From Permacltur@aol.com Sat Jun 5 12:18:20 1999 Date: Sat, 5 Jun 1999 10:02:38 EDT From: Permacltur@aol.com To: owner-permaculture@envirolink.org, permawest@olywa.net, permaculture@envirolink.org Subject: Re: Fowl forage Well, we still haven't heard from Kirk, who asked the question and indicated he has already done a lot of work here. If you have some answers, Kirk, share them. A basic permaculture principle, from Mollison, is: Everything Works Both Ways MEANWHILE, I have recollected a few more items. Bear in mind that chickens are almost a way of life, and interactions with them and residens are almost continuous. There are many species one leaves just because they drop food for chickens and don't bother anything else. I haven't listed any we have growing here because it is up to each person to be awake, seeing what their chickens eat, and reserving it for them if practical. You don't need someone else's list. Chicken Forage * When I have lived were there was a good supply of Japanese beetles, I have allowed Virginia creeper to climb up the poultry netting. This is a trap crop for the beetles, and the chickens just pick them off. * Pigs will not eat a chicken that they know. I have kept chicks with piglets, as soon as the chicks could forage on their own. They eat the garbage crumbs that the pigs dribble around (messy eaters), pick maggots, etc., from the pig manure controlling flies, and even sometimes walk on the pigs, like an egret on cattle, picking off things (dead skin, parasites, who knows?). These chicks grew faster than identical chicks from the same hatch on free range with continuous grain also available. (I think it was the extra vitamin B in the pig manure.) This being successful, I tossed in some hens that were off laying, as I figured if they were not producing they should be off the payroll. The pigs attacked and began eating the "new" hens. (Pigs do not kill a chicken before eating it, so I had to jump in and put the hens out of their misery.) The young chickens that had grown up with the pigs were mildly puzzeled and distressed by this. So then, I caught some chicks from the same hatch, same breed, very hard to distinguish from the chicks that grew up with the pigs. The pigs did not attack these, though it was their turn to appear puzzeled. (It appears that pigs cannot count.) Toss in another cull hen and bam, they hit it like sharks on bloody meat. Clearly the pigs discriminated between the chickens they knew and strangers. And clearly, one can raise some chickens "free" by letting them live with the pigs. By the way, no predator ever tried to take these chickens away from the pigs! So it was a predator-proof situation too. * Years ago, I reased steers, one at at time, by tethering them to mow the "lawn" for the first year of their life. It was easy, taking about 10 minutes a day including play and cuddles with the steer, and saved 1.5 hours of operating an awful lawnmower per week, when it would run. I never had trouble getting the steer started. And I was never able to eat the lawnmower. Well when tethered, very large horseflies, the kind that can blot out a quarter by landing on it, would harass the steer during the hotest weather. So I would take an extra few minutes each day and visit the steer with a flyswater. A regular flyswater will stun, but not kill, these huge flies. But the chickend quickly learned that the flyswater in hand meant treat time. So they would pounce on these blood engorged nasties almost before they hit the ground. Be carful not to have younger chicks in on this. The steer will step on them, all oblivious to any squawking, and then you have to feedthem to the pigs. Once the chicks get larger than, say, an American robin or a blue jay, they are ok with the steer. Here in Florida, one resourceful rooster led a bunch of hens to hide behind the steer when a coyote came through. The steer kind of liked the chickens and was verg indignant about the coyote's predatory attempts. I never de-horn an animal and I have seen no dog pack or coyote or anything else feel hungry enough to try to get past that lowered head swinging about in menace. Of course chickens get a lot of insect life out of cow-pats once they are a day or two old. They break them up and spread them about. But surely this is commonplace. In any event, this keeps the flies down. 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. A list by topic of all Yankee Permaculture titles may be found at http://csf.colorado.edu/perma/ypc_catalog.html Elfin Permaculture programs are listed at the Eastern Permaculture Teachers assn home page: http://home.ptd.net/~artrod/epta/eptahmp.html