legume. It makes a nutrient dense snack and healthy, living part of a meal. Although the sprouts I'm referring to are not found in neat packaging in the veggie aisles of a supermarket or matching bottles on the kitchen windowsill. These trays of living green are grown specifically for animals.
Farmer Buckaroo has often commented that our animals eat better than him. In the case of our investment in the Bio-Boost Grow Box this may have been the case - if it weren't for the fact that we were desperate to produce food for our starving animals. It was early in the drought but along with other farmers, we were desperate to save the lives of our homesteads - and provide food for our hungry livestock. When we first discovered this incredible Grow Box we were very excited at the concept and the simplicity.
Of course simplicity and ease are not necessarily the same. Running the Grow Box was extremely time consuming and a huge responsiblity. Every day the bathtub (an actual retired human bathtub) is filled with grains and water. Our preference was barley, oats and rye although we sometimes could only get corn in bulk. In the morning the soaked grains are rinsed and then layered in the clean trays. The misters are set on a timer to lightly but thoroughly spray water over the sprouts every 45 minutes day and night. Within two days a thick carpet has formed. By the fourth day the sprouted mat has to be cut with knives for breakfast or supper.
The Bio-Boost Grow Box works exactly as homegrown kitchen sprouts. Just on a very very large scale. Enough to feed 300 sheep. In our case, at the time we needed to feed about 100 sheep with lambs, my 60 goats and our one milk cow, Molly. The Grow Box is divided down the left and right into sets of shelves that are vertically divided into 7. So you can run two weeks altogether.
What this meant for us was that from overnight soaking to feeding the animals it was 4 days in summer (6 in winter) and our animals had a nutrient dense food. 50kg of grains converted into 300kg of living food. At 6 days the sprouted grains are at their maximum nutritional value (after that they devalue). Of course we would rotate the shelving to prevent mold as we mostly grew in 4 day cycles before feeding the sprouts to the livestock.
Because of our extreme temperatures the Grow Box has both infra-red lighting as well as a cooling system. It is a fine balance regulating the temperature and the humidity. The trays as well as the shelving has to be kept very well clean, almost sterile, to prevent bad bacteria which would inhibit growth. Rot sets in very quickly if one is not attentive. This is the only downside; that while the Grow Box is perfect for sprouting grains, it is also the ideal condition for fungal growth. However managed correctly this should not be a problem.
In an article explaining the advantages versus disadvantages of closed system fodder, Professor Brand (Directorate of Animal Sciences at the Western Cape agriculture department at Elsenburg and the Department of Animal Sciences at Stellenbosch University) explains the value of the sprout: "The total amount of protein in the seed before germination equals the total amount of protein after germination. Changes in the nutrients in the grains do occur..."
"...Starches are converted into sugars and fibres (in the cell walls) during the germination process and specific vitamins accumulate during the growth process. Moisture and enzyme activity increases. The enzymes then break starches down into sugars, proteins into amino acids and fats into fatty acids. The relevant amount of fibre in cell walls – cellulose and hemicellulose – also increases, vitamins are synthesised, and certain anti-nutrient factors are destroyed."
It didn't take long for our sheep and goats to realize that instead of going hungry they were now being fed green chocolate! They would line up at the same time every day waiting for their buffet. Immediately following the flood we had a crisis with lambing ewes rejecting their babies.
Suddenly there was bountiful food again and our animals flourished. Running the Grow Box took commitment and extra work but the benefits were incredible. Seeing the excellent condition of our livestock despite the drought, the farmers in our valley started researching the Bio-Boost Grow Box.
Sadly many farms and their animals did not survive the long drought. But now with the blessing of returned rain the Grow Box has been retired. Although we still grow our amazing nutrient-dense sprouts for the humans. Living food truly is the best form of food to eat - whether you are two or four legged creature.
