A few words on breaking up projects. I was a project manager for a defense company before I retired. One of the things we had to be cognizant of was Work Task Breakdowns. And we had to budget each hour that a given phase of a project would take. So in my retirement, I like to break down projects into their "atomic" parts. And it shows around my farm. When I get going on one thing, and I get tired of doing it, I move on to something else for a while, then circle back around to the first thing, and so on. The small steps I take are all progress. And I am not moving forward on any fixed time crunched schedule, that might get moved to the right due to delays. Well, I am the delay. And you know what? It will get done eventually, or it won't. But I'm not going to stress over doing a huge project, when I can just "play" for an hour or two, then go "play" on something else for a while. It keeps me from getting overworked, overstressed, and burning out. So 20 or 30 scoops, then go on, do something else, and the next time you walk by, do 20 or 30 more. It will get done.
Thanks for the reassurance! I do this too and have got nagged by people for it. I’ll tell them that that is how the military does it. How about you add filming your farm work and UA-cam video creation and and posting to your chores?!? I subbed and waiting 🤪
I hear you! I joke that I have farming ADD sometimes because I can be doing something full on for 15-20 minutes and then I'm ready to do the next thing super intensely for a bit. I am my own boss, which makes it all possible. In a day I get a lot done, but it might be 15% of 18 different tasks! Over time it adds up to a ridiculous amount of projects and functional moving parts... SO LONG AS I make sure that last 15% comes back around at some point :)
It would be jaw dropping. I am doing an update video today and I would say we are looking at 20-30 yards of compost coming out this spring from our .1 acre front yard...
I totally love your attitude, your approach, your perspective, on all you do on your land but especially the chicken. A cooperative system. Yes. Thank you.
Edible Acres Compost Buffet! All you can eat! Full service salad bar! Open sunrise to sunset, seven days a week, including holidays. We cater to large parties!
Some days I think there must be something wrong with me. I could watch my mixed flock all day. Then I come here and see all these wonderful people just as crazy as I am. LOL Great content Sean. Love your channel.
That is really warm compost! Chickens are easy to train with food like worms. My chickens love the tiller, shovel, turning fork, and my tractor with the bucket. Bring on the worms! I seen the steam when you were turning it. Personally I think chickens are happiest when they are busy doing chicken stuff. :)
So glad you show how to take a break in the cold weather for benefitting the chickens to scratch awhile before you turn more compost🤗(I think that's so important for some of us not to overheat our bodies for wellness in cold weather)
Sunday afternoon with Chicken TV. Mmm soooo nice. Thank you so much for showing the day to day of how compost can work multi-function duty on a homestead.
chicken butt!...hahaha...thanks for the interesting glimpse into your winter system!...love hearing the cardinal singing in the background!...can't wait for spring and warmer weather!....:D
That is a really beautiful symbiotic system. I just got my 1st batch of chicks last month. I've got 4 week old buff orpingtons and buckeyes and 2 week old black australorps. My compost pile is about 6 months in. I am hoping that both of these efforts will come into harmony by September. Peace and blessings.
Those chickens seem so happy! I would too if I had a food buffet in a sheltered enclosure. Wish I didn't live In Canada, I would be your customer for your compost for my little garden. Where I live chickens are not allowed! Love visiting family in Alden, NY and you are not too far from there.
We have much older hens, so we 'only' get 3 dozen eggs a day right now :) We share the surplus with friends and family and also do some trading/bartering with eggs for other things we're hoping for food wise.
You might want to consider building one or two worm beds. Feed a little bit of your chicken compost into the worm beds after it cools to safe temperature levels,and you get extremely high grade worm casts,and enough worms to use as fish bait and as chicken treats.
Great reminder. It is on my list as something to do. Worms tend to show up naturally but the chickens are so intense that I think they get hammered before they have a chance to really evolve.
This is one of the calmest large flocks I have seen on youtube. Do you sell a portion of the eggs harvested weekly? 65 hens must produce a lot of eggs!
They are much older hens, so they aren't super productive anymore. That said, we're getting 20+ eggs a day, so we eat a large amount and share a ton with friends and family.
It is such a pleasure to see chooks that are genuinely calm and satiated. I have noticed the black hens tend to stick together a bit. Maybe they a came together from a layer farm? Or maybe they speak a different dialect? ;) It is certainly educational watching them work the compost and to see that a more natural diet yields calmer birds. Perhaps it's the grain or soy products in commercial feeds that makes them antsy? Too much energy, perhaps? In any case, you are to be commended for your management techniques. Unfortunately in Australia, we can't access that volume of food scraps due to hygeine regulations. Otherwise I'd love to do this method.
What a bummer there are legal issues around this.... I wonder if you can simply do it and be off the radar? The black hens you saw may have been from one group we bought a ways back. They've been in their own crew for a while!
