Happy Urban Dirt

In addition to the pleasure of telling friends, a straight face, that you keep your garden, using something called a “chicken tractor”, there are many other benefits of working with several friends. Getting rid of pests without chemicals, firstly; Allowing them to perform the work of hell and soil cultivation – not to mention the location of natural fertilizer – for another; And don’t forget to supplement the chicken food invoice. Oh, and grow fresh eggs and meat if you want.

Below is a fragment GAI garden By Toby Hemenway. Has been adapted to the network.

One of the secrets of integration of diminutive animals with a garden is a diminutive mobile pen, called animal tractor. By keeping farm animals in a movable housing, animal tractors allow a gardener to decide where the animal will work best, instead of allowing creating to wander and chop havoc in freshly vaccinated beds. Without the bottom, the pens focus on growing, growing and raising animals in a diminutive space, which is the key to effectively combining animals and gardens. Thanks to the animal tractor, you can have weed -free, surface, perfectly transformed beds, with just a few minutes (your) work a day.

Chickens are ideal for animal tractors, although ducks, rabbits, pigs and guinea pigs were used in these mobile pens. Andy Lee wrote the whole book on this topic, a Chicken tractor, which I recommend to anyone who plans to operate an animal tractor.

The chicken tractor is a bottomless pen on wheels that fits the garden bed

Typical can have four feet width at eight feet and about two feet height. This design, one of many, is an open wood box, covered on the sides with one inch chicken wire (poultry mesh), covered with plastic panels, having wheels or slip at one end and the door to let the birds. Inside, food and water containers hang from the roof; In some perches project models from the sides.

There are other projects, including round styles, but this is the point. To move the pen, simply lift one end and roll it on the wheels or slip. Animal tractors work best with garden beds as wide as a tractor, and preferably with lengths, which are even a multiple length of the tractor.

The number of birds per tractor changes depending on the breed, but as a rule, the lying wheel needs four square feet of the place, while the broiler needs two square feet. Thus, thirty -two square feet can hold up to eight layers or sixteen broilers.

You can operate chicken tractor to build soil in three basic ways: rotation, mulching of sheets and deep mulching

IN rotation The method, the first in the morning, which you draw a pen and chickens into an unused garden bed. Birds can stay inside when they move – they will run along the pen. Hold their feed until they are in a recent bed for about an hour. In this way, hungry birds will eat vegetation inside the tractor. Let the birds want to the soil all day.

The next morning, pull the tractor to the bed to the next fresh place and sprinkle the litter on the first bed. Turn all unused beds. This system requires that some garden beds be in the fallow all the time, that the chickens have the soil to improve. The Andy Lee garden is twice as huge as he needs, which allows him to rotate chicken tractors every other year.

When the tractor leaves each raised bed, you can fall asleep a crop with buckwheat or winter rye and drilling, and bring the chickens back to food, and until the groundwear is about four inches of height. This not only increases the fertility and life of the soil, but reduces chicken feed bills. The result is excellent soil with a diminutive delivery, as well as eggs and meat if you want.

Down mulch made of sheet Leave the tractor in one place for several days with chicken.

Every day, add about the whole litter and let the chickens act over the litter and add manure to it. When the litter is about four inches depth, move the chickens to a recent place and repeat the process. In this way, you (and chickens) add both nutrients and organic matter to the soil. The mulch binds nitrogen and other nutrients on the spot, while the whole mixture composts. Treat this bed like any recent sheet and plant them with seedlings in soil pockets or seeds in the upper layer of pot.

You can also operate a chicken tractor to do depth Garden bed

Useful in the gardens too diminutive to move the tractor every day or where the soil is very destitute. Leave the chicken tractor in one place and add about the whole litter every day. After about five weeks – or the time when broilers grow from the chick for puberty – you will have a broad elevated planting bed. Andy Lee warns that leaving the tractor in one place can give predators – jumpers, skuns, foxes – time to dig under the pen and attack birds. If you are building a deep bed, it recommends the position of chicken wire on the ground around the pen and pinning it to frustrate digging predators.

Both litter techniques work well on the slope, as well as at the level. On the slope chickens – and gravity – leave the litter thicker partly of the feathers, which causes a level, terrace bed.

Chickens can also graze the freedom in the garden, where they collect insects, snails and weed seeds, but it is best to have an eye on them in case they find a cultivation they really like, such as berries or tomatoes. Wait for garden plants to ripen before they let the chickens into the garden, because poultry will joyfully eat tender cuttings. If you let the birds into the garden in the behind schedule afternoon, they will not be long enough to cause no injuries and naturally return to their koop or tractor at dusk, saving you problems of long chicken pursuit.

Cultivation of chicken food will reduce costs and reduce imports to your site, but it is not realistic expectation that you will grow all your food.

The chicken needs about eighty pounds of grain a year, which can be grown at about 1000 square feet. The numbers add up quickly: feeding a diminutive herd of eight chicken would require an eight -oight garden to set feet and countless working hours to grow and collect food. Instead, I suggest growing multifunctional plants around the yard to supplement the chicken diet, which will reduce costs and provide valuable vitamins and fresh food.

These plants can be nicely integrated with garden design, providing habitats, food, nutrients and all other needs of the ecological garden, and not only with a single function of chicken feed. And the growing chicken feed creates another closed cycle for the garden. When chickens build the soil, the resulting food plants will be healthier and more lush, and the chickens, in turn, become stronger and more productive.

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