Time to turn the laying hens onto pasture

April 22, 2013 Posts No Comments
Rooster on spring pasture

Several quality
permaculturalists have used the term “grass farmer” to refer to people
who focus on the health of the pasture first and foremost. 
Although I do care very much about improving our soil, I have to admit
that I’m not a grass farmer.  If I was, I probably would have
waited another week before moving our chickens in from the
woods and back onto
their rotational pastures.


Hens on pasture

But while Mark was
working the kinks out of our DIY
dog doors,
the hens were showing up in the garden every morning.  Meanwhile,
my vegetable
seedlings were getting to the point that the flock was able to make
quite a mess between dawn and 7:30 AM (when I poke my head out the door
to
make sure no disaster has befallen the garden overnight).


Spring chicken pasture

So I stuffed the
chickens back behind fences, then breathed a big sigh of
relief.  And the weather was kind enough to turn beautiful and
spring-like at long last, so they ended up having plenty to eat. 
It
turns out that about a week before the lawnmower comes out probably is
the best time to turn the flock onto pasture after all.



(If you want a more
scientific take on rotational chicken pastures, you’ll find much more
than you probably want to know in my ebook Permaculture
Chicken: Pasture Basics.  And don’t forget to
add a POOP-free chicken waterer to your happy chicken
system.)

Juice-bottle chick waterer

April 19, 2013 Posts No Comments
Chick waterer

Star Taylor emailed me the
photo above, showcasing her ultra-simple, but elegant, chick
waterer.  She explained that it’s made from a drink bottle from
Walmart, with “a tiny hole in the handle so the nipple doesn’t pressure
lock.”  She added:


“I know you’re probably getting thank yous
all the time about the chicken waterers, but I just wanted to add to
it.  THANK YOU for making and selling these!



“I bought your DIY kit
of three last year for my 10
chickens (at the time) and have been able to upgrade capacity from 2
one gallon containers and a quart brooder container (repurposed juice
bottles suspended by chain) to a single 5 gallon bucket with two of the
nipples in it and a recently upgraded brooder bottle to a 2.2 Liter
capacity.



“I will be getting more when my
chickies grow up but in the mean time am so glad I could simply find a
bigger bottle and drill a hole in it!  It’s so customizable. 
Also great because I am a lazy person and the higher capacities allows
me to be lazy longer!”



Thanks for sharing,
Star!  It’s folks like you who keep Mark plugging away. 
In fact, he’s got two premade waterer upgrades coming down the pipe as
I type — stay tuned!

How to make a dog door for your pasture

April 17, 2013 Posts 3 Comments
DIY dog door

At long last, Mark seems
to have figured out the dog-door-in-the-pasture concept!  Version
1.0 was a failure,
but replacing the carpet with a lattice made the door transparent
enough that Lucy wanted to go through.  This time around, training
went quickly, with Lucy learning the door within two tries.  Holes
stopped showing up in the pastures, so Mark added dog doors at two
additional locations, with more probably to come.


Dog door in fence

Cutting vinyl latticeNow that we’ve worked the
kinks out of the system, you may want to follow along at home.  We
got the vinyl lattice material on the curb on trash day, but I think
you can buy an 8-foot-by-four-foot sheet at Lowes for about $20 —
that will be enough for a lifetime of dog doors.  Mark determined
that it’s best to cut the lattice with a jig saw, with the size of the
door determined by your pet’s stature.



Framing around a dog doorMaking a frame out of 2X2s or
2X4s seems to work well — Mark usually has scrap on hand, so that
again cost us nothing, although we did have to buy some screws. 
It’s easiest to frame up a dog door if it’s going to be part of a new
gate, in which case the dog-door frame can be a structural support for
the main gate frame.


Weighted dog door

Homemade hingeMark added a weight (scrap
wood) at the bottom of one of his dog doors, but left it off the others
with fine results, so you probably can skip that step.  You will
need a hinge — Mark
recommends a non-mortise hinge, with a little piece of
scrap wood on the other side of the lattice for the screws to bite
into.  Or you can make a hinge out of wire (shown to the left),
although that will take a bit longer to build and probably won’t last
quite as long.



We get a lot of benefits
from enclosing our core homestead in pastures but letting our dog pass
through to patrol both the interior and exterior.  If you have the
freedom (and distance from danger) to act similarly, I highly recommend
version 2.0 of Mark’s dog doors to streamline the situation.  And
I’d love to hear about it if you put the dog-door-in-the-pasture
concept into practice!


Our chicken waterer streamlines chicken care
just like the dog doors keep Lucy happy around the hens.