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  • From: Calum Ewing <calumewing@eastlink.ca>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] new article: concerns about the way most peopleraise chickens
  • Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2009 22:50:00 -0300

We've been trying a moveable shelter and paddock system this year with a small flock of ducks and geese and had good success so far.

We had been keeping the main flock of ducks and geese in a fairly typical pen and shed (coop) arrangement with the usual problems - muddy mess, stripped of vegetation, bark stripped off trees, etc. The paddock system started this spring as an experiment in being lazy. I wondered if I could use the geese to avoid cutting the grass on the front lawn. So while the adults remained in the main flock, this year's hatchlings of geese and ducks went to the front yard. They are housed in a small moveable shelter, based on the typical "pig ark" (plywood walls and metal roof), but modified with a ramp/door that can be closed up at night for predator protection. The paddock fencing is 36 inch poultry wire clipped into plastic "step in" electric fence posts. The step-in posts make it easy to move the fencing to the next paddock area. After the birds have been in one padock for about 3 weeks, the grass is clipped down pretty short and it's time for a move. The fencing is moved and the ark dragged to the new paddock and the birds rounded back into to the new paddock. I usually take the opportunity to open up the ark (roof and walls lift off in one piece) and clean out the old bedding. The whole move and clean out process can be done by one person in under an hour. We are currently rotating through 3 paddocks.

The results so far have been great. The geese and ducks are happy and growing well, the lawn has not seen the lawn mower once this year and it is the lushest, greenest and most weed free I have ever seen it. The plan is to put a solar powered electric fence around the whole lawn area (for predator protection and containment, sell of the young ducks and move the older geese out to this front paddock arrangement later this summer.

This is planned to be only a spring to autumn practice as the front of the proprty is very exposed to winter storms and bad weather, so the geese will join older ducks in the main shed out back for the winter.

Calum Ewing
Three Fathom Harbour
Nova Scotia, Canada

----- Original Message ----- From: "Ben Martin Horst" <ben.martinhorst@gmail.com>
To: "permaculture" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 11, 2009 10:04 PM
Subject: Re: [permaculture] new article: concerns about the way most peopleraise chickens


Has anyone used a similar method for ducks? Or any other method that you've
found very satisfactory? I'm cognizant of the work done by Takao Furuno,
though I haven't read "The Power of Duck."

-Ben

On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 5:18 PM, paul wheaton <paul@richsoil.com> wrote:

> How many chickens per acre for the paddock system to be effective?

This is an excellent question. Because the answer is not simple ...

The idea is that the land would be multi-use. Lot of different
animals and lots of different kinds of things on the land. So your
human consumption fruits, veggies and grains would be grown on the
same land - just go in and harvest what you want just ahead of the
chickens. The chickens will be your gleaners.

That said, I would say 25 chickens per acre. Paddocks would be about
1/5 of an acre.
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