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livingontheland - [Livingontheland] Thinking about poops

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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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  • From: Harvey Ussery <harvey@themodernhomestead.us>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Thinking about poops
  • Date: Sat, 04 Sep 2010 13:33:25 -0400

I'm working in the section of my book that deals with what comes out the other end of the chicken and why we should care. An obvious thing of interest is the minerals, unused or surplus, that make up much of the material--priceless in our soil fertility programs. But the poops also carry a huge load of microbes, added in the gut of the chicken. Does anybody know whether these microbes *survive* their deposition onto/incorporation into the soil? Do they continue as living members of the soil food web, making the same kinds of contributions to fertility?

And what about microbial intake on the front end? I said "added in the gut of the chicken," but obviously healthy populations of gut flora start on the outside. Like lactofermented foods in the human diet, some of whose critters remain alive in the gut, making their microbial populations even more active and beneficial--are chickens benefited by eating fermented foods (some people feed them silage--ranging chickens undoubtedly get into natural ferments such as decomposing fruits etc.), and do they retain the microbes living in live animal foods like insects as part of their own internal populations?

If anybody can point me to information in this area, I would appreciate it. It's not been an easy one to research.

Thanks.

~Harvey

--
Harvey in northern Va
www.themodernhomestead.us

My book, THE MODERN HOMESTEAD POULTRY FLOCK, will be published next year by
Chelsea Green Publishing.





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