Two minutes into this video and I'm so inspired that I had to stop and share it with my chicken raising friend (who will soon be giving me my first three chickens) who said she barely breaks even for feeding the chickens in return for the eggs. Can't wait to finish the video now. Canadian Permaculture Legacy sent me here! Love it.
I've been using this method in my chicken run for the past three years....the chickens love it, I love it, and my garden loves it! Thank you for the tips.
I lived my first 16 years of my life in the mountains of grid in the middle of a bunch of trees and I remember how I hated when I was making piles of leafs and the chickens right behind me making a mess with them, now I just think it's funny
When we let our chickens out they literally RUN to the compost area. lol And to our creek bed that runs to our pond. We also use their pine shavings from under their night roosting area for compost. We have a separate container for onions, garlic, coffee grounds and egg shells on the countertop to bury in the compost. Everything else gets shared between the chickens and the compost. We're in Florida so I save the ends of the melons and freeze them in the summer. They LOVE it. And we treat them to black sunflower seeds in the afternoon. Another thing that has helped bulk up our compost is ask the tree trimmers that chip on site out here in the county to dump a couple of loads for us. They make quick work of digging through that for bugs, and then we put the leaves in their run and compost.
Go ahead! Pamper your chickens! They deserve a bit of pampering for everything they do for you. : ) I am putting some of the ideas I've gotten from you into practice in my garden. I have 13 Black Australorp chickens in my garden and get a great deal of pleasure watching them do their thing. They aren't laying yet but they should be laying in a couple months. They free range in my back yard ( and today they found a break in my gate and free ranged in my neighbors' yard!! ) Fortunately I have good neighbors who shoo'd them back into my garden. Thanks for making and sharing your videos. I'm learning a lot from you !
You're running a sweat shop. :) LOL One of the best ones though. Your employees are working for food. The best food they could get. They love worms or most insects, you might have to crush some beetles for them to eat them, but when crushed they even love Japanese beetles. Every larva is a delicacy for a chicken.
never do that. When I was a kid looking for worms to fish it was in the chicken area. One dig and I had plenty of worms to fish with. At the time I didn't know that worms make the end product for perfect compost.
You might laugh about me but I started a worm bucked with about 9 worms. As long as they don't crawl out they're maybe happy. I'll check with them when the first one wants to escape. It's an experiment. I think worms try to crawl out when they're getting o much for the food source. I have an open top container without a lid. But i'm watching it. If one tries to crawl out I'll set him free and might find out why he tries to escape.
@@hermannschmitt4031 I've had a red wiggler worm bin for years. I abuse them badly, go months at a time without checking them and they continue to thrive somehow. If you can pony up a few bucks, grab 100 or so red wigglers off ebay and you can maintain them with little work for life. I add handfuls to the compost and to my flower/vegetable beds that are mainly all compost... and let the chickens nibble on them too sometimes.
@@grants169 I don't have to buy them only catch 'em. Later i can say I did it all by myself, LOL. To me worms are the most amazing creatures of all beings. We (humankind) will be gone and these motherfuckers are still here.
I am so excited about this!! we are looking at as many ways possible to reduce/get ride of our feed costs and providing opportunities for our birds to eat in the most natural way possible. we started up a compost system this winter for them and this concept of adding the grain to sprout/ferment is the perfect addition! I'm inspired! Thank you!
Your chickens are so lucky to have you! Great work! Keep making videos! I just found your channel today and I am binge watching! I am loving every minute!
I love how you really let nature take over and do the work for you. I’ve had a similar thought process and you’re giving me so many good ideas. I’d love to see more videos of the “mini ecosystems” you create and what purpose they serve.
you probably dont give a shit but if you are bored like me during the covid times then you can watch all the latest movies and series on instaflixxer. Been streaming with my girlfriend for the last few days xD
Loved the video and I subscribed.I have started supplementing my"first" 5 hens with a compost pile.Happy,happy chickens and beautiful compost for my little garden. My 5yr old granddaughter loves to help them look for worms.Now I just need a larger compost pile!
