PERMACULTURE CHICKEN-COMPOSTING System — Ep 014

[Music] and they look at the blackberries the chickens love those my goodness you can throw some down and they'll go crazy for them i might just do you could also eat them too yeah here you go look at oh i got the black lives oh my goodness never tried it that way yum yum they normally someone will just grab it and then run really yeah they can go look at this come on oh she's got an underbite we we got a bunch of hens from from like a production laying situation that were a year old and they had maxed out of that production and they had all had their beaks like cauterized it's so sad wait yeah i'm sorry i yeah you're pretty what what is this one it's the dark colored one i couldn't tell you no we i don't know probably i guess could or should know all the different varieties we have but we don't we just a lot of times we get hens from less than optimal situations or from scenarios where folks you know now they're three years old they don't want them anymore and so we trade or we buy old ones yeah so it's in a lot of ways this whole operation is like a retirement community yeah in a way i'm i'm all for that i think that's exactly when i get my hen poops i'm gonna be like taking all the old ends yeah because we still it's it's still a lay egg yeah it's like 65-ish hens yeah and we get around three dozen eggs a day two and a half dozen somewhere in there 60 hens wow so that's fine we don't sell eggs yeah well i guess we sell a little bit but mainly we just make sure lots of friends and family have all their egg needs met i love when you throw the blackberries that's amazing so that's their favorite so is this some of the stuff that you've just cut back and you're giving the hens now or yeah it's just some perennial kale testing out what whether sea kale some of our nursery stuff as the leaves get older like good king henry look at them gobble those blackberries it's amazing [Music] it's fun that they eat right out of the hand we normally just throw stuff oh yeah i think i'm just so used to like living with a chicken that uh she she got to the point that she was she almost required to be hand-fed they get really spoiled very quickly yours are not that way so much no it's a better it's better to be this way well it's all just different ways of relating yeah i think we kind of ride the line a little between chickens for production and for homestead needs and trying to have pets that we care about a lot we kind of it lives on both sides of that somehow i think would you say that or do you name them or you haven't gotten there yet one of them special best friend but i haven't for the most part maybe it's that one right there yeah and you don't have a favorite we do eat them yeah so we love them and we eat them yeah we need to sort of occupy a middle space yeah yeah naming is that is that the line has to be drawn we've eaten some that we've named yeah oh really big red okay kind sir frankie five toes they were all stew oh no but it i think having love and really caring for them doesn't preclude eating them someday i think in some ways it makes the relate it it makes that reality more real and more honest somehow rather than like i don't want to know you too much when i had picked up kippy who was you know a stray essentially somebody got her during easter and probably tossed her out so it was like kind of like a goof gift you know that type of thing so i ended up taking her with the idea of fostering her and then when she got old enough to lay eggs we saved three of them and because i had a friend over and we prepared the the her first three eggs and i was like this feels a little weird but then our friend said no it's weird not knowing where your food comes from it's like so true you know yeah yeah we i think for the most part you see the more you want to like be up close yeah more of your own say in what's happening absolutely something can say one thing and if you go see the reality you don't want to have any part of that what it is they're very different very large space yeah so tell me a little bit more about your your chicken operation because i know you try to be as sufficient as possible and it looks like they are eating a lot of what you produce here so tell me a little bit about that well they we we supplement with what we produce here we're stri we're trying over time like this year we're growing a field of sunflower and millet that we hope to be able to harvest yeah we're hoping to move over time more and more to grain that we grow for them but we we buy in sunflower and millet seed we trade with the local mill for whole seed that we soak every day and give them soaked grapes so it's like a little bit more like ferment yeah it's fermented fermented kind of goes further that way yeah better for them well in my mind most importantly that whole seed it it sprouts yeah and so then part of the whole picture is this composting scene which is raw food scraps that come in from all sorts of various sources oh i see some of this sprouting right here yeah so that's compost that's about that would be about 15 days old from food scraps and you still have the the menard in your hand that's good um it's so soft it's like a kitty it's so they're so sweet this this monarda is so soft but so yeah we use sawdust that same sawdust from the walkways we use to bulk out our compost and absorb the excess nutrient from the food scraps that are coming in and then as so each day when sasha soaks the seed and pours it out it goes on the compost the heat tell me about