I made a mini version of this tunnel for my girls. It just has leaves in it and they love it! Thanks for the idea! I recall you mentioning tossing some seed in yours to produce sprouts for the ladies. What is it you add?
We mainly add what I call 'blow off grain' from a local organic flour mill. They have a machine that blows off weed seeds and misshapen grain seeds and bag it up. Ends up being mainly wheat seed with lots of other 'weeds' that the chickens seem to love as sprouts. You may be able to find something similar?
one question I have, when you collect leaves from the community, are you worried or are there any health issues if they also rake some dog waste in with the leaves?
I'm not worried about that. Chickens are insanely hearty if given fresh air, clean water, safe sleeping and a wide range of food and context to work in. With enough carbon around I suspect it all gets broken down/absorbed.
What if the hen walkway from coop to Compost Mountain/shed had mini compost mountains along either side of their walkway? It might create a heated walkway and coax more out of the coop as there would be some warmth right outside the coop and on the way to the compost mountain food source. Great video.
We recently learned of your amazing channel and immediately subscribed. We heard you talking about possibly getting rid of your roosters. It seems you’ve done that? If so, can you answer a few questions? 1) Has the need for hen saddles gone away and how long did it take your beautiful hens to recover and grow their feathers back? 2) What was your deciding factor to get rid of the roosters? 3) Did you merely diminish the rooster population if you didn’t get rid of them? If so, what is your hen:rooster? 4) Have your hens suffered at all or started acting unnatural without the presence of a rooster? Thank you so much for your time and efforts!
1) No more saddles needed 2) By a long shot, the determining factor was a neighbor complaining. We don't want trouble or to have people calling in inspections and oversight, or suing, etc., so they complained a good amount and we decided to be done with roosters 3) 65:0! 4) I get the feeling they miss the energy of a rooster sometimes, but overall there is nearly no conflict with our hens. I attribute that to a diversity of activities they can choose to do and an over abundance of food resource available. With one feeder of crappy pellets and nothing to do I could imagine our hens being VERY rough on each other...
EdibleAcres Thank you so much. We have over 150 chickens at the moment. We run a no-kill organic farmstead. We do have many roosters as we allow our broody hens to experience “motherhood” as they naturally would. We don’t want to deprive them of that We’ve had some issues with roosters piling up on our beloved ladies, waiting in line two and three at a time. Our hens are starting to look awful! Their backs and heads are bald! Yesterday, I pulled a rooster off one of our favorite Rhode Island Red hens and her side was split open profusely! She looked like a package of chicken breast at the store, her muscle exposed. Oh, it’s so awful. Thankfully, we were able to treat her and we’ve got her protected for now. We love all of our chickens, especially the roosters. None of them are anything but gentleman and wonderful toward us. They are just super hard on the hens. Thank you so much for this response and all that you do! I love your site and will go there frequently to hopefully buy some of your beautiful plants before they’re all sold out! If possible, could you do a video on propagating blackberries or goji berries from cuttings? That would be amazing! God bless you, Sasha and all of your beautiful hens!
@Amy אָהַב It sounds like making some decisions about culling the most aggressive roosters would be appropriate. If they are brutalizing your hens then that makes a lot of sense. We had many roosters at one point and they made life for the hens really bad. We harvested all except one or two and they have provided many incredible, nourishing and deeply appreciated meals AND took the pressure off our poor ladies so they could have a more relaxed life. Very much felt like the right move. Do you eat chicken from elsewhere or? I'm a little confused how you have 150 chickens but never cull any?
EdibleAcres We are I guess “veggan”. We eat our own eggs because we know our chickens are loved, appreciated and cared for deeply. But we don’t partake of any animal slaughter or dairy or outside eggs for our nourishment. We have a small, organic farmstead with an orchard, vineyard and garden all using the Back to Eden method. Our children and I are really getting excited to start a permaculture food forest in an unused area of our acreage. So, of course, we watch your channel every single day in our homeschooling permaculture science class. 😃 Until very recently, we’ve had no issues with our roosters. We really have only three that seem to be causing the problems with our hens. With US...they are FANTASTIC!!! We love them so. They allow us to carry them, cuddle them and they love it. They are so sweet with us! It’s just such a hardship to think about releasing them to someone who might eat them. But in the end, our hens are suffering and we have to find a solution for them. We have read that separating them from the flock for a bit might help calm them down. We’re going to take a room from the rehabbed-house-to-coop and turn it into the naughty rooster den. It has a separate run, roosts inside, feeder, waterer, everything they need. We’re going to pray fervently and hope that works to straighten those three out. Thank you so much for your heartfelt responses! We all just love you, Sasha, your chickens and your nursery so much. You’ve blessed our family tremendously! THANK YOU!