I got to tell you I'm totally excited about doing this and because of first watching you a couple of months back we are now creating over a yard or so compost / month with the help of our chickens and free resources like tree chips and boxes of discarded veggie greens from the market. So thank you! and the grains look amazing...i think I would have a hard time giving them to the girls and not eating them myself. G
I love what your doing with your chickens. This is my first winter with a flock and I have them on a moving system with portable electric fence and mobile hen house. My system was working well while the grasses were growing, but now that growth has slowed, I'm afraid my chickens are doing more damage than healing to my landscape. They are raking all my fallen leaves downhill and leaving behind bare soils. I think I will plan something similar to this for next winter.
e are beginning to create a permaculture inspired semi-sustainable homestead in rural Maine. We have been so inspired by this idea and so many others. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and ideas. -Brian @WaystoneFarm
Hello out there. This is so very helpful. Starting immediately because it looks like you have happy chickens and it is exciting to learn how to use what we have. Thank you. I'll be back and certainly will be watching more of your videos. Also, love the green house. Perfect.
It can be seen as pampering, but in the same stroke it could be seen as simply providing a healthy work space for valued workers. Since it is a simplified food and much lower cost and waste than buying bags of prepared stuff, it's actually less pamper in that way. But they end up having a really nice life while they work hard and help us make compost. Win win for sure :)
Awesome. Definitely a great system for larger scale organic gardening. It's one thing to add leaf mulch to your beds, but this way it should be high in nitrogen/nutrients from the chicken manure while they're scratching in it all day.
It's nice to have the chickens 'shredding' the leaves over the whole winter so the nutrients and especially the minerals are ready to enter the soil in the garden come spring when we need it.
I have done very little but watch your videos for the last few days. Boy am I excited! The information you share is priceless, as is the culture you've created. I do hope you written a book and will provide the name so I can order a copy, and I also hope you'll continue to make videos on a regular basis. I've got to finish catching up on the videos, but I'll be back. Thank you for doing your thing! I love it!
Right... It's one thing to spend a ton of money on them and have energy intensive or fossil fuel dependent things to 'pamper' them but in this system they are working incredibly hard and moving our bigger goals forward greatly. It's equivalent to having a really healthy work environment where employees are treated with great respect. Its the intersection of functionality and a good quality of life for the beings involved. I think its what every system with animals and plants and people should have!
We offer oyster shells and grit as a free choice sometimes, and also give them back all their egg shells to rebuild, and it seems like it works. Water freezing... th-cam.com/video/l9dSdtJCGzM/w-d-xo.html I explain what we do in our scenario here.
I love your idea of putting grain to sprout in the compost piles! It must be like little treats for them, (along with the worms and bugs too). Keep on spoiling those chickens!
How much do you manually work the compost yourself? I've found that having only the chickens do the turning results in a lot of material not breaking down or going anaerobic, but a bit of turning with the fork seems to recharge it. I wish I could reduce my labor input a bit more. Any tips? The grain could help...
maybe you can help me out.... everytime i build a pile of leaves, hay and all for my chickens to "work" and turn into compost, they level it and knock it flat within a day... so, i don't have a compost pile at all, i just pile stuff up, they kick through it and knock it down. any advise? thanks!
Thats exactly what happens... I have to build up or pile the pile every day. I work on different areas depending on where I want them to work. I make a tall pointy pile and its flat by the end of the day, but thats how they work the compost!
Pretty awesome, those are some fat birds! I like how you've scattered seed around the ground that will sprout into mixed cover crop/pasture in the spring while providing surplus feed for the chickens. How warm does that pile get? Do the chickens in manure alone provide enough nitrogen for the composting? I hope you can expand more on how your finished product becomes seed-free compost as surely the chickens will miss some.
Good questions. I haven't temp probed the pile lately but it hasn't frozen at all and we had 2 months of below freezing weather until recently. I don't actually want it to get incredibly hot since that cooks the compost and seeds so they don't sprout. The chickens get just about everything out of it, given enough time and enough turning so they can scour through it all. I also have an area that I add seed to and an area that is finishing down that no viable seed is added to. If I keep it carefully managed it is pretty darn clean as it leaves (nothing is perfect, surely a few sneak by :)
EdibleAcres very cool and thanks for the info. Really nice way to close the loop on waste leaves and Sure looks easier than turning the pile by hand. It appears bit untidy but who cares really. Your analysis on water flow and reuse of the excess nutrient and leachate is really well thought out too. I dig this system and hope to try it out myself in future. Please keep on sharing, Cheers!!
