Help! chicken pasture shift system

[chook-in-eire]

c-i-e = chook-in-eire (as I don't know your name ) ;-)

Ah. Not Córas Iompair Éireann so.

... so I was wondering how well chooks do eating fat. eg if you dumped a lump of mutton fat in front of them would they eat it and would they be ok?

I can second what the others have been saying. They love fat.
Would they be ok? It certainly helps with their energy needs, especially in cold climates of course. But obviously it's no good for their protein needs, minerals, vits etc.
They certainly eat a huge range of things including meat and fish. In an 100 year old poultry book (Wrights Book of Poultry, 1910 edition) I read an account of a very large poultry breeder in England. They went through 2 horses a week for their chickens, bought from the knackers yard, butchered and boiled!!! That was primarily to meet the protein needs, with grains also fed and large grass ranges for greens.

[gabe22]

Ludi, I could also have said 45 kg of grains, seeds, pulses or whatever. Of course it doesn't mean it has to be purchased, pelleted feed. What I was trying to impress on gabe22 is that they do eat quite a bit and some grass, a plum here and there and a few seeds, bugs and slugs are not enough to maintain them and make them lay eggs to their potential. Consider that each egg contains about 12g of protein, 10g of fat, several g of calcium in the shell and so on. All that has to come from somewhere.


Agree. It is perfectly possible to mix your own. But when it comes to amounts and constituents much depends on what is available on your land, on what your local climate is, and on what type of bird you keep. There are smaller thrifty breeds that forage well; there are also commercial hybrids that are bred to eat what's put in front of them in a climate-controlled house and push out 300 eggs a year. If they don't get the nutrition to do that they quickly start drawing on their own bodymass and perish rather quickly, basically lay themselves to death. So as usual: "it depends".

Romania has a temperate to continental climate with cold winters. Bugs only start building up in spring, fruit only falls of the trees in mid-late summer and while I'm sure with the right breed, a good paddock rotation and a low bird density a good bit of their feed need can be met I seriously doubt one can get away with not supplementing their diet, at least from September to May inclusive, with full out feeding in the winter months.


From my own experience I'd say you need at least 20m2 per bird to ensure they don't scratch it bare but that kind of area will not keep them fed and laying under the best of circumstances. I would ask: "What breed? Bantams or large fowl? Define spring. Define autumn. No feeding at all? Or do they get table scraps, access to dung heaps, compost heaps etc.? How well do they lay? How long do they live? Do they reproduce?" There are so many variables. Maybe it works with a few bantams, in your climate, from late spring to early autumn.
Take Ludi's advice and start small. Altsteirer are a good breed for this sort of set-up. They seem to be more self-reliant than most.

Well, the breed is the traditional one, no particular name, people just call them gray chooks. According to the neighbours, they forage well, and are more resistant to diseases, even if it takes longer to fatten them up and they only lay 100 eggs a year.
The spring would be march, the autumn will end in mid november. There's grass and bugs available from that time. Yes I will include dung heaps, piles of leaves and weeds aswell, and ofc table scraps, but that's a minute quantity as there's only me living in there at the moment.

But I'm just wondering, would you go for low density and a lot of time in the area, and visit it a more time in the year, or higher density, alot of time, visit it less, or higher density, little time and visit it more or what? How do you figure that out?
I'd happily keep it simple and split the orchard into some paddocks and just move them when i feel like but i'm trying to understand the logic behind this

[chook-in-eire]

would you go for low density and a lot of time in the area, and visit it a more time in the year, or higher density, alot of time, visit it less, or higher density, little time and visit it more or what? How do you figure that out?

Very hard to say as growing conditions and growing speed change through the seasons with the highest productivity probably in the 2 months around the summer solstice (longest days), while cold spring nights or late summer draughts will slow things down. You'll have to adjust rotation speed to that.
Should you, by any chance, have German, take a look at http://permakultur.net/?&mdoc_id=1000733#7 (Poultry in Permaculture / self-foraging systems). There is also a species list (Artenliste - Hühnerfutterpflanzen zur Selbstversorgung) with Latin plant names.

[eco4560]

I don't know if it works for chickens and I guess it also depends on whether you are wanting to get rid of the undergrowth in the orchard or encourage it - but if you look at Joel Salatin's methods or Voisin grazing they rotate animals very frequently - like daily and keep them in a tight space. That way the plants bounce back quickly and there are lush greens ready for the next time the animals are back on that bit of ground.

[gabe22]

Yea I'm getting a couple of Salatin's books in a week, hopefully gonna finish reading them till the eggs hatch

[pebble]

Ah. Not Córas Iompair Éireann so.


I can second what the others have been saying. They love fat.
Would they be ok? It certainly helps with their energy needs, especially in cold climates of course. But obviously it's no good for their protein needs, minerals, vits etc.
They certainly eat a huge range of things including meat and fish. In an 100 year old poultry book (Wrights Book of Poultry, 1910 edition) I read an account of a very large poultry breeder in England. They went through 2 horses a week for their chickens, bought from the knackers yard, butchered and boiled!!! That was primarily to meet the protein needs, with grains also fed and large grass ranges for greens.

Lol, no not that CIE.

I was meaning fat as an alternate source of calories than grains (needing other foods for a range of nutrients is a given). If people want to stop using commercial grains and it's impractical to grow their own, then fat seems a useful thing to explore as it's an easy way to get calories.

[pebble]

hmmmm, roadkill and pest control... finally something to do with all those dead possums ;-) (not sure the fat content of a possum though). Does meat need to be cooked (for protein)? Am wondering why people use maggot breeding systems instead of feeding the dead animal direct to the chook. Is it just a way of making the roadkill into bite sized pieces, or is there something about uncooked meat from larger animals that's not the best for chooks?

[eco4560]

An NZ possum would be nicely fat bro.... Meat doesn't need to be cooked. You should see chooks demolishing a rat that the cat didn't finish! I think you are right about the maggot farms. A whole possum would get pretty rotten before my chooks finished it off. By converting it to maggots the protein source would stay fresh.

[annette]

I found a dead rat in the chook house the other day. The chooks had obviously killed it and it had it's guts eaten out. The rest of the rat was intact. They obviously don't like skin and hair.

[Ludi]

There's a limit to how strong their beaks are, since they aren't raptors or big scavengers like Vultures, so they might have trouble eating large dead animals.