predator control - "And then she got a great pyrenees dog and never lost a chicken to predators after that"

more from Paul's great article

Source http://www.richsoil.com/raising-chickens.jsp


paul wheaton permaculture

predator control

When I moved onto my first farm, I was told that nobody in the neighborhood was able to be raising chickens because there was such a serious coyote problem. Sure enough, you can hear them howling and yipping every night. But I was dead set on raising chickens. I told the neighbors that I'll just build some super fence to keep the coyotes out - they told me stories of people with all sorts of amazing fences and the coyotes still killed all of the chickens.
Research! I could find lots of people that had some wimpy fence and never had any predator trouble: "Do it like me! You won't have any problems! I promise!" I was tempted, but my gut said that these folks did not have the coyote challenge I faced and if I tried to do what they did, all of my chickens would be killed.
And then I met a woman advocating dogs to protect the chickens. Which struck me as not quite right because not only were coyotes rather dog-like, I've heard of people losing chickens to dogs. This woman had the patience to carefully explain to me that there are certain breeds of dogs that have been bred for thousands of years to protect livestock, including chickens. These dogs would take on a mountain lion to save a chicken. And then the woman told me about how she had built what she was sure was a coyote proof fence only to lose every last chicken to coyotes. And then she got a great pyrenees dog and never lost a chicken to predators after that.
After hearing from two more people with similar experiences with livestock guardian dogs, I bought a great pyrenees pup. Liza. Well, she wasn't a pure bred gret pyr. She had a little anatolian shepherd (another livestock guardian dog breed) and a pinch of saint bernard.


On patrol with henry - a mutt. Henry always followed liza's lead so they made an excellent team.


Liza and henry were both very people friendly.


You could hear liza battle the coyotes nearly every night. First you hear the howling and then about 3/4 of a second later you hear liza running at full speed. About twelve seconds later you hear the howling replaced by "hyipe! yipe! yipe!" - she's run them off.
She patrolled all night for all predators. And if the chickens make a certain noise during the day, she's right there looking to see if there might be any threat.
I have a lot more to say about livestock guardian dogs. But for now, let me just leave it at: if you have acreage, a livestock guardian breed of dog is the way to go. Everything becomes much easier and cheaper.

predator control without a livestock guardian dog (LGD)

If you are not going to use an LGD, then this topic can fill a book. I'm going to only skim the surface of a few of the basics. I'll be happy to explore more details in the forum as people have questions. Maybe some day I'll expand on this topic a bit - but I kinda doubt it since I travel the LGD path.
Before leaving biological control behind, I want to mention the use of llamas, donkeys and attack geese: I've heard lots of stories of success and and equal number of stories of failure. The failure stories make sense to me. The success stories make me wonder if the predator pressure may have been low. I think it is possible that there are ways to have llamas, donkeys or geese work to protect your chickens and I just don't fully understand it yet. Or maybe these folks have come across animals that just so happen to have a powerful passion to protect chickens - which leaves one to wonder how to duplicate the process. I have heard that for