We had 9 roosters with our first flock of straight run chicks. We culled the first 4 that were the most rape-y and mean. Then we culled the ones from #6 on down. Doo has been our rooster for 3.5 years now.
When a friend brought over a mid sized dog on a leash, Doo didn't do a damn thing. Just kinda scurried away with the girls. He makes plenty of warning noises when they're out and about so that hopefully helps. The girls will be all over the property and he doesn't keep them together at all. But he calls them to food when he finds it.
Twice in his lifetime he's had a serious scrape. Two autumns ago he lost both spurs one day. I assume it was in a fight with something. This past summer he lost a big patch of feathers on each side of his neck. Over this whole time we've never lost a hen to an animal. So I think his primary purpose is as a decoy or target. The fox/hawk/eagle hopefully targets him and the girls get away while he's fighting for his life.
Just recently had a similar situation. We adopted this cute sweet lab mix to protect our animals on our mini homestead from coyotes and foxes.
Our dog killed a chicken after being so good with them randomly one morning. We didn’t even think it was her at first, until we saw the second attack.
She attacked another and we tried everything we could to teach her “our birds.” I’ve never had an issue with past rescue dogs and my girl she was A very smart lab mix. Maybe too smart- She broke into the pen finished the one she attacked earlier-except hid it from us until later to bring it out and eat her. She just got better at hiding it One of our favorite ducks went missing and I knew then , she did it again and We couldn’t break her and our trust in her was gone. She just learned to hide the bodies.
We took her with all her stuff to a local rescue and are donating for her care. Hoping she finds a perfect family without small livestock. But it’s heart breaking. It’s the first time I’ve ever had to return an animal . But I think where she failed as a farm dog she’d be someone’s dream hunting dog or family dog as she is very sweet. Still it was and is very hard. I’m still not over having to do it.
Best of luck with your situation.
I'm a big guy too. Over 6'5" and Over 280lbs. We are more prone to wear and tear.
Inversion Table! a sturdy one.
You don't need to go full hang - even a 30° - 45° inversion is enough to decompress the spine, which can both give temporary relief and help the disks heal. ( Plus it makes you feel good )
Big thanks to Ben, we now offer these plans up in our digital market (you can check them out, here). AND, he even let us hand them out through our dailyish newsletter! You can find out more HERE!
a state may have a site such as wa-grange.com --that's ours anyway
then they list hall locations within the state. typical meetings would be monthly evening potluck with good food / business meeting / fun short lecture / project committees (community service)
family groups, juniors encouraged, kid group camps, art and craft program contest annually that goes from local to state to national.
can have commercial grade kitchens, very nice dance floors, sometimes rent their halls.
grange loves home skills including canning and sewing, and writing!
they "grangers" do legislation and members can draft Resolutions for approval and sharing at annual State Conventions
its a fraternal organization with officers. the halls sustain themselves with community functions and need your help!
Thanks for the feed
I am in the Winelands/Breede River area of South Africa
We have a Port Jackson invasion on the land we bought two years ago.
My small herd of goats, sheep & Boris, the Ox - all love the Port Jackson
I am kept busy cutting it to have available to them over night.
During the day the roam free & help themselves.
I see it has a high protein content - good for my milking girls
I was wondering if the Tanin content may act as a natural de-wormer/worm inhibitor?
Thanks John, the varieties I have access to are fairly unusual so getting info on them is somewhat futile. I'm getting 5 trees this year and I'm aiming for one good keeper, two cider apples, one odd-ball and Ashmead's Kernel since it's famous.
Your climate is very different than mine, but it sounds like a good plan to me. If the walnut roots get down to the water table, it could work great. Might work anyway.
Keep juglone resistance in mind when planting near them.
Just realized how old the post is. How about an update?
Eating them seems like a bit of a bother,but we know what to do with food we ourselves can't digest,can't stomach,or is inconvenient to harvest.
Feed it to other animals,and eat the products they produce.
I bet chickens would love all that extra protein,and lay quite well.
I suspect swine might hunt these creatures themselves,but they might make a mess of the land in the process.
Running gopher protein through a domestic animal is like turning bits of unspeakable flesh into sausage. Marginal into magnificent.
I'm not completely done watching yet, but the peace question has been responded to. I can't help but notice that the four men talking never said a word about TESTOSTERONE when talking about peace. How could anyone talk about international peace and not mention WOMEN?
I've found Ultricularia gibba (bladderwort), a aquatic carnivorous plant, is very effective at keeping mosquitoes from breeding in aquaculture tubs, plant pot saucers, and other small containers of water where mosquitoes normally like to lay their egg rafts. Bladderwort's bladder trap catch and eat mosquito larvae. Mosquitoes can apparently detect and refuse to lay their eggs in water where Ultricularia is growing. It is especially good for locations where predators such as frogs keep eating your mosquito fish and rosy red minnows. U. gibba is native throughout the world from the tropics to as far north as Canada.
And now that we are into a discussion on how to kill it, because the benefits are outweighed by the drawbacks, it's worth mentioning that chickens in a concentrated area for a long time can kill anything. I don't know how many chickens or the diversified poultry mentioned above per acre for how many months, but I think it will work, then followed by seeding to something else.
Did someone mention whether barley foxtail germination occurs more readily in cool or warm soil? I count on grasses to germinate in cool soil, and use that to combat the kochia, goat heads and sand burrs. The foxtail being a grass might make this strategy unhelpful, but if one seeded the earth bared by chickens to a tall thing, and seeded it very thick, way beyond recommended rates, then possibly the tall plants, such as corn or broom corn or amaranth (all warm soil germinators) could get ahead and shade it out.... and they are all annuals.
