Completely Self sufficient systems

[3KillerBs]

Yes we do I'm pritty sure. Thanks.

I wish so much that we had water on this land. A few years ago we'd looked at a place where there was a pond and we had visions of ducks.

We're not into the daily management of duck water via the manual filling/draining of a pool.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

I have 2 half-acre ponds and have had ponds of various sizes my whole life. I find that invasive plants aren’t always bad. Some of them are amazing at filtering the water and providing good conditions for wildlife. Some of them would also be suitable fodder for livestock. One of my favorite is hydrilla. It cleans the water, gives cover to fish, and is food for both ducks and livestock.

The deeper and larger your pond is, the more likely you can confine invasives to specific zones within the system.

Turtles are the number 1 grazers of aquatic plants in my system and do a good job of keeping them in check, sometimes even destroying colonies of some plants I want to get established.

 

[RooStar Chicken Gang]

No the river doesn't feed the dams, that I'm aware of, thanks for sharing, yea cows an sheep walk in the dams ect.. that's where they get drink from.

 

[RooStar Chicken Gang]

Some really good comments guys, ill reply on more detail when not so busy im cruising down the freeway at the moment.

Also anothwr question someone mentioned was, we have all heard how u need to feed ya chooks the bags of food af the stores you know cause its got all the good stuff for em apparantly.. bit back in the ol days there was none of that... so what did they feed the chooks just scraps? Something more? What was ol day chook food.

 

[saysfaa]

Mostly, not much. They might help some of the species in some locations.

 

[ro ro]

i quess i misunderstood the question-----i thought it was about setting up coup to not have to do daily feed n watering ----- what i did i got 2 55 gal soda concentrate plastic barrels and set them on their side and ran plasic pipe to coup and installed 8 chicken water cups --- also got a 55gal plastic screw top barrel and put 3in 90degree elbows in it to set about 1/2 to 1 inch from bottom----this will hold about 8 bags of feed i have yet too fill completely but i use layering to fill it i put in laying pellets 3-4 bags 1 bag of scratch 1 bag of corn and 1/2 bag of black oil sunflower seeds ----- this last months and is sealed by elbow being so close to bottom & the feed to stop animals from crawling into the barrel --and the water feeds the cups for 3-4 months [must be hight than cups for total capacity to be available even tho pipe is buried to coup the barrels are high enough to empty and only lower pipe will not flow to cups once barrels are empty ------- i do still soak about a half scoop of laying pellets and feed it to chickens the next day to make feed last longer as the soaked feed has swollen and takes les to fill the birds but there are days i do not do this and they just feed out of the feeder and what ever they scratch in the run [i do give them about a third of a scoop on occasion of scratch with some sunflower seed in it] usually when i coolect eggs to get them to other end of run because i have a couple that insist on laying under the coup [its about 3ft 6in of the groun 8x8ft]and run is about 25ftx 8ft plus the size of inside of coup ----- i have 33 hens and 2 roosters ----- they are very sexually active ---- recieveved chicks april 1st of 2021 ------ loosing a couple eggs a day by peckers so next project is roll-a-way nesting boxes fun fun fun

 

[3KillerBs]

Many ponds and lakes in the area are being choked by invasive aquatic species.

Does having ducks and/or geese help with that problem?

 

[Grandmas Coop]

And so how's it going??