My concern in collecting bags for leaves from random neighbors is I am unsure of what they may have used on their lawn in terms of herbicides/chemicals. Are you concerned with this or how to do avoid this problem?
Yes, worth thinking about... I look at the lawns of where I collect from. If they are weed free and 'immaculate' and OCD kept, I avoid it! I also look into the bags and mainly try to take only bags filled with leaves from trees... Seems VERY unlikely they are sprayed... So far, so good I think!
How do you deal with rats going after the grain? In my town, there's been a big rat problem attributed to home chickens and the grain people scatter about. I don't have any experience with chickens. I do have big compost piles, but don't have rat problems like the folks with chickens. Thanks.
Maybe it takes 2 factors to create the problem, where each one by itself isn't -- like the grain and pizza crusts (joke). There are so many folks getting rid of their home chickens because of the rat problem, and that seems like a shame. Enjoy all your chickens -- and the great work they are doing for you!
We don't have chickens yet, but I know we wouldn't have a rat problem, because we have eight kitties. They've cleaned us out of chipmunks, which I hate, because I love chippies a lot.
Greetings from Clay New York. I have 9 hens and let them play with the leaves in the fall. Other than that I have a big compost pile in the back yard and use it in my garden.
nice yeah that compost helps keep them warm-ish to actually warm. I seen and been working using compost to heat my passive greenhouse just put up before this winter
Great setup. I am hoping to do something similar. Do you have any problems with the snow getting too high or does the heat from the compost keep the snow from accumulating?
Fascinating! You have a true organic ecosystem here. Very impressive. Do you have a video about how you built the cattle panel greenhouse? I looked and didn’t see one. Keep up the good work
Glad you appreciate these videos... Here is a playlist on greenhouses and high tunnels, the videos you want are in the list... th-cam.com/play/PLihFHKqj6JeqFfSnu90neOyq9eS7oSYLS.html
Lovely. Really exciting to see a method that is purposefully going into the direction of zeroing out bagged feed cost. Ithaca is a unique place where bartering is normal. The rest of the country seems locked into treasury IOUs. Best wishes!
Good luck, I'm sure it will work wonders for you! If you have the time, you may want to watch all our chicken videos since the system is evolving over time and there are lots of positive and not so amazing parts of the experiment I share with folks.
Wow. This is genius! I've thought about doing something similar, but focusing more on growth of a worm colony as sustenance for the chickens. There seems to be a lot of potential synergy there! Eggshells are highly beneficial in vermicomposting, too. What ratio of worms/seeds & sprouts would you recommend? Is an abundance of worms for the chickens a viable alternative?
I haven't worked with worms enough to be able to offer good insight, but I would think a rich supply of living worms for chickens would be some top notch feed for them! Our chickens love finding worms in the warm compost, and sprouting seeds tends to create a lot of worm activity too, so sounds like you've got the right ingredients to make it happen! I bet with experimenting and observation you'll figure out a perfect ratio...
Two minutes into this video and I'm so inspired that I had to stop and share it with my chicken raising friend (who will soon be giving me my first three chickens) who said she barely breaks even for feeding the chickens in return for the eggs. Can't wait to finish the video now. Canadian Permaculture Legacy sent me here! Love it.
Those must be the most happy chickens in the world! They look so tranquil and peaceful! Keep it up!
and really healthy. Almost fat, LOL.
There's nothing wrong with pampering your animals. The better you treat them the more work they will want to do for you. It goes both ways.
I agree!
Excited? I'm beyond excited! You've just revolutionized my chicken set up. I can't wait till next fall now.
You can get started on it any day you want... Thats the fun of it!
I've been using this method in my chicken run for the past three years....the chickens love it, I love it, and my garden loves it! Thank you for the tips.
