Re: Chicken advise newbie.


"Amy Blankenship" <Amy_nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"Jill" <news@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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Amy Blankenship wrote:
"Jill" <news@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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Amy Blankenship wrote:

I have a setup similar to yours, but it is only partially roofed.
This is because one of the main purposes of my setup is to create
garden beds. So, during the warm months the chicken house with
attached run will be in one spot for 6-8 weeks. If it rains, I add
peat moss, leaves, or feed sacks if I don't have peat moss or
leaves. The chickens work all this in to make rich dirt. IMO,
letting it get wet makes the dirt better.

As this is a global group -- a rider to this must be that it depends
on how wet wet is !!!

http://co.harrison.ms.us/weather/. It's been raining since 8 pm last
night (about 12 hours now).

Yearly rain 12 inches

I don't think that's actually accurate, but it's the only aggregate I
could find. Here's something better
http://www.weather.com/weather/wxclimatology/monthly/graph/39574.

If you add all those up, it is closer to 3 feet than 1.

Ours is 6 feet !!
The OP is drier but will be a LOT higher than 12 inches in a year.

Your great system applied here would create mud, not nice soil
unfortunately

I'm not so sure. The way it starts out is with turf. After the first
week, the grass is mostly gone. I usually go out and buy a bale of peat
moss at that point. At the first rain, I throw down a couple of cubic
feet. This stabilizes the soil so it can still get mucky, but isn't a
morass. I'll usually put a couple of feed sacks down near the door so I
can get in and out without slipping.

As I clean waste hay from the goat, I throw that in. Chickens love that,
since they seem to cut it here with the seed heads on. Earlier this year
I had to get creative, because we had no leaves (Katrina ate them all last
year), but just as the pen started to get stinky in this current location,
I looked around and saw the leaves needed raking. We have several large
pecan trees, so they cover the yard in leaves.

With two layers of leaves on top of the peat moss/feed sacks/hay, it's
very stable in there to walk on even after 12 straight hours of rain. I
put down more feed sacks anyway, because I took them out there out of
habit, and the chickens like to shred them.

<snip another interesting setup -- again pretty high maintenance but
works well when managed well>

It takes about 20 minutes a day when I don't let them out, but that
also includes the other 4 chickens with a different setup and caring
for the goat. Then the occasional leaf raking foray. The advantage
of the setup is the chickens get used to being herded around a lot,
so they're pretty easy to handle.


I was thinking of collecting the leaves, peat moss, moving, birds in,
birds out, sorting the veggies, etc.

Leaves really need to be collected anyway. And with a tarp and a rake,
you can gather enough to fill the chickie pen in about 10 minutes. I put
in less after the first layer.

I put extra carbon under the house in the form of cardboard, etc.

All of this just sort of happens as a result of things that need to get
done anyway. For instance, I already save kitchen scraps for compost.
The chicken edible ones have their own pile. It was easier to leave the
mustard greens and let them get big than pull them (the roots make
everything dirty) and the big leaves protected the soil and prevented
weeds.

It's easier to clean the pen if the birds go out in their little
pasture--that way they're not under foot. It is kind of a pain when half
the flock decides to hop the fence, but then that's one of their times to
get completely free and it's not a big deal.

It needs care and skill to know when to move, when to add, what to add
etc. without creating a nasty mess

That's a nose thing. If it's smelly, it needs more carbon. Just like
compost. If the feather footed chickens have muck matted in their feet, I
need to do something to dry it out.

If the OP was looking for the simplest system for a novice it may not be
so easy.

These are my first chickens. But the system is designed as much to create
the garden beds as care for the chickens. Incidentally, we have heavy
clay soil here, but chicken dirt is like powdered (confectioner's) sugar.

The backyard free range system folks here tend to work with if there are
no foxes etc is to open the door in the morning, water and check feed,
collect eggs later, shut in at night. Muck out as necessary. ;)

Must be nice. We have one goat because of dog predation.

-Amy
Thanks all for the advise,i will be posting more questions soon maybe?i am
going to put together house/run over the holiday period,still planning!
cheers keith


.

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