Hydroponic maize fodder as a supplementary feed for livestock

In many parts of the world, the limitation of land allocation, fertilizer requirements for cultivation, lack of irrigation facilities and natural calamity, production of sufficient green fodder and grain to feed for livestock has become a big challenge.To overcome this problem, hydroponics production technology is an alternative to grow sufficient quantity and quality fodder.Hydroponic fodder production is a new method of fodder production, which fodder seeds are germinated into a high quality, highly nutritious, disease-free animal feed in a hygienic environment.It is also more palatable, digestible and can be grown in low cost devices with locally home-grown grains.Moreover, it is advantageous in terms of nutritional benefit and economic value, constant feed supply year-round, marginal land use, reduced labor requirement and natural feed for livestock.Under intensive production system, feeds account for 70-80% of the total cost of production.Inclusion of hydroponically grown cereal fodder in the livestock diet can reduce the cost on feeding in free-range production system.From 1kg of maize seed grown for 7 days without using any nutrients in the irrigated water was obtained 6 kg of hydroponic maize fodder.