Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Harvey Ussery <boxwood@nelsoncable.com>]

Hi All,

I am starting work on an article for Backyard Poultry magazine, for 
which I am a regular writer. I am looking for input for my next 
contribution.

As we all know, feed costs are heading for the moon, and that trend is 
likely to continue. I'm wondering if there are homestead/small farm 
"flocksters" who are dealing with the rising prices using creative 
strategies on the home place for providing more nutrition for their 
birds aside from purchased feeds or feed ingredients. If so, I'd love to 
hear from you. I'll pull together all the ideas you are experimenting 
with, and write an article I hope will be of help to other flock owners 
dealing with this dilemma.

If you are interested in being part of this project, here are some 
parameters and some questions to open the conversation:

 * This will not be a "making your own feeds" article. I have been 
making all my own poultry feeds for years, but I'm getting hurt by 
steeply rising prices as much as anybody. I cannot simply keep paying 
whatever the market demands for my base feedstocks--I have to come up 
with more nutrient payout for the birds right here on the homestead.

 * On the other hand, strategies which rely on *enhancing* purchased 
ingredients would be of interest. For example, if you buy small grains 
but routinely *sprout* them to enhance nutrient content, that is a 
strategy for dealing with rising costs. (The more low-labor your 
sprouting practices, the better.) Another example: Folks have told me 
about soaking rolled oats in cultured milk/skimmed milk, and feeding 
that as an enhanced (we could say value-added) feed.

 * Is a cow (or are goats) a major productive asset on your place? If 
so, are you making extensive use of excess or skimmed milk, buttermilk, 
whey? Do you culture? Results?

 * Of course we can all grow grain crops like oats, wheat, and corn 
(and non-grain feed crops like legumes) as well as the big guys. The 
problem is that conventional handling of harvested grains (threshing and 
storage) at the home level, without expensive equipment or facilities, 
quickly becomes too labor intensive or otherwise impractical. I'd like 
to know if you've found a way around this conundrum--e.g., letting the 
birds self-harvest small grains used as a cover crop and allowed to 
mature their seeds. Ways to save mature seed heads (small grains, corn, 
sunflowers) without threshing or other processing, and strategies for 
storage and feeding to the flock.

 * Are there non-grain crops you are raising for poultry? Pumpkins? 
Sunflowers? Mangels? Anybody using potatoes as a significant addition to 
their feeding program?

 * Pasturing the birds is of course one of the major ways to increase 
the flock's access to live, natural, *free* food. I will of course say 
so in the article, but it's so obvious and so widely used an option, 
there is no point in mentioning it (unless you've found some clever new 
wrinkle on this application).

 * On the other hand, I'd like to know about managing poultry in 
*woods*. If you're trying that, let me know the results, and the main 
benefits in terms of self-foraged wild feeds.

 * Multi-functional efforts you use that yield other benefits as well 
as more free feed--poultry for insect control, geese to clean up dropped 
orchard fruit, chickens as shredder-composters who reap a harvest from 
the critters who take up residence in organic debris heaps, etc.

 * Is anyone else feeding their poultry worms from vermicomposting bins 
set up for manure management and fertility recycling? Have any of you 
joined the Madman of Hume and started generating fly maggots as poultry 
feed from carrion or food wastes?

 * Backyard Poultry is primarily oriented toward the family flock, and 
my own writings are mostly addressed to "homestead" needs (as opposed to 
those of the farm). However, I think the home flock owner can learn a 
lot from small farm producers producing at the lower end of the 
scale--those producing, say, hundreds of broilers per season rather than 
the tens of thousands of a Joel Salatin. So if you are producing for a 
small market and have creative ideas to boost flock nutrition while 
reducing costs, please let me hear them.

 * I'm not only interested in chickens, but in other domestic fowl as 
well. Are you successfully using ducks for slug patrol? Geese as 
weeders? Ducks and geese to "mow your lawn"?

 * Is anybody having success feeding their birds *entirely* by 
free-ranging them over enough biologically diverse ground? (My 
grandmother came awfully close with her flock, but she had a lot more 
ground to offer them than I do.) If so, how much ground are you finding 
is required? Anybody finding that their free-ranging turkeys can feed 
themselves entirely?

 * Are tree crops a major part of anybody's feeding program? Dropped 
fruit of mulberries and persimmons? Autumn's acorns to fatten turkeys?

Please understand that this is *not* a request for *theoretical* ideas 
or speculations on how to offer our flocks sufficient nutrition while 
becoming more independent of the feedstocks market. I'm only interested 
in practices you are actually using right now. (If there are interesting 
ideas you've tried and found flawed or impractical, that would be useful 
as well.)

If you would like to help out, please be in touch with me directly at
   boxwood@nelsoncable.com
You will have my sincere gratitude, and that of all who may benefit from 
your ideas. Thank you.

~Harvey

--
Harvey in northern Va
www.themodernhomestead.us

"Science without ethics is sociopathology."  (Bill Mollison)