If the barley foxtail persisted in the understory, I'd try putting the poultry back in there. Actually, it's a puzzle I'm glad I don't have as I am plenty occupied with others, but putting animals on it seems like an important part of the solution.
No Bill it is not. The one I read had thin wires in a grid on the inner surface of the glass. Inner surface to protect from the elements and could also be applied to existing windows although some of the language seems familiar. I admit when I read in the article that they were about 2 years from production the switch in my brain flipped LOL to put it on the back burner I read A LOT and my interests are wide and varied. Im also in the middle of a bathroom remodel and shower install. My solar project is somewhat complicated too. My south facing deck is 12.5 x 30 and sun baked so Im building a roof over my deck that lowers and raises the south side to adjust the panel angle and shades my deck and will morph into a solarium in the fall and winter to help heat my home
This month I have been eating lambsquarters. In the fall I eat sunroots. They were both staple crops that were domesticated and propagated by an agricultural system that I know little about, and by peoples who have long been gone from this area. And yet I am still reaping the benefits of their agricultural system. People are all the time telling me that they can't save seeds, or domesticate new species, because they don't know how... As far as I can tell, nearly every food species that I grow and eat was developed by illiterate farmers who had zero training in genetics... It was sufficient to know that plants make seeds, and that offspring tend to resemble their parents and grandparents. Whenever I think about it, which is often, I am filled with awe and gratitude.
Have you considered a "Lasagne" gardening type solution? Cardboard can be attained for free, or very cheaply, and it's good at choking ground cover out. Perhaps you could get a few *straw* bales, or other seedless highly compostable material, a lot of cardboard, and other types of compostables and section by section start choking out the grass.
I'm not sure how things like Creeping Thyme and various Mints would do there, but if they can get established they'll be a great asset for bees and bugs, and they don't really have to be maintained. You could possibly do things like buckwheat as well, or some tall annual grasses, that you can cut later and leave on the "lasagne" mats.
Cardboard would also allow you to cover the bases of the blueberry bushes and it shouldn't harm the roots while it chokes out most of the grass.
I just realized that I should have read all of the replies before I posted this, someone probably already suggested it...but I wrote it so I'll post it! haha.
I'm really intrigued by the chicken jungle idea.
Right now my chickens free range through about two acres of mixed hard and softwood forest, but the understory is really lacking due to heavy deer browsing. My chickens love to scratch in the leaf and needle duff, but they are clearing a widening area around their coop into barren ground.
I'm trying to establish chicken food and habitat in 3' fenced circles in this area, using mostly perrenial berries and understory trees (mulberry, blackberry, raspberry, native currant, native dogwood, chokecherry) and somewhat invasive shade tolerant things like japanese knotweed and bamboo and comfrey, as well as a peas, vetch, oats groundcover/soil builder.
Thank you for the inspiration!
The wood in Hugelkulturs breaks down over time and destabilizes the mound. This is why Sepp would not plant trees in a hugelkultur, nor use them on contour like swales. I can imagine how a couple of years into decomposition a large rainfall event could cause a section of a hugel-swale to rupture. This means you would have to come through every couple of years with a machine for repairs. Ideally Sepp likes to come through with the machine once and then never touch it again. I can definitely see how this type of machine use would not be ideal for a developing agro-forestry system.
Many thanks, Zach, for this sensible comment.
I've been pondering some sort of hugel-swale terrace on a steep slope, and hadn't faced the facts. Thanks for helping me avoid a catastrophe!
.. boy do my chickens ever catch and eat mice! - more effeciently than the cats.. I considered raising mice as cat/chicken protein, but went to rabbits instead- which feeds me as well as providing better compost material..
wayne stephen wrote:Had you thought about doing a traditional step-over espalier which would allow the root ball to grow firmly and naturally ? This would give you the best of both worlds - horizontal growth { or parallel to the ground } and allow the tree roots to do their thing . The roots on the upward facing side are going to want to go up - or sideways to the tree . Swales and berms with the espalier on contour ? Why not grapes on slope - on contour - and trees on the mesa ?
Hey Wayne, those are all excellent ideas, thanks for taking the the time! I am gravitating towards grapes the more I think about it. I've always wanted some and that south facing slope would be perfect! I'll put my crazy tree idea on hold for now. I like to think outside the box!
That's my plan too. I'm buying an 8 acre property on Friday, and I'm not planning on buying a lawnmower at all. I've got a flock of 20 hair sheep and I plan on putting them to work keeping all the open areas open with rotational grazing. Glad to see someone else has used fruit and pumpkin strategy to suppliment, I've done that a little on my rental land, but now I will be able to GROW my own supplimental feed, and I'm putting in willow and poplar as well. Would love to cut my winter feed/hay bill in half for my flock. If I get ambitious maybe even more than that. Plan on utilizing hedges and fencerows to grow a variety of fruit and veggies that will feed me, the sheep, rabbits, chickens, as well as a bit left over to add to my meat based farm shares.
It sounds to me like you are carrying the manure down the hill. Why not just pile the manure at the top of the hill and leave it to compost. Horse manure is close enough to the proper C:N ratio that it doesn't have to have extra carbon. Don't turn the compost as that promotes more fungal growth and leave the piles for a year. Any runoff will run down hill into the orchard. Carry only finished compost down the hill to save labor.
One of our favorite ducks went missing and I knew then , she did it again and We couldn’t break her and our trust in her was gone. She just learned to hide the bodies.