llamas to be effective, you need to have only one llama - otherwise, the llamas will protect only the llamas and nothing else. If there is only one llama, the llama thinks the chickens are its family and will protect the chickens. There is an excellent book (Livestock Guardians: Using Dogs, Donkeys, and Llamas to Protect Your Herd) that goes into a lot of detail about the finer points of getting llamas and donkeys to work for you. It also covers LGDs quite thoroughly, including all the bits and bobs about breeds. There has also been a fair amount of discussion here.
Let's start simple. Raccoons. Raccoons climb and dig and I have heard that they can break "chicken wire". So they can climb over a fence - or they will even climb a tree to get in and climb a different tree to get out. So a physical barrier alone will be quite the challenge. I suspect that raccoons are the number one reason why folks stop raising chickens.
The most common approach is to close up the coop at night and open the coop again in the morning. Raccoons are mostly nocturnal - and you focus your security effort on the coop. But now you have also added two chores a day that require you to be home on time. And sleeping in in the morning isn't particularly good for the chickens. And forgetting to lock them in at night ... well ... that depends on how often the raccoons test the lock.
I've heard of folks setting up the coop door with a weight or a spring so that if you just pull a small pin, the door will open. And then setting up a wind-up alarm clock that will pull the pin in the morning. All of this so folks can sleep in a bit in the morning. Not a bad idea!
Live traps don't work so good: first, you end up catching animals you don't want to catch. Second, if you catch the raccoon and take it far, far away, you'll find that that raccoon was keeping other raccoons away. So new raccoons come along a little later and you're back to square one.
An electric fence can work very well. You have to make sure that your zapper has a powerful punch. After all, an electric fence is a psychological barrier. When the raccoon encounters it and you don't have a lot of pop, then the raccoon tries to decide if the pain will be worth it - or if it can find a way in without getting shocked. With a big pop, a raccoon thinks DAMMIT! .... RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY!
Using electric fence on large portable paddocks works really well. You should never use electric fence for a small paddock. It's too stressful for the animals inside the paddock.
Anything that works on a raccoon will also generally work on coyotes, dogs, foxes (canines), cats (all sizes), skunks and opossums. Although the canines are more apt to dig than raccoons.
This cat (walter cronkite) generally eats a bird a day - but has never taken a chicken
Weasels (which includes minks) will dig a little and climb a little, but what they are really great at is squeezing themselves through a tiny space and then eating the heads off of all of the chickens. One day all will be great, and the next morning you find all of your chickens have no heads. Weasels can also chew through wood a bit.
Rats are a different sort of problem. They will take eggs and chicks, but I have yet to hear of a rat taking down a grown chicken. More on rats and mice here and here. Snakes can pose a similar problem - going after eggs and chicks.
Raptors (hawks, eagles, owls, etc.) will take chickens and chicks. Some ravens will take chicks. Lots of shrubs and trees seems to solve nearly all of this during the day. A good coop solves the owl problem at night.
A couple of odd contraptions I have heard about but have never tried, nor have I even heard of anybody trying them.

