Chickens in Permaculture

[shortgrass]

Oh I know, me too! It's so cold and sad when everything is all brown and dead for winter


I had to scroll through 1000 pics of flowers and greenery to find more butterflies in anticipation lol....


These showed up in June...

These in July.....

And now that I looked up a Swallowtail, I know those were around too, I just don't have any pictures.... But these do look like the caterpillars

 

[Adorkable]

They sure do love that dill!

 

[lazy gardener]

Yep, I've had them on my dill, and I think on my parsley as well.

 

[centrarchid]

Guess I assumed lol.... See how easy it was to "mistake" a larvae?


Looked like a Monarch caterpillar to me lol

I'm not picky lol, butterflies are butterflies

Oh, so @centrarchid, are the Viceroys the ones that are orange, gray, and black spotted? I don't know what those ones are but they were all over the place too....


Are these who the caterpillars belong to?

Look closer at the caterpillar. Butterfly immediately above looks like a Painted Lady or something closely related.

 

[shortgrass]

Look closer at the caterpillar. Butterfly immediately above looks like a Painted Lady or something closely related.

Oh yeah, I noticed the difference right away... The monarchs are more colorful, bigger, and they have 2 sets of what look like antannae... Must be some sort of camouflage trick so that predators don't know which end is the head?

I guess I never paid attention to the caterpillars unless they were eating my veg lol


But we have a creek and TONS of milkweed, so I'm going to be looking for MONARCH caterpillars over there next year for sure

My favorite so far is the one in the picture with my finger next to it... Such a delicate wing pattern

The outside of the wings was nothing fancy but inside was such a surprise!

 

[Leahs Mom]

The outside of the wings was nothing fancy but inside was such a surprise!

I hope that's what folks say about me when they get to know me.

 

[Leahs Mom]

Wishing you all a Happy Thanksgiving!

 

[donrae]

Just posting to mark my place. Love all the info!

 

[shortgrass]

I got bored, so I took some pictures, of piles of poo lol...

This is the big ol pile at the end of the wheatfield... It started out being over 6' tall and covers about 4 acres...

It's now only 3' tall, after 8 months of self composting

The wheatfield was harvested in July, and Millet was planted in the stubble. The millet was cut before it went to seed for feed, and the cattke are grazing the stubble now, getting ready to calve... The poo will wait until 2 weeks before planting to be spread around the 100 acres it is sitting at the sideline of

An interesting tidbit about a soil problem we have here in N Colorado, an excess of copper. It can be bad enough to cause toxicity in the cattle when they're grazing on certain grasses, especially rye and Millet, because they pull excess copper out of the soil and store it in their vegetation, poisoning the cattle.

We have to feed them a mineral supplement with a very high percent of magnesium, to help bind with the copper so they can expel it...

I'm looking at options that will help either increase the cal/mag content of the feed, or help fix the excess in the soil, which would call for more intervention than I can tolerate.

So my options are limited to beneficial plants that can grow in an arid, hot, Colorado summer, pull excess copper from soil, that the cattle won't eat, OR, plants that have massively high magnesium content, so the cattle can offset it themselves.

Whee!

 

[centrarchid]

Could you get the cattle to consume dolomitic limestone crushed into lime?