Seasoned pet parents know: the best way to keep your furry, feathered, or scaly friend healthy is to feed it a nutritious diet. We’re always on the look-out for new and improved foods to add to our pets’ diets, often paying more attention to this than to our own meals! Feeding our pets can get expensive, but did you know it’s possible to easily generate an almost free source of “superfood” right in your own kitchen? It’s not magic; you just have to learn how to sprout seeds.

Below, find out why you should be sprouting seeds for your herbivorous or omnivorous pets, which animals benefit from eating sprouts, and how to grow sprouts yourself using items you probably already have in your pantry.

Why are sprouted seeds healthy?

You’ve more than likely eaten sprouts and/or sprouted seeds at some point. Everyone learned to sprout beans in wet kitchen paper or cotton in primary school! Alfalfa and mung bean sprouts have always been popular, while recent health crazes brought the introduction of more ‘unusual’ sprouts, like cilantro, radish, and wheatgrass.

Whether you like some sprouts in your salad or not, no one can deny they’re good for you. And their benefits aren’t just limited to us humans: they’re great for our animal companions as well. But why is that, exactly?

Well, according to a 2010 review of sprouts and their health benefits (compared to dried seeds):

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• Dry seeds contain stored fat meant to kickstart a sprout. Once the sprouting process is on the way, the fat content plummets and the protein content increases.
• The amount of healthy amino acids goes up during sprouting, as does the vitamin content (notably vitamin C).
• The mineral content stays the same, but the minerals in question are better utilized, meaning sprouts are more nutritious.
• Speaking of better utilization: sprouts in general are easier to digest and their nutrients absorbed better.

Which pets are sprouts good for?

If your pet is herbivorous or omnivorous, then sprouts are probably a good addition to their diet! We’d like to point out that parrots in particular benefit from them: although a lot of people still feed their feathered friends a dried seed mix, this is actually not the ideal food for these birds. These mixes are high in fat and low in nutrients, meaning that your bird is at risk of malnutrition and obesity. As such, veterinarians now generally agree it’s much better to offer a formulated parrot pellet mix enriched with such fresh, nutritious foods such as—you guessed it—sprouts.

But that’s not all! Although sprouts are a great way to make a dry parrot seed mix that much more nutritious, there are many other animals that can benefit from these little green gems of nature. Other birds like canaries, finches, doves, chickens, quail, and ducks are obvious candidates. So are rodents: rabbits, mice, guinea pigs, and the like will love getting to munch their way through different tasty types of sprouts.

You can also sprout seeds for:

• Herbivorous reptiles, like tortoises
• Livestock like sheep and goats
• Herbivorous fish, like goldfish (remove the seed hull)

And don’t forget about yourself, of course! Your pet won’t mind if you redirect a few sprouts to your own salads and sandwiches.

How to sprout seeds: What do you need?

Jar

There are a few sprouting methods, like sprouting in soil or on wet cotton/kitchen paper. In our opinion, though, the easiest method to sprout seeds for animal (and human!) consumption is with a sprouting jar.

You can opt to buy a seed sprouting kit, which comes with a jar plus a handy lid and a stand. However, it’s also entirely possible to go the DIY route with:

• A large, clean, transparent jar.

• A square of mesh or breathable fabric (like pantyhose or cheesecloth) that will allow water to pass through.

• A rubber band to fasten the cover.

Seeds

Time to select seeds to sprout! And here’s the kicker: almost anything works. Just raid your cupboards to see if you have one of the following:

• Legumes: Lentils, beans (except for kidney beans), chickpeas, mung beans
• Seeds (you may have some of these in your spice rack or garden shed): Broccoli, radish, fenugreek, mustard, clover, cilantro, radish, sunflower, pumpkin, sesame, quinoa, millet
• Grains: Corn, wheat, barley, rye, wild rice, whole oats, spelt
• Nuts (they have to be raw): Almond, cashew, pretty much any

This list is far from exhaustive: you can easily do a Google search to figure out whether you’ve got anything suitable in your pantry.