I lived my first 16 years of my life in the mountains of grid in the middle of a bunch of trees and I remember how I hated when I was making piles of leafs and the chickens right behind me making a mess with them, now I just think it's funny
When we let our chickens out they literally RUN to the compost area. lol And to our creek bed that runs to our pond. We also use their pine shavings from under their night roosting area for compost. We have a separate container for onions, garlic, coffee grounds and egg shells on the countertop to bury in the compost. Everything else gets shared between the chickens and the compost. We're in Florida so I save the ends of the melons and freeze them in the summer. They LOVE it. And we treat them to black sunflower seeds in the afternoon. Another thing that has helped bulk up our compost is ask the tree trimmers that chip on site out here in the county to dump a couple of loads for us. They make quick work of digging through that for bugs, and then we put the leaves in their run and compost.
I have lived in Florida, my concern would be termites from the wood chipping.
Go ahead! Pamper your chickens! They deserve a bit of pampering for everything they do for you. : ) I am putting some of the ideas I've gotten from you into practice in my garden. I have 13 Black Australorp chickens in my garden and get a great deal of pleasure watching them do their thing. They aren't laying yet but they should be laying in a couple months. They free range in my back yard ( and today they found a break in my gate and free ranged in my neighbors' yard!! ) Fortunately I have good neighbors who shoo'd them back into my garden. Thanks for making and sharing your videos. I'm learning a lot from you !
I add chickens to my garden three years ago. They are my low wage workers.
Really you are doing very good work
You're running a sweat shop. :) LOL One of the best ones though. Your employees are working for food. The best food they could get. They love worms or most insects, you might have to crush some beetles for them to eat them, but when crushed they even love Japanese beetles.
Every larva is a delicacy for a chicken.
Hermann Schmitt solar powered bug zappers can add dead bugs to their diet as well
Oh you are so polite to your chickens!
I keep rewatching your chicken videos. It just makes me happy :) Thank you.
Very glad to have them available for folks!
All this time I've been fencing off the compost from chickens. Time to rethink that.
never do that. When I was a kid looking for worms to fish it was in the chicken area. One dig and I had plenty of worms to fish with. At the time I didn't know that worms make the end product for perfect compost.
You might laugh about me but I started a worm bucked with about 9 worms. As long as they don't crawl out they're maybe happy. I'll check with them when the first one wants to escape. It's an experiment. I think worms try to crawl out when they're getting o much for the food source. I have an open top container without a lid. But i'm watching it. If one tries to crawl out I'll set him free and might find out why he tries to escape.
@@hermannschmitt4031 I've had a red wiggler worm bin for years. I abuse them badly, go months at a time without checking them and they continue to thrive somehow. If you can pony up a few bucks, grab 100 or so red wigglers off ebay and you can maintain them with little work for life. I add handfuls to the compost and to my flower/vegetable beds that are mainly all compost... and let the chickens nibble on them too sometimes.
@@grants169 I don't have to buy them only catch 'em. Later i can say I did it all by myself, LOL.
To me worms are the most amazing creatures of all beings. We (humankind) will be gone and these motherfuckers are still here.
They are so Healthy. I sprout grains and seeds for my chickens. This is awesome.
I am so excited about this!! we are looking at as many ways possible to reduce/get ride of our feed costs and providing opportunities for our birds to eat in the most natural way possible. we started up a compost system this winter for them and this concept of adding the grain to sprout/ferment is the perfect addition! I'm inspired! Thank you!
great stuff, cant wait to have this many birds. its fun to watch my 3 chickens turn my compost throughout the year, nature is great
Permaculture Homestead nice, I have three also.
this is genius! I saw a post on Vermont's system, and really love it. I love seeing this on a smaller scale
Yeah, it was mind blowing the first time I learned of that system and it really inspired this work in a major way.
Your chickens are so lucky to have you! Great work! Keep making videos! I just found your channel today and I am binge watching! I am loving every minute!
Welcome to our community, we're glad to have you!
very nice. thank you for this. 5 years after posting it. Bless you.
I love how you really let nature take over and do the work for you. I’ve had a similar thought process and you’re giving me so many good ideas. I’d love to see more videos of the “mini ecosystems” you create and what purpose they serve.
Very inspiring, thank you for taking the time to make this.
