Chicken Feed Café: Sprouts
The first time I saw someone sprouting seeds to eat was while visiting a friend living in some crunchy granola group house in the 1980s. The guy held up some fancy jar — made for sprouting seeds — and slowly rolled it in his hands. He held it up to the light from the window over the kitchen sink. Inside was a tangled mess of mung beans
that had sprouted and were stretching out: Their seed leaves were seeking bright light while their roots were seeking dark soil. I didn’t want to break it to those seedlings that the only darkness they would find was in the stomach of this guy marveling at his own ability to sprout some beans.
Over the years I’ve eaten plenty of sprouts. They seem to show up unsolicited in some restaurants. However, I’ve never conjured them myself until I grew some for my chickens. (The things we do!)
But it fits my profile for worthwhile activities: a smidgen of work for a substantial payoff. Given that sunlight is food for plants — even tiny little sprouts — it’s still mysterious that the nutritional value of sprouts about doubles even without being in contact with the soil. Somehow these unfolding creatures turn water, air and light into protein, vitamins, enzymes and antioxidants that didn’t exist while the seeds were dormant.
You wouldn’t use sprouts as a substitute for bagged feed. But they work well as a treat and as a winter alternative to foraging for greens. Or this can be a great science experiment for your kids. And heck, you might even want to eat the things, too.
Seeds
Sprouting is just another word for germination, something any gardener has done many times. Now you’re just doing it above ground, and with a much quicker turnaround from germination to gustation.
Sprouting works because any seed is like a tiny, dense battery with energy stored to power up a young plant once it’s plugged into enough water and warmth.
Lentils are good seed batteries to start with because they are pretty reliable and sprout quickly so you’re less likely to get mold. But forgo split lentils: That would be like trying to grow a daffodil bulb that’s been chopped in half.
Other enthusiastic sprouters include mung beans, peas, alfalfa, barley and mustard seed. But you can also manifest some crowd-pleasers
with seeds of clover, grains, quinoa, peanuts, garbanzos, radish, pumpkin and even sunflower seeds. These will all take several days longer, so a drop of vinegar to make conditions too acidic for mold might be justified.
Mixed birdseeds are also an option, but do aim for organic seeds so you know they haven’t been treated with chemicals.
Just like any garden seed, the older they are, the less likely they are to germinate or sprout. And beans that don’t sprout should be cooked or tossed in the compost. Dried beans have a toxin called hemaglutin that can harm chickens (and people). Any other type of seed too old to sprout is still a good and popular treat for your hens. They just have less nutrition than their sprouty sisters.
Nutrients
Lentils double the amount of vitamins available once they sprout, especially vitamin C. British explorer Capt. James Cook kept scurvy at bay in the 1700s on his around-the-world ocean adventures by feeding his sailors not just lemons and limes but also sprouts. Grains used as meal or flour don’t provide vitamin C, but when sprouted, the grains became reliable scurvy fighters.
Folate, a B vitamin, is very important for hens incubating their eggs. Lentils and mung bean sprouts contain a lot of folate.
Fresh sprouts also generate plenty of antioxidants that boost the immune system. But there’s more. The enzymes liberated by sprouting make the seeds about
50 percent more digestible — more bang for your seedy buck. Those enzymes dismantle the molecules that keep a seed stable in dormancy. As your seed battery wakes up, more nutrition and fiber also becomes available.
Sprouting also makes your birds’ eggs look better: The leafy parts add chlorophyll and beta-carotene, which makes for darker yolks.
Container
I pulled some spent canning jars from the basement to sprout our seeds. The glass is sturdy and lets in light. But it’s the lids that make this pretty painless. Use the flat disk as a template to cut out a same-size circle from some mosquito screen. Fiberglass or metal screen works. Scissors cut either one.
Mark an outline of the disk with a marker and then follow the line with your scissors. Or just hold the disc in place and cut around its edge. It doesn’t have to be perfect: Close is good enough. You can also use the type of plastic shelf liner that has a lacy pattern.
Anything that’s easy to cut, lets water drain and stands up to moisture is OK. The idea is that air can circulate in the jar, and then you can pour water in and drain it out without removing the lid. Of course, there are sprouting lids at the store, but you’ll save money by making them yourself.
Drop the circle of screen into the threaded ring part of the lid and then screw it onto the jar. If the screen is cut to the right size, it won’t interfere with screwing the lid on. And it stays in place when the jar is upside down.
Once you’ve mastered sprouting small batches, you can graduate to quart jars for bigger batches. Or set up some well-drained trays or tubs for big sheet cakes of succulent sprouts.
Steps
Scoop out a big tablespoon of seeds and drop it in a pint jar. Top it up with cool tap water. If you have had trouble with mold forming in your jars, you could preempt that with a few drops of vinegar. You’ll know if you have mold because the sprouts smell like a locker room.
Put the lid in place and let the seeds sit in the water overnight or for about 8 to 12 hours. Pour the water off and then refill with enough fresh water to swirl around the seeds and give them a good rinse. Pour it out again. Shake out the last of the water. I then put my jars upside down on the dish drainer on the counter. It’s no big deal if the seeds stick to the inside of the jar.
Give each jar a swishy rinse-and-pour every morning and every evening. Position them to drain in between rinses so the seeds can get plenty of air. In a couple of days you should see what look like little white tails poking out from most of the seeds.
Don’t put them in a cupboard; they need the light. That said, direct light on a bright windowsill might be too much. So I put mine on the counter. Indirect light helps the seed leaves green up.
After about four to six days — depending on temperature and species — sprouts will be
about 2 to 4 inches long. Longer than 4 inches and you’d call it “fodder,” and that might be a hazard for your chickens’ crop. So serve them when they’re shorter or give the fodder to larger animals or the compost. You’re also more likely to get mold if you wait to harvest the sprouts when they’re older and longer, especially in a warm kitchen.
Treat Time
When your sprouts are ready, open the lid and shake the sprouts into your hand or a bowl. By winter, you’ll be familiar enough with the process that you could be laying out big trays of sprouts several times a week if you like. But a small amount of sprouts in any season will get the attention of your hens. They’ll slurp them up like so many noodles. Their enthusiasm might even inspire you to pop a few in your mouth.
Frank Hyman’s new book Hentopia: Create a Hassle-Free Habitat for Happy Chickens; 21 Projects entered its second printing in just one month. Apparently lots of people want to keep chickens and still go on two-week vacations without fretting. Learn more about Frank and his book at www.hentopiacoops.com.