permaculture

[Permacltur@aol.com]

First Kirk, why don't you share what you have learned, too.  OK?

        Forage is a word with out a lot of specificity.  While as a verb it 
seems to have meant to cast about looking for something to eat, or looking 
for something of value, people use it nowadays to refer to food brought to 
animals too.  I was just reading last night about amaranth being peletized as 
feed for sheep.  They must be crippled sheep, not able to walk out into the 
amaranth, eh?
        Well, yesterday I had an intermediate situation, where I had a stack 
of sabal palm fronds and petioles (some attached, some not) "curing" to go 
through the shredder and become chicken littler.  This palm is very tough, 
and will strangle my little home shredder in short order when green.  As I 
unpacked an shredded dried palms, I disturbed hordes of palmetto bugs.  Right 
away I called the chickens.   They were a little hesitant because the 
shredder makes an awful noise and the plam frond with petiole looks something 
like the net I use tocatch them sometimes.  They hate that.  But a few of the 
hens really trust me (probably the ones I'll stew next :-)  ), and they came 
over to check out what was happening. After one experience, they came running 
when I started the shredder in a new place.  Chickens aren't stupid.  They 
are just focussed on food.
        Well, Mister Big (our head rooster) wasn't going to hold back and let 
a couple of hens show him up so he edged over and spotted the bugs and called 
over the rest of the hens who were hanging around with him that day.  They 
ate at least hundreds, if not thousands of the giant cockroaches.  Yum!  Some 
of them (the palmetto bugs) were so big the chickens hand to peck them to 
pieces to eat them.  (These are chickens that routinely eat frogs and lizards 
and sometimes small snakes.  No going barefoot around them!)  
        This reminded me o after  harvest.  The chickens seem to eat hardly 
any grain in deep mulch and they really excavate.  I never did have enough to 
have a whole chicken yard of deep mulch, but I think that the invertebrates 
that would be produced would keep the chickens well supplied with animal 
protein.  
        And that brings to mind the chicken yard where I kept one particular 
flock when I wanted vegetables, not chickens, in the mulched garden.  I used 
the old trick of planting comfrey around the edge of the poultry netting, 
about six inches from the edge or more.  The chickens ate about 1/2 of each 
plant in a semicircle, leaving the center bud and the leaves they couldn't 
reach.  I can't say how much of this they ate, but the part they didn't eat 
got pretty big.  People say chickens won't eat comfrey unless you cut it for 
them--that's nonsense.
        Another thing that that era brings to mind is chickens eating blood.  
When I slaughtered a steer, I didn't have time and patience to save the blood 
for sausage, though I dearly love blood sausange. I did the entire job and 
the rest of the homestead alone and for most of those years had my kids 
living with me 5 days a week too.  However the blood tended to coagulate on 
top  of the ground and the chickens ate every speck of it.  they even ate 
some of the blood-soaked dirt.  Pretty fast turn around, I think, backinto 
the food chain as eggs.  I tried to lure  my present flock over to where I 
slaughted my steer this winter, but they were "flighty" and didn't come over. 
 It iwas a period of heavy predator activity and the tree I strung hung him 
on was a ways from their usual area.  This has to be a factor of where the 
tree that is the right shape and size grows, of course.
        I' ve often fed chickens fish -- large ones smashed up a bit to give 
them the idea to rip them apart and small ones caught in a minnow trap.  It 
helps to have a few ducks as a chicken only has to see a duck hold a fish by 
the head and swallow once to get the idea.  Otherwise, they peck it to death 
first and bust it up into pieces when they could just toss their heads back 
and let it slide down.  I've fed chickens rabbit and squirrel guts, too, and 
cooked racoons for them, getting that river to run uphill.  I've slit open 
snakes that drowned in minnow traps so the chickens could eat them.  They 
leave the skin entire and just eat the guts and flesh, so it is one wayi to 
clean a snake skin.  I cut the heads off poisonous snakes first.
        Chickens eat palm hearts, of course, and freshly cut palm logs 
attract certain beetles to the cut surface.  The chickens eat those.  I use 
the chickens to make planters out of the top of the palm.  I cut a section 
out maybe 6 inches below the bud and six inches above.  They peck out every 
bit of the heart and leave a flower pot with a weighted base.  There is 
something about sabal palm that stimulates plant growth and this makes a 
great flower pot that you can set right in the ground when it starts to break 
up after a year or two and the plants grow right through it.  
        Associated with forage, I use the chicken kick-down phenomenon, so 
named by Bill M., to mulch my bamboo windbreak plantings.  These happen to 
run more or less on contour.  Our oak trees forever drop dead branches and I 
pile these and their brush up on the downhillside of the bamboo planting.  
The chickens kick the natural mulch from the oaks down and the brush and 
branches trap it.  I also put brush around the bamboo on all sides to 
minimize scratching there.  I don't want the chickens to knock off my shoots 
before they get tough.  We have just had the bamboo in for a few years and we 
are keeping phenological records, including shooting dates.  So before too 
many years, I'll know when to put fresh protection around the bamboo to 
protect it from chickens.  Chickens don't eat bamboo leaves (at least on the 
three genera we have), but I think it will be all over if they learn to eat 
the shoots.
        Ok, one silly one and that will have to do.  Our chicken coop  door 
is hollow.  The ubiquitous palmetto bugs like to live in the door during the 
day and come out at night to feast on undigested bits in the chicken litter.  
I have learned that if I whack the door, the present crop of bugs falls out 
the bottom.  The chickens now line up when I open that door and wait for me 
to whack it to feed them.  If they happen to be at the far end of their yard 
(They have a HUGE yard, sort of a private jungle), they come running when 
they hear the whacking noise.  They seem to be able to hear the sound of 
cracked corn in a tin can for about a quarter mile,too.

For Mother Earth, Dan Hemenway, Yankee Permaculture Publications (since 
1982), Elfin Permaculture workshops, lectures, Permaculture Design Courses, 
consulting and permaculture designs (since 1981), and annual correspondence 
courses via email.  Copyright, 1998, Dan & Cynthia Hemenway, P.O. Box 52, 
Sparr FL 32192 USA  Internships. YankeePerm@aol.com  

We don't have time to rush.

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