• Motion detecting water squirt. Apparently, when something crosses its sensor, it will aim water at it and squirt it. I guess this won't work during the winter.
• Red-eye thing: I guess you put a bunch of these solar powered contraptions around your property. At night, they have some sort of intermittant red light. This will, supposedly, freak out the predators. They gurantee that it will work. If anybody has any experience with this sort of contraption, please tell us about it in the critter care forum. 

Source http://www.richsoil.com/raising-chickens.jsp

paul wheaton permaculture (g+)  

chickens harvesting their own feed

An interesting article full of observations, comments and ideas.........

chickens harvesting their own feed

Ahhhh ..... I think this is where permaculture really shines.
Imagine an area for the chickens which has en enormous mulberry tree dropping fruit throughout june, july and august. There is a plethora of clover, alfalfa, grains, sunflowers, buckwheat, peas and lentils in the more open areas. Fruit and nut trees are surrounded by siberian pea shrubs, chickweed, comfrey, dandelion, amaranth, nettles and sunchokes. Maybe some raspberries and blueberries are in the mix too. Assuming it is summer, why would a chicken eat dried up "chicken feed" with this bounty at hand?
When raising chickens on a large scale, you generally raise your meat birds only in the summer. And you harvest your non productive layers in the fall. So most of your chicken feeding efforts are focused in the warmer months when your chicken feed crops can be producing prolifically.
What, specifically, to grow depends on a lot of factors. How much room do you have; how cold does it get; what is your soil like; how much does it rain ....
Some plants produce more food per acre per year than other plants. And some produce food for a just a week and others produce food for six months. The best producers appear to be mulberry trees (lots of fruit dropped constantly over three months) and wheat (when grown with the bonfils method). Sepp Holzer pushes a perennial rye and sunchokes as the core chicken/pig feeds.
I advocate using the chicken paddock method. And along with that, I think that the lion's share of the people food should be grown in those same paddocks. A lot of the stuff we eat is great chicken food! And the chickens clean up anything we drop and anything we leave behind. Less waste.
This is a good time to mention polyculture. All plant eating animals are designed to eat plants from a polyculture. They eat plants, not from rows and rows of the same thing, but from a mix of a dozen or more species. Every plant has special nutrient needs and every plant exudes an excess of nutrients that it mysteriously has superpowers to find/build/whatever. The mycelium in the soil has no leaves and depends on developing a bartering relationship with plants to get sugar. The mycelium offers nutrients. The sugar water from a carrot is loaded with nutrients that the carrot has in excess. The sugar water from an oak tree is loaded with something completely different. The carrot gets a bit of the oak excess and the oak gets a bit of the carrot excess. Because the oak's roots cover a bigger territory, it gets far more diversity than the carrot. And the oak ends up inadvertantly sharing some of that with the carrot.
We have barely scratched the surface of what we know for human nutrition. And we have studied human nutrition ten thousand times more than chicken nutrition. Human nutrition is based on humans eating from a polyculture and eating the meat of animals that consumed from a polyculture. Rather than prending that we know all there is to know and growing things in a harshly organized fashion, I suggest that, instead, we grow things in a diverse polyculture of 50 or more species. I suspect that by doing this, the vegetation will become far richer in nutrients (both known and currently unknown) than if we attempt to infuse the soil with known nutrients. Diversity would include things that make for good chicken feed and things that make for good people feed. Rather than have an area for the chickens and an area for the people food, have one area for both (and many other purposes too).
Since paddock shift systems tend to encourage five times more growth of vegetation, the result should be MORE people food than if chickens were not rotated through the area.
For the winter, a lot of remaining grains and seeds will still be on their stalks. The taller stalks will eventually fall to the level chickens can get it. Winter apples will often stay on the trees deep into the winter. When they fall, they will keep for a long time on the ground. Kale can provide some winter greens. If chickens follow pigs in a rotation, pigs will often pull up sunchokes (and other tubers) and leave scraps for the chickens. Sepp Holzer has observed chickens eating the manures of other animals in winter. His son reports that they will provide feed to chickens only on the dozen coldest days of the year.


For full articles go to: http://www.richsoil.com/raising-chickens.jsp

 by

paul wheaton permaculture (g+)

"It's not a conventional outlook, but it's what interests me. I think in 50 years time agriculture will be revolutionised.......

"It's not a conventional outlook, but it's what interests me. I think in 50 years time agriculture will be revolutionised. If you're feeding the soil in this way then you're really feeding the soil and you get really healthy plants."

Biodynamic farm aims for a back to nature approach

Scott Casey

Sunday 18 December 2011 06:00

Enterprises don't come much more alternative than biodynamics, as Scott Casey discovers

When thinking of on-farm diversifications, most famers probably wouldn't consider biodynamic farming as an option. But with the right business attitude and a passion for the style of farming, it can be a profitable endeavour.
At Tablehurst Farm in East Sussex the good business sense of the resident farmers, and their dedication to the method of farming, has seen returns increase and their farm expand.
Owned by about 600 shareholders in the local community, the 500-acre farm has grown from being an unprofitable enterprise managed by a local school to a thriving farm business, with a diverse range of stock and a booming farm shop.
Egg producer Daniel Hoeberichts, who keeps 1,700 laying hens inside a 30-acre apple, pear and soft fruit orchard, came from outside farming and studied biodynamics in his native Netherlands. "I wanted to work closely to nature and with biodynamic farming you bring all those connections back," he said.

