permaculture

["Stephen Barrow" <barrow@telkomsa.net>]

Hi Christo,

 

I live on a smallholding to the south of you, in Centurion, bordering on Midrand and Sandton, and involved with organics, Bio-Dynamics and inspections for certification etc.

 

Good to hear about your plans - would like to see the project sometime.

 

I have some chickens around the yard, not any serious farming, but really gaining experience for my other work.  Some of my chickens recently had Fowl Pox, a strain of the Herpes virus.  Two of the eight infected ones died, but I have managed to save the others using homeopathy, herbs, indigenous muti-plant extract, honey, Bio-chemic Tissue Salts and Effective Micro-Organisms (EMROSA).  The big lesson learnt with this episode is that we have many endemic poultry diseases against which the birds can be inoculated.  My strong recommendation is that you follow a vaccination program to ensure that you don't have un-necessary disease problems.  What's more, vaccinations are allowed in organic certification standards, which means that you can still go for certification at a future date if that is part of your plans.

 

May I also suggest that you contact Thomas Linders and Alan Rosenburg at the following e-mail addresses.  They consult within the Permaculture arena (amongst other things) and may have worthwhile information for you.  They live in Kyalami and Hartbeespoort respectively.

 

    thomas@lindros.co.za

 

    alan@lindros.co.za

 

Another point - what breeds are you looking at?  - For eggs or meat?  I would strongly recommend that you look at the indigenous breeds, either from the ARC @ Irene, or from Mike Bosch (see adverts and articles in the Farmers' Weekly), living near Pienaarsrivier.  I have some of his birds and am very happy with them.

 

Keep in touch

 

Stephen Barrow

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: permaculture-admin@lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:permaculture-admin@lists.ibiblio.org]On Behalf Of Christo van Staden
Sent: Thursday, April 11, 2002 11:29 AM
To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [permaculture] free-range chicken farming

Hi

I am going into free-range chicken farming (to be evolved, within a year, into a food forest project) soon, initially on about 1 acre north of Pretoria, South Africa (bushveld). Can anyone perhaps point me to some good chicken info sources on the net, and publications? Any thoughts will also be appreciated – about pitfalls, possibilities, guilds, etc.

Christo