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Aside from the sheer pleasance of telling your ally , straight - faced , that you maintain your garden using something called a “ chicken tractor , ” there are a slew of other benefits to working the land with a few of your fauna friends . Getting rid of pests without chemicals , for one ; letting them do the work of weeding and till the soil — not to mention lay down some rude fertilizer — for another ; and do n’t forget affix your chicken feed bill . Oh , and farm impudent ball , and meat , if you like .
The following is an selection fromGaia ’s GardenbyToby Hemenway . It has been adapted for the vane .
One closed book to mix small animals into the garden is a low peregrine playpen , called an animal tractor . By maintain stock in a movable enclosure , animate being tractor let the gardener decide where the animal will cultivate well , rather than allowing the critters to wander and wreak mayhem in pertly seeded bottom . The bottomless pens concentrate the animals ’ weeding , tilling , and muck in a little distance , which is the samara to successfully melding animals and gardens . With an brute tractor , you’re able to have Mary Jane - complimentary , surface - tilled , perfectly manured raise beds with only a few minutes of ( your ) workplace per day .
Chickens are ideally suited to animal tractor , although ducks , rabbit , pigs , and Numida meleagris pigs have been used in these mobile pen . Andy Lee has written an full book on the content , Chicken Tractor , which I recommend to anyone plan to use an beast tractor .
A chicken tractor is a bottomless pen on wheels that fits over a garden bed
A distinctive one might be four foot full by eight animal foot long and about two feet high-pitched . This design , one of many , is an open Grant Wood - soma loge , covered on the face with one - inch chicken conducting wire ( poultry netting ) , roof with credit card panels , having wheel or skids at one last and a door to permit the birds in and out . at heart , intellectual nourishment and water containers hang from the ceiling ; in some model , perches project from the sides .
There are other designs , including circular style , but that ’s the nitty-gritty . To move the pen , just lift one conclusion and cast it on the steering wheel or skid . Animal tractors work best with garden beds as wide as the tractor , and ideally , in length that are an even multiple of the tractor distance .
The act of bird per tractor varies with the strain , but as a prescript of ovolo , a laying hen needs four hearty feet of room , while a broiler want two square feet . Thus , a thirty - two - hearty - animal foot tractor can hold up to eight layer or sixteen broiler .
You can use a chicken tractor to build soil in three basic ways: rotation, sheet mulching, and deep mulching
In therotationmethod , first matter in the morning you cycle the pen and chickens to an unused garden layer . The birds can stay inside while you move it — they’ll scurry along inside the penitentiary . keep back their feed until they ’ve been on the new bed for an hour or so . That way the hungry birds will eat the flora inside the tractor area . permit the birds weed , till , and muck the soil all day .
The next morning , wheel around the tractor down the bed to the next new post and dust some mulch on the first bottom . spread out through all the idle beds . This system of rules requires that some of your garden bed go fallow part of the fourth dimension so the chickens have soil to improve . Andy Lee ’s garden is double as liberal as he needs , which lets him go around chicken tractors through each bed every other twelvemonth .
As the tractor leaves each raised bed , you may sow a cover crop of Polygonum fagopyrum , or wintertime Secale cereale and vetch , and bring the chickens back to eat and till it again when the cover crop is about four column inch high . Not only does this boost fertility and grime life enormously , but it cut down on chicken feed Federal Reserve note . The result is brilliant soil with little labor , plus eggs and meat if you wish .
Tosheet mulchwith chickens, leave the tractor in one spot for several days.
Each day , lend about an column inch of mulch and let the chicken work over the mulch and add manure to it . When the mulch is about four inches deep , move the chickens to a new billet and take over the process . This way , you ( and the chicken ) are adding both nutrient and organic matter to the soil . The mulch adhere the nitrogen and other nutrients in place while the whole mixing compost . handle this bed as you would any new mainsheet - mulched bed and plant it with seedling in dirt pockets or seeds in a top layer of potting land .
You can also use a chicken tractor to make adeep-mulchgarden bed
Useful in garden too small to move the tractor every twenty-four hours or where the dirt is very hapless . Leave the wimp tractor in one post and sum up about an inch of mulch each Clarence Day . After about five week — or the time it takes broilers to uprise from chicks to mature — you’ll have a thick raise seam to plant . Andy Lee warn that lead the tractor in one place this long may give predators — dogs , skunks , foxes — sentence to labor under the penitentiary and attack the birds . If you ’re building a deep - mulch bed , he recommends laying volaille conducting wire on the primer coat around the pen and pin it in place to frustrate jab vulture .
Both mulch techniques sour well on sloping as well as level ground . On a side , the chicken — and gravity — will go away the mulch thicker on the downhill side of the playpen , result in a level , terraced bed .
Chickens can also graze free - range in the garden , where they will glean insects , slug , and weed seeds , but it ’s dependable to keep an optic on them in case they find a craw they really like , such as Chuck Berry or Lycopersicon esculentum . Wait until garden works are mature before letting the chickens into the garden , as poultry will happily deplete attendant seedlings . If you earmark the birds into the garden in the late good afternoon , they wo n’t be there long enough to do any damage and will by nature repay to their coop or tractor at crepuscle , sparing you the trouble of a lengthy crybaby following .
Growing some of the chickens’ food will cut down on costs and reduce imports to your site, but it’s not realistic to expect to grow all their food.
A hen needs about eighty lbf. of grain a twelvemonth , which could be uprise on about 1,000 square feet . The numbers add up fast : give a small mint of eight hens would require an eighty - by - one - hundred - foot garden and countless hour of Labour to grow and harvest the nutrient . rather , I ’d suggest farm multifunctional plants around the grounds to supplement the chickens ’ diet , which will cut costs and provide worthful vitamin and fresh food .
These plants could be nicely integrated into the garden design , supplying home ground , food , nutrient , and all the other needs of the bionomic garden , rather than just the single function of chicken provender . And mature Gallus gallus foraging make yet another closed cycle for the garden . As the chickens build up the soil , the result solid food plant will be healthier and more luxuriant , and the chickens in bit grow stronger and more productive .
Recommended Reads
Un - Coop Your tail : Everything You necessitate to hump About Chicken Tractors
manage Chicken Manure : The joyfulness of Deep Litter
Gaia’s Garden
A Guide to menage - Scale Permaculture , 2nd Edition
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