More improvements

In these pictures you can see the upstairs which is enclosed on 5 sides, and the new ladder going up, and the new longer roost, as well as the temporary quarters we put the chickens in during the terrible storm. It is the dog-crate-brooder pushed up against the house, under the porch overhang, with the brooder light in it. I also included one picture of our GROW BIOINTENSIVE double-dug garden bed, in the process of being double-dug. We are doing something between sheet-mulch and deep mulch now with the tractor inside the backyard "dog" fence, and we plan to use those beds for herbs and salad greens inside the fence, and for perennial fruits like berries and grapes further out in the yard. 

We don't let the chickens free range anymore because it is too hard to catch them, and they seem to only want to poop on the porch and eat the clematis. We bring the greens to them now. We bought a bale of hay and we add fresh hay on top of the old stuff every day. Today I will experiment with giving them grass clippings, and we may try using that as bedding as well in order to reduce the external inputs and try to create as closed a system as currently possible. We don't have a hay baler (it would be impractical on this amoubnt of land anyway), and with the amount of rain we are having, I was lucky to get half the lawn mowed yesterday. I hope to rake it all up for bedding, food and compost before it gets rained on again. 

If it looks like their feeder is out of reach, that is because it is attached to a crosspiece of the lid, so when the lid is open the food and water go up with it. The food and water are both hung on carabiners now for easy removal for washing and filling. We are trying to get both placed where they can't be pooped in from the roost. I think I got the food moved far enough away today - we'll see. Washing the feeder and waterer takes a lot more time than just filling them. We do that at a utility sink in the garage. 

We plan to build a lighter tractor soon that can be moved more easily and get meat birds to live in there. 

Improved tractor

Deep Mulch

We are starting a new method with the chicken tractor called the Deep Mulch Method. Instead of moving the chickens to new forage daily, we will leave them in place for a couple weeks, adding fresh hay every day. This creates a deep layer of manure and hay which rapidly decomposes and creates beautifully fertile soil, conveniently in a rectangular raised bed. We will throw in greens from around the yard so they still have "forage" as well. 

Over the last week we have had very cool weather and severe storms so Peter made their upstairs much more secure and added a ramp and a longer better roost.  We started putting hay up there for them as well. We are studying various tractor designs at http://home.centurytel.net/thecitychicken/tractors.html in order to get ideas for improvements, nesting boxes, etc.  We also moved them back to the dog crate with the light out on the back patio for a couple nights so they could be warm and dry during the horizontal rain and thunder and lightning. We will post pictures soon.