it it sprouts and then we basically like go from the raw food scrap mix it with carbon and tumble it down through you know each day we try to pile up the material and so this is like maybe 10 to 12 days in it looks like this yeah oh it looks so great though like look it's just so darkened and then it moves down we have a whole other little pipeline and then we sift it and it can go from basically raw food scraps to a compost that's it's good enough as a mulch in the garden in about 30 days so it's not finished it's not aged yeah it's not perfectly balanced there's all sorts of funky little issues here there but so they basically are the the shredders and the turner we pile it they turn it kind of thing they're so good at kicking and pecking they undo any eating shoes they'll like take a mountain apart if they could have access to it i love how curious they are they're like i think you have food in your hand i'm like i don't have food in my hand so we have a lot of hens for a small space yeah but there's almost no there's almost no strife or they peck on each other a little bit there's hierarchy a little bit but by and large they're really gentle to each other and i think it's because there's so much going on and so there's always some new area to kick and explore or there's new food coming in and so it it helps us greek get this amazing product but i think it also gives them a quality of life that we feel really good about i think they go to bed each night like it was a full day yeah yeah well it's good i mean they have so many little nooks and crannies that they could go in and they do get bored after a while i mean in the winter months oftentimes they tell you you get bored in like 10 minutes yeah they like the new everything yeah they're like i mean like as you turn something over they're like what do you got there yeah they're very curious you turn another spot and they this spot's boring what i found from just having hens for a good portion of my life is that it's not even just hierarchies they have alliances you know what i mean where they come together and because we have some like the top pen and you know the top hand is nice to the bottom hand but the third hand likes the top end but doesn't like this hand and you know it's like it's like mean girls yeah we find the the the crews that came in together a lot of times they're in orbit with one another right i think when there's enough there's enough ends and there are enough spaces in here that's kind of hard to track the details yeah we just get a rough head count periodically and cross our fingers that everything's going well but it seems we it feels like from a zoomed out place we can sense whether or not we're doing things right by how much if we hear like angry or frustrated sounds from them or if we see more pecking then we know we need more raw food scraps we need more things happening a lot of time that correlates with us taking a break from turning as much yeah they start to get a little antsy and a little negative to each other and it all goes away the moment we start adding in that that newness and that raw material so with the seed that you are fermenting is this something one of the things that you barter some of them a lot of them or do you purchase them the wheat is so it's a local mill yeah that we do a trade with them to get basically as they mill their material they sift off okay different sizes or weed seeds or broken seed and so some good seed comes through sometimes it's like brassicas or corn it's all sorts of different things and so we that's the bulk of what we soak and there's enough real seed in there that with the moisture and we can feel the warmth of it very nice and it smells great this is only 10-15 days in wow and it's we've learned to not fool ourselves and say well we can put it in the garden and seed it out and it'll grow things but as a mulch it's wonderful it can leech the excess nutrient and then next year yeah it's ready for whatever we want to do with it but we get around 10 or 15 wheelbarrow loads of this a week maybe 10. fantastic what do you use for calcium supplements for them the oyster shells you give them the oyster shell but we also trade with a friend who has dairy cows is that the yogurt that i saw out there they like yogurt like these they love it yeah old milk is just about old milk and fresh fruit they flip for it yeah so that's free choice for them wow that seems to be a couple of them already they love that yeah dip in their beaks in it yeah yeah you know we buy in the granite chunks so it's not like we're doing everything yeah abnormal or whatever you want to say but do you ever feed them their eggshells back yeah every last one all the eggshells yeah because i i from my own limited experience with the chickens they never really like the oyster shells they don't yeah and they love their eggshells and getting them enough calcium and everything is yeah one of those things yeah it feels like we could probably boost their calcium even more sometimes the shells feel a little thin oh yeah i agree you know especially if they're very productive um it ebbs and flows really sometimes and it totally is dependent on where they are in the hierarchy i think like somebody's getting more and somebody's getting less no matter how much is available you seem to be an independent hen the bard rocks i mean they're all wonderful but they they're really mild but they also are like very inquisitive yeah some of the first ones to come in they're they're a great one do you know i don't think we have