>Dan let me thank you for your reply. It looks like I have a lot more
>designing to do. does anyone know of a quick easy chicken pin I can put up
>and take down in different locations easy. Easy is the key here. I tried
>to make a chicken tractor but it is too heavy for me by my self to move
>around . I guess I can just stick fence stakes in the grown and wrap some
>chicken wire around it. Also does any one know of a food that is easy to
>grow that chickens love so much I can use it to heard them and get them to
>graze in the places I want them to graze. Now I throw bird seed out and
>the really work the spot where I throw it . I like the way chickens turn
>weeds bugs,and weed seeds into eggs and meat. I need to learn more about
>them to get the most from them. Thanks for all the food for thought.
Hi Sal
Glad that my post was useful. My forte is biological components to
designs--I only think about structures of necessity. We just bought two
adjacent places for our permaculture center--one with a frame house for our
home and the other with a much larger mobile home for a permaculture office,
our extensive library, and of course quarters for interns. With the fram
home came a camper trailer. It is actually in pretty good condition inside,
though it looks a bit rough. Nevertheless, to avoid building stuff, I'm
going to strip it out and use it for a mobile home for chickens. For now we
will pull it around with either Cynthia's Toyota pickup or my big engine big
tires van, depending on the texture of soil we have to pull it through. So I
will be moving chickens from place to place, an alternative we haven't
discussed but that I thought I'd throw in.
By the way, the little propane stove that comes with camper trailers
(caravans to many people on the list) is perfect for our summer kitchen and
we'll scrounge the propane lamp for our hurricane season lighting. I'm
getting older and my eyes don't see well in the dark any more. We could
probably start a whole thread on scrounging componets of caravans and what to
do with the shells. (No, they don't lay eggs.)
Chickens love to eat any grain--they are all easy to grow if you just cut
them and harvest the grain stalk and all--no threshing, no winnowing, use
them for mulch or littler in the chicken coop and let the chicens do the
work. I'm talking true grains or cereal grains here. Buckwheat, a seed crop
but not a grain (from gramin--- something or other Lating root for
grass/grain), is a lovely forage crop for poulty. Theat the greens (so do
I!) or the seed and it is a great biological control crop when in flower as
it feeds adult stages of "beneficial" insects (unless you happen to be one of
the little guys who gets a voracious egg laid inside him).
If you screw up the timing to get everything out of your enclosure at the
same time, or nature messes you up similiarly, you can fill in with
buckwheat, grows very fast, while waiting to finish the later crops. This
will be extra feed for the chickens at any stage of growth and you get greens
for yourself, buckwheat grains (I pick them like blueberries which I find
easier than cutting or threshing after frost has killed the leaves), etc.
The thing chickens like best to eat is invertebrates and I did mention how to
grow them. Deep mulch. If you have a slug and/or snail problem, throw in a
few ducks to educate the chickens. Duck eggs are great.
For Mother Earth, Dan Hemenway, Yankee Permaculture Publications (since
1982), Elfin Permaculture workshops, lectures, Permaculture Design Courses,
consulting and permaculture designs (since 1981), and now correspondence
permaculture training by email. Copyright, 1996, Dan & Cynthia Hemenway, P.O.
Box 2052, Ocala FL 34478 USA YankeePerm@aol.com
We don't have time to rush.