IsraeliFarmer
In the Brooder
- Jun 18, 2020
- 5
- 5
- 19
Hi all! First post here!
A quick introduction - my name is Ira Weissman. Born and Raised in Miami, FL but living in Israel for the last 20 years or so with my wife, 7 children, 1 bullmastiff and a bunch of birds
We purchased a farm here recently and have been getting into things slowly. On the property we purchased, there was an olive grove of about 10 dunam (approx 2.5 acres). I figured this would be a great place to pasture chickens and turkeys, so I fenced off the entire grove and built a 3 sided coop in between 2 trees where a tree had died years before.
It has been fun and challenging - with loads of trial (and just as much error) and constantly learning.
When I began to understand the problem with overhead predators and realized natural brooding wasn't going to work (unfortunately another trial and error), I fenced in a smaller area around the coop so I could gather the turkey eggs (otherwise they were hiding them all over the 2.5 acres). I built them their own laying boxes on the ground separate from the raised chicken laying boxes.
I recently created a separate small fenced off section around two adjacent trees where I've been bringing chicks and poults from the brooder out to the grove. I covered it with netting to protect from flying predators.
This has worked somewhat, but I still have a number of problems.
1) Turkey and chickens share the space and don't always get along.
2) The turkeys have abandoned their laying boxes and lay eggs with the chickens in their boxes.
3) They're no longer on pasture. Since they're not moving, they've just killed all of the grass in their fenced off area.
4) When I want to slaughter one of them, it's a huge pain to catch them.
I'm reconsidering the design of my set up and have come up against a fundamental question.
I need to get the birds pasturing again and as I see it, I have 3 options:
1) Use the current coop, but fence out a system of alleys and runs from the main stationary coup to all areas of the grove.
2) Build a few turkey/chicken tractors. What I mean by this is a little movable structure where the birds will stay inside and all of their needs will be provided inside. The tractor will be moved daily to new pasture. The big downside to this option is the last of freedom of movement.
3) Build a portable open turkey shelter (something like this:
). This would require me to fence off each row of trees (there are 11). It's a lot of work and would make the olive harvest a lot more complicated. I'd run some kind of fencing right along the line of trees. I need to keep the rows empty for my tractor to drive through. I'd close off the row that the mobile shelter would be in and let them roam freely within that row. When they've had enough time on that row, I'd move them to the next row.
Option 1 and Option 3 would require a significant investment of resources and time in terms of adding the fencing. Option 2 just seems less nice for the birds. Options 1 and 3 would still have the complications with catching the birds for harvest.
I also need to separate the turkeys for meat and for breeding. Likewise with chickens I would need to separate my layers from the broilers. I don't mind building a few separate tractors for each category.
Would love to hear your thoughts everyone! Thank you very much for taking the time to read all of this
A quick introduction - my name is Ira Weissman. Born and Raised in Miami, FL but living in Israel for the last 20 years or so with my wife, 7 children, 1 bullmastiff and a bunch of birds
We purchased a farm here recently and have been getting into things slowly. On the property we purchased, there was an olive grove of about 10 dunam (approx 2.5 acres). I figured this would be a great place to pasture chickens and turkeys, so I fenced off the entire grove and built a 3 sided coop in between 2 trees where a tree had died years before.
It has been fun and challenging - with loads of trial (and just as much error) and constantly learning.
When I began to understand the problem with overhead predators and realized natural brooding wasn't going to work (unfortunately another trial and error), I fenced in a smaller area around the coop so I could gather the turkey eggs (otherwise they were hiding them all over the 2.5 acres). I built them their own laying boxes on the ground separate from the raised chicken laying boxes.
I recently created a separate small fenced off section around two adjacent trees where I've been bringing chicks and poults from the brooder out to the grove. I covered it with netting to protect from flying predators.
This has worked somewhat, but I still have a number of problems.
1) Turkey and chickens share the space and don't always get along.
2) The turkeys have abandoned their laying boxes and lay eggs with the chickens in their boxes.
3) They're no longer on pasture. Since they're not moving, they've just killed all of the grass in their fenced off area.
4) When I want to slaughter one of them, it's a huge pain to catch them.
I'm reconsidering the design of my set up and have come up against a fundamental question.
I need to get the birds pasturing again and as I see it, I have 3 options:
1) Use the current coop, but fence out a system of alleys and runs from the main stationary coup to all areas of the grove.
2) Build a few turkey/chicken tractors. What I mean by this is a little movable structure where the birds will stay inside and all of their needs will be provided inside. The tractor will be moved daily to new pasture. The big downside to this option is the last of freedom of movement.
3) Build a portable open turkey shelter (something like this:
Option 1 and Option 3 would require a significant investment of resources and time in terms of adding the fencing. Option 2 just seems less nice for the birds. Options 1 and 3 would still have the complications with catching the birds for harvest.
I also need to separate the turkeys for meat and for breeding. Likewise with chickens I would need to separate my layers from the broilers. I don't mind building a few separate tractors for each category.
Would love to hear your thoughts everyone! Thank you very much for taking the time to read all of this
