el dorado quail
Crowing
- Mar 24, 2019
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We are right on the edge of keeping the bananas alive. Zone 9a. It was an experiment that is going well. Learning about microclimates and such.
A lot of people keep birds for the eggs. I wanted poop. Sorry Kiki. Poop for the compost is working amazing. After the compost ages, I open it to the chickens and they disassemble the pile. Makes it easier to pick up. Feed bill drops drastically during the few weeks they are chewing the pile down. Bugs, microfauna, worms and such.
They have to stop eating my cucumbers though. And tomatoes, lettuce, radishes...
I like the poop and the eggs. I keep the birds out of the garden though. They get greens still that we throw to them - mostly weeds and cuttings. The problem is having enough greens for the 8 chickens, 14 quail, 4 turkeys and 3 ducks. They'll enjoy plenty when we harvest our small pea and greenbean patches soon.
I'm doing 6 inches of pine chips + stuff that doesn't fit in compost for the floor of my aviary. Can't wait for fall! Pine straw, leaves, grass, apple cores and peels, corn cobs, etc. Then in the spring I shall steal the top 4 inches and start anew! I've also been making this kind of spread out area of browns/greens mulch that's like 4x6ft and 5 inches deep for a tractor zone. It's in between 2 fruit trees so my hope is they'll poop poop poop, turn turn turn, and fertilize the fruit trees so I won't have to
