How a ‘chicken tractor’ can clear and improve soil, as well as getting rid of pests

My vegetable field has some problems. It’s not that vegetables don’t grow there; over two seasons I’ve had some notable successes, it’s just that there’s verdant weed growth throughout, more slugs than you can shake a stick at, and the soil needs improving if I am going to grow the range of crops I want to, on what can be a challenging site.

Of course, chicken tractoring is one of the staples of Permaculture gardening, and the first time I saw chickens used to help in the garden was at Ragman’s Lane Farm years and years ago. Since then I’ve had chickens in most of my gardens, but it’s always a good idea to refine and reconsider how we design our food growing systems.

Chickens enclosed in a pen will till, scratching and clearing away weeds. They won’t necessarily knock-out perennial weeds, but they will keep all kinds of plant growth under control. In so doing of course, they will also provide quite a lot of their own food.When I cleared ground in my mountain garden in France, I went in first with the brush-cutter, and then penned the chickens on the opened ground; they couldn’t clear brambles unaided, but once I’d started the work, they quickly made ground good enough to be turned into beds. Here in Wales, my birds will face less of a challenge, more greenery and less thorns.

In their scratching and searching, chickens effectively control slugs, eating both the adults and uncovering their eggs. Slugs are considered by many people to be the single biggest limiting factor on veg production in this climate, controlling them can make the difference between a viable garden and no garden at all. I know quite a few people here in the wet West who use Indian Runner ducks or Khaki Campbells to eat slugs, they are breeds which much prefer to eat slug flesh than your vegetables, but whilst you’d never let chickens roam amongst your veg, carefully penned on ground being prepared for gardening, they can at least clear the way a little, and keep a lid on the slug population prior to planting or sowing.

Read more here.

5 Herbs Your Chickens Will Love

Use both fresh and dried, these herbs will help boost your flock’s health and keep them laying happily.

Just as they do for humans, most culinary herbs have wonderful and varied health benefits for your chickens. Whether you scatter herbs in your coop and nesting boxes to help repel insects and parasites, feed them fresh to your chickens, or dry them to add to feed, you can greatly enhance your flock’s health by incorporating a few herbs into their living environment and diet. Like grass and weeds, herbs are considered green treats and can be fed free-choice. Each hen will eat as much or as little as it wants or needs.

Herbs are easy to grow, and many are perennials in much of the country. They generally aren’t very picky about soil conditions and don’t need a lot of water or babying to thrive. I grow a variety of herbs for my chickens, but these five are my favorites.

1. Lavender

Lavender leaves and flowers are my favorite herb to use in nesting boxes. An aromatic stress reliever, lavender also increases blood circulation and acts as an insecticide, so it’s beneficial to your laying and setting hens. The leaves and flowers can be harvested as needed and scattered in your nesting boxes to keep them fragrant.

Lavender loves dry soil and full sun. Flowers, buds and leaves all can be air-dried and used through the winter.

Read more: http://www.hobbyfarms.com/crops-and-gardening/5-herbs-your-chickens-will-love.aspx

9 Natural De-Worming Plants for Your Backyard Flock

Take preventative measures to keep your chickens worm-free by growing and feeding them these natural de-worming plants.

Conventional wisdom of the day tells us that if we own a farm with animals, we need to have a plan in place to regularly "worm” them. I recently received an email from an old friend who raises backyard chickens and she had noticed a problem with worms in her chickens. She, like myself and many others, tends to opt for natural remedies when it comes to caring for her flock and wanted some advice.

In general, backyard chickens are not in a situation that demands routine de-worming. They usually aren’t overcrowded and often have plenty of green things and weed seeds to range around and eat. Worms are more typically a problem in poultry kept in close proximity in abnormally high numbers, indoors or in a mercifully picked over chicken yard. However, just because you keep your chickens in poultry Shangri-La doesn’t mean that it won’t happen to you!

Read more: http://www.hobbyfarms.com/hobby-farms-editorial-blogs/dawn-combs/9-natural-deworming-plants-for-backyard-flock.aspx

Do your hens need a pin-up calendar?

Do your hens need a pin-up calendar of sexy roosters?

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

No, it is not April 1st and it is no joke. Some researcher have suggested that flocks of hens where there is no cockerel (rooster) do better if they have a picture of a nice strutting rooster pinned up on the wall of the coop. Really?

Well yes, they have suggested is and obviously some entrepreneurial spirit has now also gone and produced such a calendar and is trying to convince everyone that hens will be calmer and produce better when they have a picture of a rooster to look at.

As someone said people will believe (almost) anything as long as it is said that scientists have discovered this or that. Call me a cynic but I do not think that your hens or mine do need a rooster or a pinup calendar with rooter pictures. And, how would they turn the pages?

Flocks of hens have roamed our farmyards and backyards for centuries if not millennia with or without rooster and no one so far has needed to put up any pictures of a rooster in the coop.

However, with hen keeping having become rather fashionable in the last decade or so people are trying to cash in on this phenomenon whether by means of rather expensive fancy coops or now by producing a pinup calendar for the feathered girls. What next?

While some of the manufactured chicken coops are real good others are just too fancy and too expensive. The only plastic coops, for instance, and plastic material for the building is better than wood as it will reduce mite infestation and allows for easier cleaning, are those made by Solway Recycling in the UK. Made from so-called Agri-Board, which is recycled plastic boards made from plastic farm waste, such as those plastic wraps for hay and silage, and they also make other great products from that material for the farmer, smallholder, homesteader and gardener.

I succumbed a while back to buy one of those for my hens as the wooden shack that they occupied previously got infested and re-infested by mites time and again and also because it was falling apart.

Despite that I lost, over time, and some had been lost before, my original flock and acquired some point of lay hens who seem to be quite happy with that home of theirs. But I digressed.

I find it ludicrous to think that my hens, or yours for that matter, would need a pinup calendar with pictures of roosters. However, cross-shredded waste paper makes for good bedding (litter) and old calendars can be used for that as well.

© 2013