If you choose carefully, you
can have American persimmons ripening in your forest pasture
for over six months, from August through February.  The fruits are
mostly sugar, but they provide a vitamin boost that your flock will
enjoy during the cold, winter months when fresh food is scarce.  I
tossed a few persimmons to our chickens last week to test them out and
was stunned by how well the fruits were received.  “More
persimmons, please!” the hens seemed to say.



This winter, I’m collecting
seeds from wild trees to start my own persimmon test patch.  With
the help of a reader and some friends and family, I’ve already nailed
down varieties that ripen in August, September, October, November, and
December.  (If you’ve got a later ripening tree, I’d trade a
waterer for some seeds.)  Planting persimmons is a long term
project, but I feel confident that at least by 2020, our chickens will
be fat and happy on the winter fruits.



I posted a lot of
information about persimmons over on my homestead blog last week:

• Persimmon
  uses for livestock, nutritional information, and sources of information
• Persimmons
  as human food and the difference between American and Asian persimmons
• General
  information about planting persimmons
• How
  to propagate persimmons by germinating seeds, grafting, and
  transplanting
• How
  to ripen persimmons

Hopefully those tips
will help you out if you decide to add persimmons to your own forest
pasture.

Sheila Baker came up with
another ingenious homemade
chicken waterer reservoir:



I
adapted a couple “Sunny D” bottles to get started and hung them on an
old section of a wood extension ladder that they use for a perch. 
They love your Avian Aqua Miser, they
jockey for pole position to get a drink. 



When we first started
selling our chicken waterers, I was bound and determined to reuse
plastic containers that were being recycled.  Even though that
option didn’t pan out on the large scale, I’m always thrilled to see
customers turning our do it yourself kits into unique waterers that
keep plastic out of the landfill.