Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Carrie Shepard <carrieshepard@yahoo.com>]

Harvey,

 

I'd still mention pasturing.  My experience with people raising poultry on smaller acreages is that they give up trying to pasture, so reminding them of options like gathering grass clippings from neighbors who don't treat their yards, making sure that they are not keeping the birds on hardened chicken poop covered soil that offers no scratchin' up their own food options is still very valuable advice.   Deep littering I think is what you call it?

 

My friends in an area where the houses have grown up all around them have the problem of needing rotational pasture for their flock as the birds decimate the small area quickly.  predators are a problem, the neighbors don't like the birds on their place, so confinement is their only option.

 

I really like the heirloom pumpkin "seminole" for it's amazing storage!  I plan to grow these and the longneck squash again this year because both of these are excellent easy keepers.  I've had them piled in the basement all winter and none have gone bad.  Not so for the rouge de temp pumpkins.  They don't last.

 

So my vote's in for including good storage type squashes in the plan and deep litter system reminder. 

 

Carrie

Harvey Ussery <boxwood@nelsoncable.com> wrote:

> 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)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Livingontheland mailing list
> Livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/livingontheland