Pasture
Steve
"Look beyond complexion and see community.."
Maya Angelou
Charlie
>--} Hi Charlie,
>--}
>--} Random question.
>--} I was wondering if you raise chickens on your land (I reckon
>--} you mentioned sheep recently, but not birds).
>--} If so, would you mind describing your approach?
>--} I've been learning quite a bit about pastured poultry and other chicken
>--} tractor type models. Hoping to put it into practice soon.
>--}
>--} Mostly, I'm curious though, because I've heard good things about
>--} incorporating poultry into a food system (and ducks, too, for that
> matter, --} though I suspect it's a bit dry there for ducks).
>--}
>--} Anyhow, I'm turning in for the night.
>--}
>--} I hope your wombat pulls through.
>--}
>--} Peace,
>--}
>--} Steve.
Hello Steve,
Sorry for the tardy reply, but so many things happening at the moment. We have
used and use poultry and waterfowl in various ways. Always thinking of the
birds welfare, because not only do we want them to be fit and healthy, but
also as reasonably happy as we can make them in our human way of interpreting
this.
Tractor birds.........
We can't have a vegetable garden every year, but when we can, we often use
poultry arks that in the past, I built for us and sold to others who wanted
them, for a few years anyway. But don't do so anymore because steel is so
expensive now and even though I sold them almost at cost, they are too costly
for people to buy. The arks are 900mm wide, about as wide as we made a
vegetable garden bed, and 1200mm long, some had no bottoms and some had a
wire mesh base and both types were used in the vegetable garden. These were
placed over what was going to be the vegetable garden bed allowing the grass,
old vegetable matter to be mostly scratched out/consumed, and the manure from
the poultry in the ark was in reasonable quantity on that section, were then
moved along. There were often 6 of these arks in use.
The vegetable garden was created in a form that had a bed one metre wide and a
path one metre wide. The arks were moved along the ground the length of the
vegetable garden bed proposed for the spring, during the late summer, autumn
and winter. When the bed was mostly scratched up and manured, it was dug over
and if more manure was required it was taken from the poultry pens that are
few, but have another purpose. If a particularly wide bed was required, the
arks were placed side on and the bed was then 1300 to 1500mm wide. For sweet
corn beds, the arks were placed in a block form.
This operation was fairly intensive, where the birds, usually bantams and 3 to
7 in number, were placed into the bottomless arks in the morning and fed
there, usually some grain. At night, they were taken out and placed in the
secure arks with the wire mesh bottoms and any eggs collected. The wire mesh
bottomed arks kept them out of harms way, as the fox is very cunning here.
Each morning the bottomless arks were repopulated and the birds went about
their business of cultivation, and the arks moved along the beds. They clean
up insect larvae and any left over vegetable residues.
When the bed had been reasonably cleaned up and manured by the birds for its
entire length, then they were dug over and left fallow till they were again
drug up in spring and planted out with seeds/seedlings depending on the type
of vegetable. Any beds rushed or not quite finished by this method were
planted with root crops, leaving the more heavily manured beds for leaf crops
which did well with the high nitrogen in the poultry manure.
During the growing time, when the vegetables were maturing, only two or three
birds were left in the wire mesh bottom secure arks and moved along the path.
Often these arks contained birds that were bred for future layers and show
birds. These were moved along the paths more quickly, just to keep the fast,
vigorous spring growth in the paths under control.
The following year, where we thought appropriate, we then dug over what had
been paths using the same method as outlined above, so our vegetable beds
moved each year, but not every bed. I didn't like ground just left for paths.
The vegetable garden beds, were usually the French raised bed types in years
gone by, but later, as the rain pattern changed and there was less water, we
made them as flat beds, level with the paths. Adaptation is required all the
time here. But it keeps us on our toes, and thinking all the time.
I'll see what pictures there are, if any, of all this in the archives, and
will try to place these in a document with the information above and some
more information for your perusal in the files section, and you will be able
to download it and maybe use some of it to advantage. There is no copyright
on anything I write, it's all copyleft for anyone to do with what they will.
Please be aware that the way we do things is not ``the way'' it's merely one
way that works here, and you may find bits and pieces to pull out of it and
modify, improve and create new things with new ideas it may engender.
The baby wombat is all right still. Every 2 hours we take it out of its human
made pouch to feed it with a bottle, we hold our breath, but he is a fighter
and wants to live, though we have been told his chances are slim, only 10%
they say. But we will stand with him and fight as long as he is willing to do
so.
Hope what I have written above helps even if only as a threshold to a better
idea of your own. I will add more and post the link.
Be well,
Charlie
--
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.......................................Henry David Thoreau
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