permaculture

[Scott Pittman <pci@permaculture-inst.org>]

At 10:34 AM 11/18/02 -0500, you wrote:

> > more and add some more animals.  We're thinking about chickens (a few for
> eggs),
> > guinea hens (for bugs in the vineyard)

I can't say enough good things about guinea hens, they are the most 
voracious bug chasers I know of, they are especially good with 
grasshoppers.  A word of warning don't raise them with chickens, they will 
learn the nasty habit of scratching, and therefore become useless in the 
garden.  We pen them in the garden and they don't seem to harm anything 
except red fruit like tomatoes, and strawberries; it is an easy problem to 
solve - kick them out when the fruit starts to ripen.

Our auracaunas have been the best layers with beautiful pastel pink, blue, 
and beige eggs.  We raise Rock Cornish for meat and they are also great 
setters and mothers.  Our problem has been that chickens produced by the 
big poultry houses have had the urge to set bred out of them, all the 
chicks are incubated artificially.  If you can find a source that raises 
the breed naturally you should have no problems.  The bantam silkies are 
great setters and mothers if you have to use commercial eggs, which is 
cheaper than buying the chicks.  I try to raise endangered livestock 
whenever possible, so we are raising Bourbon Red Turkeys with limited 
success due to feral dogs, coyotes, skunks, and racoons.

Both the guinea's and the turkeys are very susceptible when they nest and 
have chicks, otherwise they roost up high in our trees and most predators 
don't reach them.  We did have seven coons up in our poultry roosting tree 
last year and the score wound up being two dead coons to five dead turkeys, 
we have since nailed galvanized tin around the trunk of the tree making it 
impossible for the coons to climb.

> and some meat goats (helping to
> clear
> > some brushy areas and for cash - we've got large hispanic and muslim
> populations
> > in Kansas City and we believe we've got a good market for them).

I think that the last Kinsolver novel, unless she has written on since 
then, has a great section on raising goats for Muslems.  They are also 
great weed and seedling eaters.  There is a woman who has been in Norther 
New Mexico recently cleaning up the highway right of way with goats, and 
also clearing overgrown properties.  She leases the goats and her time and 
seems to be doing great, I hear she has 3000 goats.  The problem is you 
have to keep moving, or have a monster goat roast.  Goats have proven to be 
great at helping get rid of exotics that have gone rampant ie Russian Olive.

> >
> > As we grow our little farm each year, we are wishing to tread more lightly
> on
> > the planet.  And with a "dance with the one that brung ya" sort of
> attitude, we
> > are looking to use resources that are plentiful in our area. We are
> thinking
> > about building our animal shelters out of straw bale,

We have a strawbale chicken house which have proven to be perfect , we 
don't have to thaw the water if we keep it inside the house and close it at 
night.  The insulating value and the high metabolism of the chickens keeps 
everything pretty warm.  I also think that you can house any other animals 
in strawbale as long as you plaster it well.  The exception may well be the 
pig but they only damage about three feet up the wall with rooting and they 
start at the bottom and work there way up.  You can ring their nose to stop 
the rooting, or we used to put a short wall next to the actual wall of two 
2X6 with angle iron top and bottom, this short wall is well anchored in 
cement, and they can root away with no real damage.

> and installing a
> corn
> > burning stove in the house for winter heat.

I have a Russian stove or Kacheloffen, which is a mass heater that is 
fueled with fagots, these bundles can be made from your fruit tree or vine 
prunings, or any other prunings from your land.  I feel that I am fuel self 
sufficient with this stove.  I have also incorporated a large oven into the 
stove for baking and as a slow cooker.  These stoves are supposed to be the 
most fuel efficient design of all heating appliances about 89 percent 
conversion.


> > cause some problems?   Do some animals like to eat the stucco/plaster?

My only concern with our chicken house is that the plaster is good enough 
to not allow an infestation of lice to take hold in the straw.  We provide 
our poultry with a dust bath area of diatomaceous earth to prevent body 
lice, which can be transported by wild birds.

> What
> > kind of measures might be required if you wanted to create a fairly high
> > humidity enclosure, - like a greenhouse, or a chicken coop?   What about
> > moveable enclosures on skids?  Would the weight of such a building be too
> great
> > to move about as you pasture the animals?

I don't think that strawbale is a good idea for moveable structures, you 
won't be doing much pasturing in winter in Kansas anyway I don't believe so 
why strawbale.  Strawbale is really only good for insulation if you are 
looking to cut costs strawbale is comparable to wood frame.  We build 
moveable "chicken tractors out of pvc and chicken wire so one person can 
move it.  At night we open these tractors and the chickens race back to the 
chicken house.  In the morning we troll them with a bucket of grain, they 
follow us to the tractors and spend the day eating alfalfa, and austrian pea.

Good luck Meg,
Scott Pittman