Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Chickens

It raining pretty hard this morning and the garden was pretty muddy yesterday. So I am going to talk about chickens.

My grandfather had a great solution that involved chickens, tilling, weeds and fertilizer.

He had a very large chicken house, at least 200 hens. On each side of the chicken house was a large outside yard, at least as large as the chicken house. Each year he alternated which outside yard the chickens got to use. The other yard was used for vegetables. He got the chickens off the vegetable yard by Christmas so that the rich nitrogen-filled soil would have time to "cool off" before planting.

He did not have to till the chicken yard. He had very few weeds (some blow in on the wind.) He did not have to fertilize, and each fall the chickens got the advantage of any left-over food.

Now, I'n not suggesting that we could do this with 1/4 acre plots, but think about it on a smaller scale.

2 comments:

  1. At Starbird Farm, chickens would have to be protected from dogs, raccoons and eagles.

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  2. I understand that electric poultry netting that you can buy at Premium 1 is effective against dogs and raccoons. Maybe an LGD would be effective against all three?
    Dama

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