Johnnie Lawson
My pleasure!
you probably dont give a shit but if you are bored like me during the covid times then you can watch all the latest movies and series on instaflixxer. Been streaming with my girlfriend for the last few days xD
Loved the video and I subscribed.I have started supplementing my"first" 5 hens with a compost pile.Happy,happy chickens and beautiful compost for my little garden. My 5yr old granddaughter loves to help them look for worms.Now I just need a larger compost pile!
Very calm to watch these chickens
This has been very helpful in cutting cost and making my chickens happier. Thank you
Great to hear!
This is absolutely brilliant! Thanks for posting!
This is amazing! I love how you care for your chickens!
I got to tell you I'm totally excited about doing this and because of first watching you a couple of months back we are now creating over a yard or so compost / month with the help of our chickens and free resources like tree chips and boxes of discarded veggie greens from the market. So thank you! and the grains look amazing...i think I would have a hard time giving them to the girls and not eating them myself. G
Genius. I learnt so much from you. Thank you and keep exploring!!!
That's a happy bunch of chick chicks. Such a contrast to factory farms.
I love what your doing with your chickens. This is my first winter with a flock and I have them on a moving system with portable electric fence and mobile hen house. My system was working well while the grasses were growing, but now that growth has slowed, I'm afraid my chickens are doing more damage than healing to my landscape. They are raking all my fallen leaves downhill and leaving behind bare soils. I think I will plan something similar to this for next winter.
Great work! Very natural, love the way your chickens are so comfortable in your presence. They look so healthy.
e are beginning to create a permaculture inspired semi-sustainable homestead in rural Maine. We have been so inspired by this idea and so many others. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and ideas.
-Brian @WaystoneFarm
Most healthy and happy chickens ever!
Hello out there. This is so very helpful. Starting immediately because it looks like you have happy chickens and it is exciting to learn how to use what we have. Thank you. I'll be back and certainly will be watching more of your videos. Also, love the green house. Perfect.
I just found your videos and I am addicted! I just LOVE watching what you do! This chicken video is fascinating!
I really enjoy that you are pampering your animals...they have a good life and its a win win situation for you as well...
It can be seen as pampering, but in the same stroke it could be seen as simply providing a healthy work space for valued workers. Since it is a simplified food and much lower cost and waste than buying bags of prepared stuff, it's actually less pamper in that way. But they end up having a really nice life while they work hard and help us make compost. Win win for sure :)
thank you sir! you the best. We need mooohr people like You
Do you wait a certain amount of time before using this compost in a garden as it will have fresh chicken manure on it?
You have beautiful healthy chickens!
these chickens seem very happy
LOVE this! Very unique! Thanks for sharing and all the great info!
Oh cool you guys are in the Ithica area. We live in the Northern Catskills and have 30 chickens and 4 ducks. Love the idea of using the leaves.
Awesome. Definitely a great system for larger scale organic gardening. It's one thing to add leaf mulch to your beds, but this way it should be high in nitrogen/nutrients from the chicken manure while they're scratching in it all day.
It's nice to have the chickens 'shredding' the leaves over the whole winter so the nutrients and especially the minerals are ready to enter the soil in the garden come spring when we need it.
I love this video. You achieve such amazing symmetry in your practices. If chickens could smile, they would be doing it right now.
great content! happy to see you upload often now, you have so much good things to show us! thank you.
Thanks, I wasn't sure if we're starting to push too much content out, but I figured people can watch it or not!
I have done very little but watch your videos for the last few days. Boy am I excited! The information you share is priceless, as is the culture you've created. I do hope you written a book and will provide the name so I can order a copy, and I also hope you'll continue to make videos on a regular basis. I've got to finish catching up on the videos, but I'll be back. Thank you for doing your thing! I love it!
Our pleasure. No books in the plan, but we plan to definitely continue to grow the content on the channel. Thanks for joining us!
I'm very impressed with how you think. Thanks for sharing.
My pleasure to share
Gorgeous birds! Great job keeping them happy and warm while you save money and enjoy super nutritious eggs! 🥚
If anyone tells you disapprovingly that you're "pampering your chickens," please tell them, with pride, "YES! Yes I am!" 😁
"The problem is...??"
