Jez
02-08-2006, 02:12 AM
Very interesting article on raising free-range chooks, homestead security and other things:
Homestead security equals free-range chickens, a good dog, and Jerusalem artichokes
by Jim Hogue
Click Here For Full Article (at top of page) (http://www.countrysidemag.com/issues/3_2006.htm)
...
Karl Hammer has 1,400 free-range, egg-laying hens. He lives in Montpelier, VT where temperatures drop to -40°F. His barn is unheated. His hens lay for 12 months out of the year. The fecal matter from the chickens does not pollute.
...
How?
Answer: Garbage.
Living in the State Capitol, Karl has access to all the garbage his flock could ever want, especially when the legislature is in session. He charges a tipping fee to local restaurants, which supply him with appropriate food refuse. He feeds this to his chickens (Australorps, Buff Orpingtons, Wyandottes and Rhode Island Reds) mixed with nutrient-rich and seed-rich late-cut hay. This mixture is 1) fodder, 2) a heat source, and 3) compost.
The chickens add to the food mixture a nitrogen-rich substance that chemists refer to as chicken manure. The food/hay buffet provides a bed for the efficient collection of nitrogen, and the amonia gasses (which on a factory farm would wake the dead) are released so slowly that they are unnoticeable and non-toxic.
...
Anyone observing free-range hens can watch them select from nature's table with individual and decisive discrimination. What I have noticed is that they prefer meals that are moving. Karl's hens are free to roam in search of whatever they like. In winter, when confined by sub-zero degree temperatures to the barn, they still get a good supply of live, varied and tasty food. And even in winter they are able to choose from the constant, ever-growing buffet.
The environment in the barn is a metabolizing ecology: a constant succession of species that live off of the decaying matter and off of each other.
Homestead security equals free-range chickens, a good dog, and Jerusalem artichokes
by Jim Hogue
Click Here For Full Article (at top of page) (http://www.countrysidemag.com/issues/3_2006.htm)
...
Karl Hammer has 1,400 free-range, egg-laying hens. He lives in Montpelier, VT where temperatures drop to -40°F. His barn is unheated. His hens lay for 12 months out of the year. The fecal matter from the chickens does not pollute.
...
How?
Answer: Garbage.
Living in the State Capitol, Karl has access to all the garbage his flock could ever want, especially when the legislature is in session. He charges a tipping fee to local restaurants, which supply him with appropriate food refuse. He feeds this to his chickens (Australorps, Buff Orpingtons, Wyandottes and Rhode Island Reds) mixed with nutrient-rich and seed-rich late-cut hay. This mixture is 1) fodder, 2) a heat source, and 3) compost.
The chickens add to the food mixture a nitrogen-rich substance that chemists refer to as chicken manure. The food/hay buffet provides a bed for the efficient collection of nitrogen, and the amonia gasses (which on a factory farm would wake the dead) are released so slowly that they are unnoticeable and non-toxic.
...
Anyone observing free-range hens can watch them select from nature's table with individual and decisive discrimination. What I have noticed is that they prefer meals that are moving. Karl's hens are free to roam in search of whatever they like. In winter, when confined by sub-zero degree temperatures to the barn, they still get a good supply of live, varied and tasty food. And even in winter they are able to choose from the constant, ever-growing buffet.
The environment in the barn is a metabolizing ecology: a constant succession of species that live off of the decaying matter and off of each other.