Protected beds to supply chickens with greens year round; an in-place chicken tractor.
Lawrence London <[email protected]>
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Protected beds to supply chickens with greens year round; an in-place chicken tractor. My Facebook friend Keith writes: "grazing wire top barrels with Proso millet, to give full season green munchies" This gives me an interesting idea. How about a fixed-in-place chicken tractor. Take two 12 foot pieces of 6 foot galvanized mesh fence wire (something more durable than dog wire). Lay out two beds 6'X12' each side by side with 6"X6" nontoxic treated beams. Fertilize the soil with rock dusts, greensand, rock phosphate, biochar, compost and manure - fork/spade/hoe or rototill that in. Then attach the 2 fence wire pieces to the beams with the wire about 4-6 from the ground. Use metal T posts laid across the beams to keep the fencewire from sagging. Seed the fertilized, tilled soil with a succession of greens for the chickens. They will eat what grows through the fence wire and it will continue to regrow (cut-and-come-again greens) and provide food for them most of the year. The wire will keep them from scratching the ground and uprooting all the plants and they in turn will provide continuous fertilizer for the greens. This could become a permanent fixture in the chicken yard and not require any maintenance until the wire rusts and has holes. -- Lawrence F. London, Jr. [email protected] https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared permaculture mailing list permaculture-rm8PX32fqvbMZ2x0e22RKNi2O/[email protected] subscribe/unsubscribe|user config|list info: https://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture