Sprouts for Pets

If your pet likes to eat grass now and then, have you considered growing your own sunflower sprouts to offer instead? Sprouts can provide a very easy and inexpensive source of fresh, live organic vegetation for your dog or cat to nibble on.

Sprouts Are a Rich Source of Nutrients for Pets

Seeds are the first life stage of a plant, and sprouts are the second stage. They are the tiny stems of the plants that emerge from wet seeds before they put down roots and become full-grown plants.

After a few days of germinating, these little plants are packed with nutrients. In fact, pound for pound, many sprouts contain significantly more digestible vitamins, minerals, proteins, and enzymes than the adult versions of the same plants.

Unlike vegetables, which can be difficult for pets to digest if theyre consumed whole, during sprouting much of the starch thats contained in the plant seed is broken down into simple sugars by amylase. The proteins are converted into amino acids and amides by protease, and the fats and oils are turned into simple fatty acids by lipase.

Benefits of Sprouts

Sprouts have many beneficial attributes. For example:

• They support cell regeneration
• They are whole food sources of antioxidants, minerals, vitamins, and enzymes that protect against free radical damage
• They have an alkalizing effect on the body that is thought to protect against disease, including cancer, since many types of tumors and cancers put the body into a state of acidity
• They are abundantly rich in oxygen, which can also help protect against abnormal cell growth, viruses, and bacteria that cannot survive in an oxygen-rich environment

In addition to their nutritional benefits, sunflower sprouts are also the ultimate in homegrown foods. When you grow them yourself using organic seeds, you can be sure youre not exposing your pet to harmful pesticides or other chemicals.

Sunflower sprouts are also among the least expensive foods you can buy or grow. Interestingly, if we dont provide living foods for our cats to eat, they often end up snacking on our houseplants. Since many kitties also tend to immediately throw up after nibbling a houseplant, and because some houseplants are toxic , sprouts are a really safe and healthy alternative.

If you grow them yourself, you can cut the cost by about 90 percent or more compared to buying them.

Sprouting Process

When sprouting your own seeds, its best to ensure they havent been chemically treated, so buy organic seeds. Soak them overnight in water in a Mason jar covered with a mesh sprouting screen. The soak time depends on the type of seed youre sprouting: 5 hours for small seeds and up to 12 hours for really large seeds and grains.

In the morning, drain the fluid off and rinse the seeds. Turn the jar on its side and repeat the process three times a day until the seeds sprout.

On average, sprouting time is about three days. Rinsing and draining the seeds three times a day gives them just the right amount of moisture, and also helps flush away toxins.

Your container should be about a quarter to a third full of seeds, since they will swell to around eight times their original size over three days. I recommend keeping the jar at room temperature with good air circulation.

Once the green tips start to appear on the sprouts, you can begin feeding them to your pets right away, or you can refrigerate them, or plant them.

Another option is to grow your seeds in potting soil. I like the sprouting phase because it speeds the process up. When grown in soil, you can harvest your sprouts in about a week.

A pound of seeds will produce at least 10 pounds of sunflower sprouts, which is a great yield.

Of all the different kinds of sprouts, sunflower shoots produce the most volume. In one 10 x 10 tray, you can harvest between 1 and 2 pounds of sunflower sprouts. You can store them in the refrigerator for about a week after harvesting.

Feeding Sprouts to Your Pet

At my house, I simply put the tray down on the ground and let my pack nibble on them throughout the day. In the evening, I put them up on the counter and my kitties usually continue to snack on them overnight.

All my pets regulate their sprouts intake really well, so I dont have to limit their access. However, if you happen to have a dog that obsesses over sprouts, youre not going to put the tray on the ground because he might gorge himself. Instead, as a general guideline, you can offer about 1/8 to cup of sprouts for every 20 pounds of body weight each day.

Dr. Karen Becker is a proactive and integrative wellness veterinarian. You can visit her site at: MercolaHealthyPets.com

Her goal is to help you create wellness in order to prevent illness in the lives of your pets. This proactive approach seeks to save you and your pet from unnecessary stress and suffering by identifying and removing health obstacles even before disease occurs. Unfortunately, most veterinarians in the United States are trained to be reactive. They wait for symptoms to occur, and often treat those symptoms without addressing the root cause.

By reading Dr. Becker's information, you'll learn how to make impactful, consistent lifestyle choices to improve your pet's quality of life.

For more by Dr. Karen Becker, click here