The mulch is spread, the compost is made, the leaves are down, and today comes the rain. It's almost like nature knows when to happen... ;)
Today's daily chicken is a disinterested Koekoek. And Red. And Sweet Goldy. All busy doing chicken things.
It looks to me like their compost operation is ready to be harvested. We've added about two feet of leaves in here since August when we started with chickens, and now there's about five inches of stunning soil in the run. I'm torn as to whether I should leave it and move the chickens, or move it and leave the chickens.
As y'all know, my chickens are illegal imigrants here. I'm allowed to have ten chooks in city limits, provided their coop is 100 feet (35m) from a home or gathering area. Well, if I put them in the food forest without a nominal coop, I wonder what would happen... With no coop, they'd sleep in trees and bushes. The new six are stubborn and sleep outside anyways, despite my incessant urges to the contrary.
Just a little thought I've been toying with. Yeah, they'd have less shelter from predators, and that's a big consideration. As the forest matures, that would be less of a concern. They'd be able to be part of a more integrated system too, and their badass composting would happen in place on a larger scale. I dunno. It's bigly against traditional agricultural models, but so is everything else that's permaculture, so...
Things like that are fun to ponder.
If you could move the coop and all, I would. But to just move them, and they'd have no coop, no, not a good idea... Predators in your neighborhood would be neighborhood dogs. They are the biggest threat in a populated area... You really don't want the kids to witness that...
Yeah, that wouldn't be fun. A lot of our neighbors have dogs.
Posted using Partiko Android
Love these chickens! Amazing how chopped leaves and a lot of poops do the thing! Nature is so cool. Thanks for sharing, I want some chooks soooooooo bad, someday soon tho!!
Xx ToL
They're super rewarding and lots of fun. They've probably nearly paid themselves off just with #dailychicken posts too! Hahahah
Looking back, I wonder if we did chickens wrong. Our first four birds (we ate the extra rooster) were bought with a coop and run that I found on craigslist. I forget how much, but I want to say $200. It took a week and another $100 for the uhaul to get the whole assembled thing over here, and I think we could have done it much cheaper than that.
Pallets could have been found for free, and they're the majority of the run, plus I think twelve 2x4s and chicken wire. The coop is ten 2x4s, four 4x4s, three sheets of siding, and some corrugated metal for the roof. Not sure the retail cost, but I think I overpaid lol
The six chicks we bought after that were like $24, and the whole chick raising setup only cost probably $85 with chicks and their first bag of feed included.
To do it again myself, I'd use pallets, chicken wire, and t posts (pallets optional) for the run, and make a small coop myself. The t posts would make it easy to move the run when I wanted.
They've probably nearly paid themselves off just with #dailychicken posts too!
I literally 😂 when I read that, it's funny cos it's true! I'm hoping my worms pay for themselves in crypto too! 😂
Thanks for the tips on your chicken setup. We are renting here for another year so it's a ways off, but I'm one of those people who reads shit and stores it away in my brain like a squirrel with a nut.
I'll keep my eye out for more chicken posts. I imagine we'd be doing coop construction in a year or so.
Thanks nate!
Xx
How do you pronounce Koekoek? :DYou should chat with @lyndsaybowes about her chickens. They have a coop, but they also have free reign outside (except for certain times in the summer when they would annihilate the baby garden). So, they chill in the forested area around her house a lot.
Koo-kook
It's dutch/south African for a heritage breed of chickens in SA that's really similar to the American dominicker, which our Koekoek and Soul Sister are). @buckaroo turned me onto it. :)
Thanks for the pointer, I'll head over and pick her brain about it!
Posted using Partiko Android
man those are some great looking birds!
nice