Homeowner Forum / Lawn and Garden / August 2008

You may want to look at raising black soldier fly larvae.

sci.agriculture.poultry, alt.cooking-chat, alt.permaculture,
rec.gardens, aus.gardens

Chickens – supplementing their grain diet?

My Brother has some Chickens in his backyard to lay Eggs. I have to be
honest and say that since Noah floated the Ark, I have been a hardcore
dedicated Egg-a-holic. And then some. Add some bacon/polish sausage/
chorizo sausage……and SWISS BROWN mushrooms……and it’s game on!
I particularly like Eggs where the yolks have a really rich orange
colour, and are full of flavour. At the moment, the Chickens are being
fed the proper Pellet Food from a local Grain & Fodder retailer, but I
am trying to “supplement” their diet to make their Eggs taste
absolutely A1. I don’t just want the Chooks’ diet to be “reasonably
good”…..I want it to be as close to perfect as possible. At the
moment, I am getting box load after box load of vegetable scraps from
some local grocers – and I am continuing with this. They mainly
contain lettuce and cabbage scraps, but there are often some carrots,
cauliflowers, avocadoes, etc. (Some of the more choice vegetables get
carefully “selected out” by my brother…..but that’s another matter
entirely) I also know that the Chickens go crazy over thistles and the
like.
Anyway, I heard somewhere or other that, along with LOTS of greens,
the addition of some protein to the Chickens’ diet can help boost the
flavour of their Eggs. So I thought of worms! I’ve recently set up an
ultra-basic compost pile by digging a very shallow hole in the Chicken
Yard, filling it with as many food scraps as I can lay my hands on,
watering them in, covering it with hessian, then watering the hessian.
Then I have covered the whole pile with a plastic tub of sorts. The
hole I have dug in the ground is actually quite shallow, so most of
the food scraps are actually above ground, not below ground level. I
am assuming that in a week or so, this compost pile should be
absolutely writhing with masses of worms…..hopefully. Once it reaches
this stage, I will simply remove the plastic tub and the hessian, and
let the Chooks go to town.
I am hoping for any and all advice, in regards to what I am doing
here, particularly with the worm-compost pile.
• Any specific do’s or don’t’s?
• How long should the worms take to fill up the pile?
• Certain foods that are particularly good or bad for the Chickens?
• Certain foods that are particularly good or bad for the Worms?
Like I mentioned before, I want the Chooks to have the best diet
possible to give the Eggs the best flavour. As an aside, the Chickens
seem to dig and scratch about like nothing I have ever seen. Quite
funny to watch how they actually do this. I have even seem them sort
of “rub themselves about” in the dust in drier weather, and this is
VERY funny to watch. What is this they are doing? They often get quite
aggressive when other birds, such as doves and pigeons, try to eat
their food. They really are funny critters to watch. When we’re out
the back having wine and beers, and play the Stereo, the music really
has some sort of effect on them. They will often come over and jump up
on the garden table or on the Stereo. Weird.

I've long heard that coffee grounds are not good for worms.  And here
is a link I found while researching the same thing primarliy for
self-sufficiency purposes:

http://www.lionsgrip.com/recipes.html

Hal

g'day gas bag,

you pretty much covered it all, except maybe to say give them all and
most kitchen scraps, no meat scraps generally but any other food stuff
you might throw out.

you will be needing a very large worm farm if you want to raise enough
worms as regular food for the chooks diets, so the regular home
kitchen farms i don't think will do the job ubnless you run about 4 or
5 or so of them. then all yor kitchen scraps will be going to the
worms instead of the chooks. unless you start collecting scraps from
your neighbours.

maybe collect material from your local vege' shop ie.,. cabbage and
lettuce leaves, carrot tops damaged fruit etc.,.

snipped
With peace and brightest of blessings,

len & bev

--
"Be Content With What You Have And
May You Find Serenity and Tranquillity In
A World That You May Not Understand."

http://www.lensgarden.com.au/

In the book "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A natural History of Four Meals",
author Michal Pollan describes the routine of a super-efficient all-natural
farm in Virginia. The farmer rotates his fields with clock like precision
and the one process that might give guidance applicable to your situation
is the sequence of animals on a given field. First comes the cows. They
stay for a while eating the grass and dropping manure. Then the cows are
moved to the next field and the first field is left for a number of days.
This allows the cow flops to attract flies and develop a good crop of
maggots. Then the chickens are moved to the field where they happily peck
apart the flops, eat the maggots, and spread the manure in the process.

Consumers claim that this farmer's eggs and chickens are absolutely the
best to be had at any price. They happily pay a hefty premium and sometimes
travel long distances to obtain them.

Not that I'd expect you to invest in cows for your egg production but it
would pay to keep in mind that chickens really love their protein in the
form of insects and it does wonders for their taste and egg production.

Gas Bag <shazlikd@yahoo.com.au>wrote:

Chooks, man. "Chickens" are the hatchlings up to Pullet size.
"Chickens" is also an Americanism.

[cut]

Protein at higher levels than available in mixed feed can stimulate
egg production.
Meat meal added at maybe 1 metric cup to a 4 litre mix of dry feed is
ample and a very efficient method of delivery.

[cut]

Worms are a fine idea. However your average backyard chook
will clean up in an hour as many as you have 'hatched'. In this
respect chooks become Rambo type beings and will seek out any
moving object whether they be actually hungry or not. Chooks
have no brain as such and are reactors, not thinkors, hence the
saying "silly old chook".
Also I would be wary of what you 'grow' using that method you might
well botulise your chooks?
Besides, it is an abuse of my cousin's Right to survival.
We all have our place in the System, "chook food" is not the Plan
for us subterraneans.

[cut]

Having a "dustbath". Many feathered friends have this 'habit'.
Birds have oil glands to both keep their feathers waterproof and to
keep the feather structure from weathering (as do we humans in our hair).
In small amounts the oil gathers and can make areas of skin uncomfortable
so the chook gathers some dust and rolls the oil into tiny balls and pecks
(preens) them out.
Keeps them busy and presentable. As a clue a crook chook will look
rather ragged from a lack of bathing.

[cut]

Chooks, particularly Roosters, have many strange learnt (mime) behaviors.
The joke about Big Red lying 'dead' in the yard just two days after
being introduced to the hens is not a long way from the Truth.
Roosters will f.ck anything that moves once the hens have all been
covered. Just make sure the Missus does not have too many wines
and ends up legup on the courtyard floor..
Big Red might just have a Plan.

--

   ()-().----. '.   '    '  . ' .. '. ^/
   \"/` \___ ' ;_._______/ '  . . .. . ............................

<Use a proper text editor and you'll get a quicker response>

I think it was Earth Garden that had a chook pen design that consisted of
central hen house with two attached pens. Basically you dumped all the
vegetable matter that you could (AMY vege matter in small pieces) into one
pen whilst they had the run of the other pen. Then you swapped. it might
have been a week about, it might have been longer (probably).

The idea ws that the worms built up in the pen and created compost safe
from the hens, then you'd allow the chooks into tractor it and eat the
worms, whilst boosting the worm population inthe other.

Personally, I'd also throw out all meat scraps as well as that brings
maggots,which the chooks will eat.

You are starting in winter, so by Christmas if you're lucky.

A better way to grow worms is to get a pile of cow manure and leave it
undisturbed (away from the chooks). In a month or so it will start to
develop a healthy colony of earthworms, and you can gradually harvest
some to feed to the chooks.

Earthworms are different from compost worms.

What's with all the binary characters?