The birds are kept in 12 moveable sheds, which are provided primarily for shelter at night, laying and for storing their feed. But mostly they roam within the orchard.
The sheds are moved up and down the hill upon which the orchard is built on a weekly basis, about 10m each time, in an effort to spread the manure from the birds and the associated nutrients as far afield as possible.
Each shed has a small flock of 130 hens and these are paired with five cockerels which, Mr Hoeberichts says, allows the chickens to live a more natural existence.
"Cockerels do a great job. They guard the hens throughout the orchard, they look for food and if they find anything they will call the chickens and let them eat it," he said.
"During the night they bring the birds back to the house and they protect them against predators. You can really see their social interaction working. There is no feather pecking, no cannibalism, none of the problems you get in intensive poultry."
Feed comes in from a fellow biodynamic producer, Perry Court Farm in Kent, but soon Tablehurst will be milling its own feed on-farm.
"The chickens are spreading the nutrients we need, so from a biodynamic perspective we've gone to another level. It's better to produce the manures on the farm than bring it in from outside, so it's more connected to the farm." Mr Hoeberichts told Poultry World.
"We've worked on it for a couple of months and at the moment the plan is that, by next year, all our feed will be biodynamic."
Dust baths
They have had some problems on the farm, such as convincing DEFRA they didn't need to supply dust baths as the birds simply find and make their own across the sprawling orchard.
"If you look to nature, they just make their own. We don't limit the birds so it's quite a natural habitat. So DEFRA came here to have a look and they agreed that it was fine," said Mr Hoeberichts.
Another issue is foxes and while the orchard is surrounded by an electric fence, powered by a biodiesel generator with a battery backup for night-time, when it fails the results have been disastrous.
"It's always been Christmas Eve they come. Perhaps they want a big dinner too," Mr Hoeberichts said. "The severe snow we've had over the last two winters has been a problem. The electric wires get covered and we lose the electricity and the foxes get really hungry." When he started the farm with his girlfriend in 2008, Mr Hoeberichts says they took on every customer they could get. But now they've got to ration their eggs as they can't keep up with demand.
Eggs from the birds are sold in the farm shop at Tablehurst, through local shops around the farm, and at farmers' markets in London.
"We can't take on any new customers. We have to make sure we can supply our current customers and keep them happy. We can't just buy in eggs to make up the difference."
Despite the poor economic climate and the much publicised decline in organic consumption, Mr Hoeberichts sees plenty of room for growth in his method of production.
"We would like to add a few more houses because we can see if we expand another 20% or 30% that will be the perfect number of chickens for the orchard. We don't want to go beyond that because the balance will be gone," he said.
"It means four more houses to put up, but financially it's quite an investment and we would need to employ someone for a few hours each day. But we wouldn't want to become huge. That's not what biodynamic farming is all about."

What is biodynamic farming?

Biodynamic farming is a method of farming developed in the 1920s that is simply organic farming taken to its highest level. Farmers view the entire farm as a living organism, avoiding outside inputs as much as possible.
Biodynamics also incorporates a form of spiritualism into its practice and uses preparations in a similar way to homeopathic medicine, which was also founded in the 1920s by the German philosopher Rudolph Steiner.
"I believe there are forces in your food and not just the chemicals that are printed on the label," said Peter Brown, who raises broilers at Tablehurst Farm. "It's not a conventional outlook, but it's what interests me.
"I think in 50 years time agriculture will be revolutionised. If you're feeding the soil in this way then you're really feeding the soil and you get really healthy plants.
"I came into biodynamics because I think there is more to life than a physical substance. I mean, we all know it's dependent on the sun, but there is a moon and other planets and in homeopathic medicine things are potentised, then you see are dealing with forces not substances."

Pullett Eggs

An interesting niche Mr Hoeberichts and Tablehurst have carved out is supplying the generally smaller eggs produced by pullets, with information on packaging explaining why they are smaller.
Only available once a year, the pullet eggs are very popular with customers and come in trays of 36 eggs. They are bought mainly by keen local bakers who want to use them for making pastries and desserts, as they are richer than eggs producer later in the laying cycle.
"We just can't keep up with the demand. We run out really quickly because eventually the egg size goes up," said Mr Hoeberichts. "We think its very important to put that extra information out to the customer and, when they understand why the eggs are smaller, they like it more because they understand more."

Source: http://www.fwi.co.uk/Articles/18/12/2011/130544/Biodynamic-farm-aims-for-a-back-to-nature-approach.htm 

soon start with eggs, Biodynamic Orchard eggs

I am just about to start with eggs, Biodynamic Orchard eggs from Brambletye Fruit farm, Forest Row in Sussex, (http://www.myorchardeggs.co.uk/Pictures/English/Kippen_schuur.html) and the first venue is the Farm Academy Farmers market and

festive fayre at Corelli College SE3 on the 9th, if you want to come along. If not put your order in and I’ll deliver to your door within my area (£5 per dozen, minimum order 2 dozen). They will be £4 on the day at Corelli, but only if you bring your own egg box.

Will have a load of other stuff as well, that is education things along with some of the young hens from the Farm Academy’s fab chicken house made by Men in Sheds.
Not sure what else will be there but come along to find out!