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  • From: Carrie Shepard <carrieshepard@yahoo.com>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Need ideas for dealing with high costs of poultry feeds
  • Date: Thu, 22 May 2008 06:23:54 -0700 (PDT)

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)

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