Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

Harvey asked specifically for methods people are actually using, not ideas. 
He's heard all the ideas, trust me.

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 5/22/2008 at 6:23 AM Carrie Shepard wrote:

>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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