mid winter report 2017, part 2, poultry

The two hens are doing well, though perverse dark weather stopped egg laying early and they are just resuming now.

We moved their house, in fact have set up two houses, so they can readily be moved to clean ground and where they have been can be put to crops for them or for us.

Because of previous problems with pigeons, sparrows and others spending a lot of time in the chook pen, eating food and creating potential for disease transfer, we have netted over small runs.

Enclosing the whole run under net means we can broadcast seed without the whole neighbourhood reporting for eats.
The hens tend to go for the better, higher protein seeds, leaving the wheat.
With their 'scratch mix' spread on the ground, if the ground is wet by rain or human intervention,
wheat seeds scratched into the ground will sprout. At which time we can ease up on fresh feed until they have eaten the sprouts... wheat probably more nutritious and digestible as sprouts.

The provision of water is important. Rather than provide some plastic container, etc, we have a pond which runs from inside to outside the chook run. On the outside, plants, insects, frog, etc, which could not survive on the inside.

 

This chook run is squeezed in adjacent to mini-rainforest with torii



And at another part of the garden, a new chook run awaits. With the netting over it, down the end there, we now have broadcast scratch mix (mixed seed) and covered it with straw mulch and kept watering. So that we now have a mini-pasture sprouting. This heals the soil and provides a nutritional start when the chooks arrive. More detail later.

this photo takes us into the kitchen mantra, regarding waste minimising: dog, chook, compost, garbage