A lot of good ideas but I'd make a third of that zone and just run deep littler system. You can also use it as a storage space for mulch. Ya do the green stuff. But deep little system can double as a worm farm if you do it deep enough. And it overwinters in a way the vegitation doesn't. Setup a lasagna bed deep litter system. Bottom layer biochar and woodchips. Big crusty lumps of biochar not the ground stuff. Big barky woodchips. Then you do your more fines on top of that. Your looking at woodchips and crunched up bio char. If you have hay or straw through that on. from there you just keep adding more littler can be leaves, straw more fine woodchip doesn't matter. (it's your chicken sacrifice zone) If you want to you can even add the little from chicken nest if you want to. Doesn't matter stir up the top layers of the bed. Then add fresh better over the use stuff. Get red worms place then under a mound of rocks. That's your worm hide zone. You can harvest compost / wormcasting from this big sacrifice zone or you can chooose to leave it for a long awhile and stir it from time to time adding more to cover it. The chicken can collect worms when you stir it just remember to not fiddle with the rock pile to the side. And also put food scraps under the rockpile from time to time. (not all the time/ and grind/blend the food scraps)
Awesome info, thanks for turning me on to that deep litter system. That definitely sounds like a good way to do it. It reminds me of how the folks at Edible Acres are doing things. Like a chicken vermicomposting system that converts food waste and mulch into chickens / eggs / worms / compost. We definitely want to move in that direction and have a similar setup eventually.
@@AgroecologicalSystems ya I was a beer in when I wrote that up at 2am. But there's a guy who does ducks and a guy who does chickens. I forgot his name just looked it up EdibleAcres. And he's basically doing an inplace compost and worm farm. I ended up copying him 5 years ago. And built on it a bit for bigger spaces. Letting certain farm livestock rotate in. Horses during mid summer and the grass slows down. deep litter witht he biochar bottom layer is the only reason it can with stand that. Without it looking bad or smelling. then ducks get it later in the year. When we need an inground place for water during the end of the season. Then chickens stir it up in spring. before the grasses start. But it's always good to design a deep litter area of the farm. Because just about anything can use it if it's stired and setup correctly. the bottom layer with woodchips and biochar controls the smell.
@ haha nice 🍺. Ya Sean and the Edible Acres crew have a great system, they get all kinds of bagged leaves and coffee grounds and food scraps and just churn out wormy soil and healthy chickens haha. Your system sounds really cool too, with different species. Even horses! In this video you can see our horses and their main pasture at the barn which is all torn up and muddy.. we’re trying to rehab that as well. I think they just need to spend more time in different pastures so that one can recover..
They sometimes do, usually when they want to go to a fresh area. When we used to have only a few chickens we would clip their flight feathers on one wing and that definitely works.
The portable electric fencing is pretty durable, we do get some tearing over time but we can repair that to a certain degree. They’re not terribly expensive to replace but we try to take care of them so they last many years.
@@marcopolo9324 not sure which fence you’re talking about. The fence around the chicken yard is not electric, just your average welded wire fence. Very durable and cheap. The white portable fencing is electric.
This is at the campus of a summer camp and boarding school in the Adirondack Mountains, New York. The farm is one of the central parts of the program, giving kids the opportunity to connect with the land and participate in growing their own food, caring for animals, etc. It is called Camp Treetops & North Country School.
Yea, main difference is they don’t scratch up the soil nearly as much. We’ve raised ducks within forest gardens and they seem to do really well in that setting.
This is the best video for natural grazing for Chickens I have seen so far. Great job I plan to follow your site.
Thanks that’s good to hear!
Chickens are so cool! What an awesome way that all these different elements work together.
I agree, such great little creatures.
Really good video
Thanks I really appreciate that. I love those little zoomy chicken timelapses.
❤❤ beautiful 😊
Thanks :)
Lovely area! Could also dedicate a compost area within for them to scratch around in?
Yea I want to, hopefully this year we can add something like that.
A lot of good ideas but I'd make a third of that zone and just run deep littler system. You can also use it as a storage space for mulch. Ya do the green stuff. But deep little system can double as a worm farm if you do it deep enough. And it overwinters in a way the vegitation doesn't. Setup a lasagna bed deep litter system. Bottom layer biochar and woodchips. Big crusty lumps of biochar not the ground stuff. Big barky woodchips. Then you do your more fines on top of that. Your looking at woodchips and crunched up bio char. If you have hay or straw through that on. from there you just keep adding more littler can be leaves, straw more fine woodchip doesn't matter. (it's your chicken sacrifice zone) If you want to you can even add the little from chicken nest if you want to. Doesn't matter stir up the top layers of the bed. Then add fresh better over the use stuff. Get red worms place then under a mound of rocks. That's your worm hide zone. You can harvest compost / wormcasting from this big sacrifice zone or you can chooose to leave it for a long awhile and stir it from time to time adding more to cover it. The chicken can collect worms when you stir it just remember to not fiddle with the rock pile to the side. And also put food scraps under the rockpile from time to time. (not all the time/ and grind/blend the food scraps)
Awesome info, thanks for turning me on to that deep litter system. That definitely sounds like a good way to do it. It reminds me of how the folks at Edible Acres are doing things. Like a chicken vermicomposting system that converts food waste and mulch into chickens / eggs / worms / compost. We definitely want to move in that direction and have a similar setup eventually.
@@AgroecologicalSystems ya I was a beer in when I wrote that up at 2am. But there's a guy who does ducks and a guy who does chickens. I forgot his name just looked it up EdibleAcres. And he's basically doing an inplace compost and worm farm. I ended up copying him 5 years ago. And built on it a bit for bigger spaces. Letting certain farm livestock rotate in. Horses during mid summer and the grass slows down. deep litter witht he biochar bottom layer is the only reason it can with stand that. Without it looking bad or smelling. then ducks get it later in the year. When we need an inground place for water during the end of the season. Then chickens stir it up in spring. before the grasses start. But it's always good to design a deep litter area of the farm. Because just about anything can use it if it's stired and setup correctly. the bottom layer with woodchips and biochar controls the smell.
@ haha nice 🍺. Ya Sean and the Edible Acres crew have a great system, they get all kinds of bagged leaves and coffee grounds and food scraps and just churn out wormy soil and healthy chickens haha. Your system sounds really cool too, with different species. Even horses! In this video you can see our horses and their main pasture at the barn which is all torn up and muddy.. we’re trying to rehab that as well. I think they just need to spend more time in different pastures so that one can recover..
How do you keep your chickens from flying over the netting? I've got 6 feet of mesh (not electric) and most of them can fly over that and do.
They sometimes do, usually when they want to go to a fresh area. When we used to have only a few chickens we would clip their flight feathers on one wing and that definitely works.
Is the fence strong enough not to tear/degraded? And is it cheap?
The portable electric fencing is pretty durable, we do get some tearing over time but we can repair that to a certain degree. They’re not terribly expensive to replace but we try to take care of them so they last many years.
@AgroecologicalSystems didn't expect it to be electric 🤣
@@marcopolo9324 not sure which fence you’re talking about. The fence around the chicken yard is not electric, just your average welded wire fence. Very durable and cheap. The white portable fencing is electric.
where is this place？
This is at the campus of a summer camp and boarding school in the Adirondack Mountains, New York. The farm is one of the central parts of the program, giving kids the opportunity to connect with the land and participate in growing their own food, caring for animals, etc. It is called Camp Treetops & North Country School.
What about ducks? Similar thing ?
Yea, main difference is they don’t scratch up the soil nearly as much. We’ve raised ducks within forest gardens and they seem to do really well in that setting.