From hanzibra@svn.com.br Mon Jun 19 21:32:02 2000
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 12:01:15 -0300
From: Marsha Hanzi <hanzibra@svn.com.br>
To: Larry London <london@metalab.unc.edu>, bonsac@metalab.unc.edu,
     mlomas@metalab.unc.edu
Subject: Info- Marsha Hanzi, Brazil


    [ Part 1, Text/PLAIN (charset: ISO-8859-1 "Latin 1")  24 lines. ]
    [ Unable to print this part. ]

    [ The following text is in the "iso-8859-1" character set. ]
    [ Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set.  ]
    [ Some characters may be displayed incorrectly. ]

Dear friends,
 
I would like to add  some information on chicken systems:
 
We  have come to  calculate 5 square meters per hen, in rotation of no
less than 8 pens with a maximum of 5  days in each pen ( giving a
minimum 40 days for the hens to cover the wole rotateion) .  Basically we
are managing the earthworm population, as they reproduce in the forty
days resting period allowed, and  , in five days ( with the stocking
rates above), the hens do not destroy the system.  We plant permanent
elephant grass, bananas,  and comfrey in the pens, and leucena trees
around them. When the hens move on, the  elephant grass is cut to
re-cover the soil.  By the time the hens are back, the grass had time
enough to grow out of the hen's reach.  By the same token, the hens eat
at the young banana leaves, but the parent plants are out of reach.
 
Marsha Hanzi ( in Brazil)
 
PS.  Please add  the homepage of the Bahian  Permaculture Institute (
Instituto de Permacultura da Bahia):  http://www.geocities.com/oliarte 
to your links page...  Thank you...