Fermenting Feed for Meat Birds

[Triple Willow]

Mine spend their winter in my fenced in veggie garden. The electric netting won't work with our snow. So come spring I have a garden full of rich compost with lots of chicken poo. I also dump my leaves in my garden in the fall. The girls love spending winter digging thru them and do a great job of helping them break down as they scratch. My garden this spring was wonderful. To bad the wx didn't cooperate lol

I was thinking about your garden setup.. how bad does grass and weeds grow back after your chickens have been on your garden spot? That is one reason I have never been a good gardener - I don't want to use grass and weed killer so the grass/weeds get too out of hand.

 

[galanie]

I was thinking about your garden setup.. how bad does grass and weeds grow back after your chickens have been on your garden spot? That is one reason I have never been a good gardener - I don't want to use grass and weed killer so the grass/weeds get too out of hand.

I hear ya on that. The only "organic" solution I've found is hard work. Spend a year or two weeding and hoeing yourself to death, and after that so long as you mulch, all you really have to worry about other than the odd weed here and there is the grass creeping in from the edges.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

And that's why I have nothing but raised beds for my garden! XD That and the extremely heavy clay soil that keeps both roots and water on the surface of my lawn. :|

It's so flippin' cold right now! I sure hope it warms up again. D: I have to build a quick hoop house for my tomatoes because it's been suddenly dropping into the low 50's at night! Two weeks ago it was 90....

 

[Triple Willow]

I hear ya on that. The only "organic" solution I've found is hard work. Spend a year or two weeding and hoeing yourself to death, and after that so long as you mulch, all you really have to worry about other than the odd weed here and there is the grass creeping in from the edges.

I have read about people using pigs to turn the soil and eat any roots. It may work very well but I don't like the thought of that flavor fertilizer on my garden. lol

 

[Kassaundra]

...speaking of naked chickens, check the pics of "Kung Fu Henny" posted by Zazouse at this link. Disturbing and funny! lol
https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...hickens-contest-september-ends-october-6th/30

Man that is SOME molt!!!!!! It would be interesting to know if her siblings or offspring have such hard molts, I bet it is a genetic mutation or rare genetic combo thing.

 

[galanie]

I have read about people using pigs to turn the soil and eat any roots. It may work very well but I don't like the thought of that flavor fertilizer on my garden. lol

I dont' like the thought of that either! But in my new place, I bet it would be a great idea. Reason is, I have a lot of "snakevine" out there where I want to grow stuff. Oh it's a small, innocent looking vine even though it has thorns, but dig up the root and.. WOW!!! I dug one up that had to have weighed 30 lbs. Kind of reminds you of a cross between a Jerusalem artichoke root and a sweet potato. Edible too. But nah..

 

[Triple Willow]

Man that is SOME molt!!!!!!  It would be interesting to know if her siblings or offspring have such hard molts, I bet it is a genetic mutation or rare genetic combo thing.

Something definitely went wrong. It's kind of pitiful looking. Made me think how I guess they are all kind of pitiful underneath those feathers.

 

[Triple Willow]

I dont' like the thought of that either! But in my new place, I bet it would be a great idea. Reason is, I have a lot of "snakevine" out there where I want to grow stuff. Oh it's a small, innocent looking vine even though it has thorns, but dig up the root and.. WOW!!! I dug one up that had to have weighed 30 lbs. Kind of reminds you of a cross between a Jerusalem artichoke root and a sweet potato. Edible too. But nah..

Eat it! lol Yeah I bet between chickens and pigs you could get ground in pretty good shape. Goats would be good to take down the high stuff, bushes and saplings. Then you could put them all in the freezer if you chose to. Free fertilizer, free cultivation, almost free meat! I heard or read somewhere that you should take animals off the land 4 months before you put a crop on it to prevent samonella problems. Probably for the pigs but I think that seems a little long for the goats and chickens.

 

[Beekissed]

I was thinking about your garden setup.. how bad does grass and weeds grow back after your chickens have been on your garden spot? That is one reason I have never been a good gardener - I don't want to use grass and weed killer so the grass/weeds get too out of hand.

I'll tell you a fine thing we've found for moisture retention and weed suppression in our gardens we've been using the last several years....permanent rows with white dutch clover planted in between them. Then you just mulch the actual row after planting and weeds are very few and far between after that. Here's a pic of my clover, right after plowing the rows into it...sure does cut down on the tilling too and the clover attract pollinators to the garden...



By the second year here at Mom's place(pic below), her clover had been taken over with native grasses, so it makes it a perfect time to switch the pathways...here you see where we've seeded the garden rows after the garden was done with the white dutch clover and the following year we plowed the pathways instead..leaving the old garden rows filled with clover as the new pathways. It covers the tilled ground in the fall, provides green forage through the fall and winter months for the chickens and keeps the nutrients and moisture in the soil where it belongs. The clover fixes nitrogen in the soils, is good nutrition for the chooks and keeps the soils covered so that weeds cannot get a foothold. Another good thing about overseeding your rows with clover is when it gets too high or you want to trim it, you just take a mower down the row and mow it down.

No muddy shoes from the garden, a place for worms and beneficial bugs to live, a pollinator attractant and a good cover crop in the fall for the animals to make use of...we will never go back to tilling up the whole garden and trying to keep the weeds hoed out of it any longer. We just till the rows only, each year, plant them back to clover after harvest and we never have bare soil in the garden. It also helps us till in nutrients in the spring, while doing a bit of crop rotation.



The pic below shows early spring, with the rows on the right being planted to potatoes and mulched with hay~you can just see some potatoes sticking up through the mulch. The other rows have been plowed once and worked by the chickens and will be tilled once again before planting and mulched when the plants are placed or grown large enough.

I have read about people using pigs to turn the soil and eat any roots. It may work very well but I don't like the thought of that flavor fertilizer on my garden. lol

Best manure you can possibly put on a garden! Manure tea made from pig poop is some high octane fertilizer and can yield some massive veggies!

 

[Triple Willow]

@Bee... That's pretty neat! I've seen gardens like that in Mother Earth News magazine. Do you mulch everything with hay? I am to old and broken down (and lazy) to fight grass and weeds. lol

Ahhh pig doody fertilizer (sigh). I will take your word for it. lol