From the kitchen cupboard, our favorite option for sprouting is definitely lentils. The birds go bonkers for them! Whatever you go for, make sure it hasn’t been sitting on a shelf for years. Sure, even old seeds will still sometimes sprout surprisingly well, but fresher ones do really tend to have a higher success rate and develop more quickly, which reduces the risk of mold and other issues.

For our demonstration, we sprouted some budgie seed mix (mostly millet).

How to sprout seeds: Step by step

Step 1: Soak the seeds

All seeds like an initial soak to help wake them up. The actual preferred soaking time depends on the type (just Google it if you’re unsure!), but 6-8 hours is the norm for most.

Just tip the seeds into the jar you selected, filling it about 1/3 of the way. Cover them with water and set the jar in a light but not sunny spot.

Step 2: Rinse & wait

Once soaking time’s up, give the seeds a rinse with fresh tap water. Just fill the jar and drain it out a few times; the mesh cover will ensure the seeds don’t fall out. On the last drain, make sure you get as much water out as possible, giving the jar a careful shake.

Now the waiting game begins! If you have a sprouting jar holder, you can set the jar in there. If you don’t, that’s fine: just find a way to maintain the jar at a downward-pointing angle, like by using a bowl with some kitchen paper at the bottom. Twice a day, repeat the rinsing process to make sure the seeds stay hydrated.

From now on, depending on the seeds you’re using, you’ll have to wait anywhere between 24 hours (small seeds like millet) to 6 days or more (alfalfa, clover, etc.). The first roots can appear pretty quickly.

Day 2: Our seeds are starting to wake up.

Step 3: Feeding time!

The best “harvesting” time for your newly sprouted seeds depends on their use. If you have a parrot or chickens, for example, you can offer the seeds at any time in the sprouting process. These birds are seed-eaters anyway, it’s just that you’ve now made the seeds more nutritious. For other pets, like rodents, we prefer waiting until the sprouts have developed a little stem and a few leaves. After all, for them the focus is on the plant, not the seed.

Congrats, you just created a home-grown meal for your pet—and yourself, if you want. Check your sprouts one more time to make sure there’s no mold. They should smell fresh and crisp, a bit like when you open a bag of lettuce. Offer some sprouts to the test panel and see what they think!

If you’ve got sprouts left over, they can be air-dried for an hour or so and then stored. Just use a food container lined with some kitchen paper, place the sprouts inside, and then cover them with more paper. They’ll stay fresh for up to a week.

Day 3: The sprouts are ready to be fed to the budgies. For rodents and reptiles, we’d wait a day or two longer.

Notes on sprouting seeds for birds

Sprout hygiene

Cases of Salmonella or E. coli as a result of eating raw sprouts are not unheard of in humans. In fact, some studies note that the immunocompromised and elderly might want to refrain from eating sprouts altogether. What does this mean for our pets?! Well, don’t let it scare you away! With good sprout hygiene, it’s unlikely you’ll run into issues. As mentioned in the guide, you should be rinsing the seeds regularly.

Consider sprouting only as much as your companion can eat in a short time period (1-2 days) so you don’t have to store the sprouts. And remember, they should always be discarded if they look moldy or smell off.

Moldy sprouts?!

If you look at your sprouts one morning and see them covered in what seems like mold, your first instinct should hopefully be to discard them. However, wait just one minute and take a closer look! The actual suspect can be something different: cilia hairs or feather roots. These tiny white hairs look suspiciously like mold, but are actually tiny roots.

How do you tell them apart? Well, mold looks more cobwebby than fuzzy, and might come with a slimy look. It also doesn’t lessen with a rinse, while cilia hairs temporarily seem to disappear. Most importantly, cilia hairs only appear on the roots, not the seed husk or anywhere else.

This is not mold, but cilia hairs (mini roots)!

Frequently asked questions