Right... It's one thing to spend a ton of money on them and have energy intensive or fossil fuel dependent things to 'pamper' them but in this system they are working incredibly hard and moving our bigger goals forward greatly. It's equivalent to having a really healthy work environment where employees are treated with great respect. Its the intersection of functionality and a good quality of life for the beings involved. I think its what every system with animals and plants and people should have!
Great system. I want to try something like this on my farm one day soon.
EXCELLENT video!! Thanks for sharing.
Wow what a beautiful rooster!!
Do you feed anything for calcium? What about their water freezing?
We offer oyster shells and grit as a free choice sometimes, and also give them back all their egg shells to rebuild, and it seems like it works. Water freezing... th-cam.com/video/l9dSdtJCGzM/w-d-xo.html I explain what we do in our scenario here.
I love your chicken. They look so healthy and well treated.
I'm glad you think so.
Great video. Thank you.
I love your idea of putting grain to sprout in the compost piles! It must be like little treats for them, (along with the worms and bugs too). Keep on spoiling those chickens!
Great video as always, perfect length and quantity of information. I'm surely going to emulate this!
That is ingenious, and inspiring. Now I want chickens again.
How much do you manually work the compost yourself? I've found that having only the chickens do the turning results in a lot of material not breaking down or going anaerobic, but a bit of turning with the fork seems to recharge it. I wish I could reduce my labor input a bit more. Any tips? The grain could help...
One of my favourite videos on you tube right now. Harmonious.
Thanks kindly for that! I'm excited to see how many folks have been responding to it. I need to do an update.
Would you ever consider doing a video where you really go deep into how and what you barter. Your thoughts and techniques.
Pretty genius and an easy system to understand!
Beautiful Australorps. My favorite Chickens and Of Course Jersey Giants
maybe you can help me out.... everytime i build a pile of leaves, hay and all for my chickens to "work" and turn into compost, they level it and knock it flat within a day... so, i don't have a compost pile at all, i just pile stuff up, they kick through it and knock it down. any advise? thanks!
Thats exactly what happens... I have to build up or pile the pile every day. I work on different areas depending on where I want them to work. I make a tall pointy pile and its flat by the end of the day, but thats how they work the compost!
Pretty awesome, those are some fat birds! I like how you've scattered seed around the ground that will sprout into mixed cover crop/pasture in the spring while providing surplus feed for the chickens.
How warm does that pile get? Do the chickens in manure alone provide enough nitrogen for the composting?
I hope you can expand more on how your finished product becomes seed-free compost as surely the chickens will miss some.
Good questions. I haven't temp probed the pile lately but it hasn't frozen at all and we had 2 months of below freezing weather until recently. I don't actually want it to get incredibly hot since that cooks the compost and seeds so they don't sprout.
The chickens get just about everything out of it, given enough time and enough turning so they can scour through it all. I also have an area that I add seed to and an area that is finishing down that no viable seed is added to. If I keep it carefully managed it is pretty darn clean as it leaves (nothing is perfect, surely a few sneak by :)
EdibleAcres very cool and thanks for the info. Really nice way to close the loop on waste leaves and Sure looks easier than turning the pile by hand. It appears bit untidy but who cares really.
Your analysis on water flow and reuse of the excess nutrient and leachate is really well thought out too. I dig this system and hope to try it out myself in future.
Please keep on sharing, Cheers!!
@Joseph Satri Cleofe Villanueva I don't know about being more nutritious, but they are more digestible.
So chill they must be full already
So many awesome ideas.
Thanks for sharing.
My concern in collecting bags for leaves from random neighbors is I am unsure of what they may have used on their lawn in terms of herbicides/chemicals. Are you concerned with this or how to do avoid this problem?
Yes, worth thinking about... I look at the lawns of where I collect from. If they are weed free and 'immaculate' and OCD kept, I avoid it! I also look into the bags and mainly try to take only bags filled with leaves from trees... Seems VERY unlikely they are sprayed... So far, so good I think!
What a great setup, +1 sub I can't wait too catch up on old videos.
Your doing a great job , thanks for sharing.
This is a great system. Very adaptable.
They look great too...awesome job👍
Those birds look super healthy!