one we don't have a lead i don't maybe we do but if if we do she's subtle about it i think i think there's just too many there are definitely some who are more towards the bottom and there are some who are more towards the top but whether there's like there's probably one ultimate further look at that he already sees she sees it [Music] luckily we have almost no we had one hawk attack in all the years but i think having so much structural complexity and big trees overhead and so many wild birds around yeah it's become basically a non-issue yeah but we do have raccoons and skunks and opossums that come at night but we i feed them and yeah they don't try to get into the poop as long as no chickens left out yeah that's always an important thing sasha gives them their their nightly offering of bananas and eggs and they come and they eat every last thing they peel the bananas they eat all the eggs you have a little hand washing station yeah like yeah yeah we set up a game cam once and we saw both raccoons and opossums and they they leave they leave the shells and they leave the peels oh my goodness and they have a little portal they come in and out and that's yep that's the agreement yep i sometimes get i'm like why are we you know why are we buying banana but it's it's really sweet and it they love bananas more than anything and a lot of times at the grocery store you can get like a big bag of like old bananas for a dollar they like them right now it's like our equivalent to like a monkey or a lemur yeah it's sweet and then what's what's this garden is this all for your chickens or yeah well it's a dry moment so you don't get to see it in its full glory is not the word but the fullness of what it is but basically it's a hole that i dug yeah and there's a tube that runs from the gutters from the north side of the house that sends right into here and so in the spring and fall this is filled with water out this mesh is here to keep the hens from eating this is a perennial water celery that they really like oh wow and it's also a very aggressive non-native plant yeah so they eat everything that gets you can see like they browse it down and what the water celery does is it's so nutrient hungry that it takes water basically a pond in the middle of a static chicken yard should be the grossest thing ever yeah but it filters all the water by turning itself turning the water into itself and so we just throw them out and then the hens eat it as they want it oh so that's great so you don't you only use it for the hens basically for like for for eating yeah we wouldn't i mean i guess if we needed to we could bring it inside and wash and eat it but we've got lots of other foods yeah so it's basically it's a water filtering water cooling nutrient swapping plant for the hens [Applause] i didn't think it would be this aggressive so it's helpful that the hands like that's what i was going to say the hens will mow it down for you we're thinking about offering it through the nursery but that's one of those plants we want to be careful with and know about before we do and you mentioned amaranth i see some again growing behind you do you do you give the chickens amaranth at all like will they eat it yeah they i think this time of year they're less psyched on it but when the seeds are ripe they like it but that that pretty much every amaranth you've seen here has is all volunteers they just pop up this mother yeah not nice that's one they don't eat yeah and i know you like it so i don't pull it yeah they're like i don't know i throw off some of those berries again yeah they love the elderberry they can be a little bit picky and that's fine it's nice that they are they absolutely are they have their preferences that's for sure they like the elder you can just goodness i just tap the stems and then it rains down some medicine for them and they they do you mind if i like shake it a little bit that's fine yeah that's that's mainly what that one's there for look it's raining elders oh let me just we harvested a bunch for us but there's we grow so many elder plants and really like the fruit from one elder is all we actually need for you yeah we want to do i i love looking how interested they are in these elders because it just brings me such joy when they when they have something that they love yeah i think it's like a low dose thing for them though i think it feels like we can trust that we can offer them a really wide range of things yeah and they'll decide what's the right amount chickens are good at self-regulating they're smart yeah as long as it's not all blended together and as long as they're not desperate yeah like there's lots of things available then they can choose what is the right thing for them in a given moment yeah they're stuck to your clothes oh i do it's going with you that's good here i wanna which one which one of you wants oh here and here there you go there you go good girl you

Channel: Flock Finger Lakes

Views: 184,721

Keywords: Flock, Flock Finger Lakes, Finger Lakes New York, homestead, homesteading, permaculture, permaculture farm, upstate New York, summer rayne oakes, how to start a farm, chicken composting, compost, how to compost with chickens, permaculture chickens, how to raise chickens, chickens and farming, farm chickens, raising chickens, raising chickens for eggs, raising chickens for meat, growing your own chickens, how to raise chickens for eggs, how to raise chickens for meat

Id: PGx0arcwrIE

Length: 18min 38sec (1118 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 02 2021