I believe they are
Beautiful Australorp's! You good Sir are brilliant. Thank you for sharing your wisdom.
How do you deal with rats going after the grain? In my town, there's been a big rat problem attributed to home chickens and the grain people scatter about. I don't have any experience with chickens. I do have big compost piles, but don't have rat problems like the folks with chickens. Thanks.
We have no rodent problems. I can't tell you why since its not that we HAD problems and now we don't, we just simply never did...
Maybe it takes 2 factors to create the problem, where each one by itself isn't -- like the grain and pizza crusts (joke). There are so many folks getting rid of their home chickens because of the rat problem, and that seems like a shame. Enjoy all your chickens -- and the great work they are doing for you!
I never had rats until I had a ton of rats.
I bet he has rats. You will eventually have rats throwing grain out like that.
We don't have chickens yet, but I know we wouldn't have a rat problem, because we have eight kitties. They've cleaned us out of chipmunks, which I hate, because I love chippies a lot.
this is amazing! in a tiny urban setup would you put leaves into the run attached to the henhouse or would you want it separate?
Greetings from Clay New York. I have 9 hens and let them play with the leaves in the fall. Other than that I have a big compost pile in the back yard and use it in my garden.
nice yeah that compost helps keep them warm-ish to actually warm. I seen and been working using compost to heat my passive greenhouse just put up before this winter
Wow! This is an amazing set up.
Wow! Very informative. Thank You!
That is fantastically clever! Good on you!
Fantastic, I love ❤️ your ideas. Thank you 🙏 for great information
this is awesome. Thank you for making this
Interesting! How do you prevent the critters, rats and voles from feasting on the grains in the compost pile?
Curious regarding rats/mice as well.
Great setup. I am hoping to do something similar. Do you have any problems with the snow getting too high or does the heat from the compost keep the snow from accumulating?
Sometimes a deep snow helps insulate the piles and actually keeps them warmer than if it was open and having no snow.
Thank you. Great ideas!. Western NY is such a lovely place to live.
Fascinating! You have a true organic ecosystem here. Very impressive. Do you have a video about how you built the cattle panel greenhouse? I looked and didn’t see one. Keep up the good work
Glad you appreciate these videos...
Here is a playlist on greenhouses and high tunnels, the videos you want are in the list...
th-cam.com/play/PLihFHKqj6JeqFfSnu90neOyq9eS7oSYLS.html
Lovely. Really exciting to see a method that is purposefully going into the direction of zeroing out bagged feed cost. Ithaca is a unique place where bartering is normal. The rest of the country seems locked into treasury IOUs. Best wishes!
I bet barter and exchange is possible way more than you might think.... I'd explore it and see whats possible where you live.
Those are nice healthy chickens they look content.
Great video! Thank you for sharing this info!
They look like they are wondering why you are messing up their heater. Lol
Great video...love the way you use hand gestures to drive home the point...very interesting and educative.....thanks a lot.
Wow. Outstanding system. Thanks for sharing. God Bless
Logs are a great idea!
Wow....this is great ,i cannot wait to do it.
This is so great. I needed this!
Brilliant. Watching your series on the chicken composers...we want to implement, this year. Thank you.
Good luck, I'm sure it will work wonders for you! If you have the time, you may want to watch all our chicken videos since the system is evolving over time and there are lots of positive and not so amazing parts of the experiment I share with folks.
Great ideas you have there.
Wow.
This is genius!
I've thought about doing something similar, but focusing more on growth of a worm colony as sustenance for the chickens.
There seems to be a lot of potential synergy there!
Eggshells are highly beneficial in vermicomposting, too.
What ratio of worms/seeds & sprouts would you recommend?
Is an abundance of worms for the chickens a viable alternative?
I haven't worked with worms enough to be able to offer good insight, but I would think a rich supply of living worms for chickens would be some top notch feed for them! Our chickens love finding worms in the warm compost, and sprouting seeds tends to create a lot of worm activity too, so sounds like you've got the right ingredients to make it happen! I bet with experimenting and observation you'll figure out a perfect ratio...
Boy I hope so!
Excellent Job!
"It is what it is" ahaha dont worry , you have some really healthy chickens!!!