Hello EdibleAcres, really enjoy your videos, thanks for making me dream. I have a question as an unambitious hobbyist: I just want to grow and multiply some basil on my (south facing) bathroom window sill. My problem is that the soil I can get is very compact and quickly turns soggy even with sparse watering. Basil doesn't like wet feet, and all the sources I found recommend mixing in peat to loosen up the soil. I don't like that idea, seems unsustainable from what I heard. Any suggestion for alternatives?
The hen was correcting the other for dirtying up their fresh clean & warm, dry bedding. 💞👵 PS I'm new, today, so I ve only seen 2 videos. Why are the hens on the ground? Do they have high perches available?
Hey, Sean! Hey, Sasha! I’m just a little confused about which cattle panel tunnel this is; is this one multipurpose, or is it strictly for composting overwinter? Like, do you get all the compost out in late winter or spring and then set it up as a greenhouse to grow veggies or fruits? I’m just setting up something similar at my farm.
I loved the confusion in the beginning about the volume of compost ... turns out imperial units are shit for conversion, who knew :D Nice big pile for sure tho.
I love seeing what you do with the compost chicken system. My question is, how do you desl with rodents (mice and rats)? We only feed our own kitchen scraps to our home chickens and ate dealing already with mice. No way we could leave these ammounts of food out with the chickens without enabling an armada of mice to be born... Would love to hear you talk about that aspect. Best. Moritz
We see mice/voles/rats once in a while in the system, but so far we haven't had any issues with them. They show up, they eat for a while, they leave. The chicken presence is too intense for them to really easily set up shop or take over, so as of now they have only been a compatible side element.
Wouldn't a cat help to keep mice population at bay? We used to have a mice problem in our yard. This past year, neighborhood feral cats often stopped by for our meat scraps, and we have not seen mice in our garage or around the yard. Of course, it can be a coincidence but I much doubt that. Though I don't know how the chickens will feel having cats around. I don't have much experience with that.
Our still young chickens (1 year old) completely ignore the mice. They are totally uninterested. Saw the mice and chickens side by side in the coop. I was very surprised. Our cat got a hold of the situation though after I showes him the rustling.
Find a sawmill in your area. We get coarse hard maple wood chips from a local sawmill by the trailer load. I buy large bags of Feather Meal to break it down. We could trade if you were closer, haha.
ua-cam.com/play/PLihFHKqj6JerMl-RTZRp1ZTgNDK9Oce-T.html Propagation playlist of ours. You can check that out and find hardwood cutting and softwood cutting ideas we're trialling...
Too many variables to answer that question, sorry... You'll have to figure it out as you go. If you look at our older videos we had about 25 chickens for a while, and you can see what things looked like then, in our simple system.
I think you have a huge amount of labour ahead to deal with your mounds of compost. Perhaps its time to think up a plan to mature it and dispose of it. Best of luck with that.
Of all the problems and challenges of the farming style we're developing, the 'I have truly more compost than I know what to do with' is my favorite one to try to work on! This spring we plan to put the word out to local gardening groups and food bank garden plots, etc., to come and help themselves a bit.
Love the videos giving me so much food for thought on my new suburban homestead-to- be. I will be the first one to put a rural footprint on this suburban property. I'm only allowed five chickens though and they can only be Hens so I must select carefully. Are your black chickens Black Australopes? Any suggestions for first time new suburban homestead? I'm surrounded by many variations of trees which gives me a lot of leaves on the ground in the fall and instead of hauling them to the curb I was thinking of hauling them to the fenced in area attached to house that the previous owners used as a dog run which is about 4 ft high and runs the entire length of the house around 30 ft long and at least 12 ft wide. It has many cedar Play needles work and to the soil and various wild show growing. I think I am going to have an overgrown chicken coop in the middle of my property and workout from there. Much open yard that I like to turn into productive gardening and less mowing. Trying to fit the abundance of squirrels into my scheme 🐿️🌻🐿️
Yes they are Black Australorpes and YES to saving all the leaves... Move them into the chicken run and add more, they hens love them and they turn into beautiful soil over the winter with all the chicken play!
@@edibleacres thank you This is all very exciting even while being covered with snow here in Minnesota yet. Trying to think of some positive things to do to prepare for my new suburban homestead life. The area I was talking about seems to have very dark soil to begin with I'm not sure if the other owners had animals other than dogs there but it's well on its way and it's partly shaded most of the time so I thought that would be a good place for the chickens when they aren't in their coop. So now it's planning not planting but planning season, though I have put several slips of Christmas cactus in bigger pots but I don't know if I water too much or too little but sometimes I get up in the morning and disappointed to find stems have fallen on the floor during the night. I read not to water them until the topsoil is rather crusty. Finally just wanted to mention I originally from upstate New York, Cooperstown area is where I grew up 🌻🐓
Rats have a tendency to burrow down below and through the compost, which actively brings oxygen to the center of the piles, helping keep the microbes healthy and vibrant. not sure if problem or pest would be words I'd use. Different in different contexts to be sure
Everything we've seen and heard about ducks... we wouldn't want them in with this flock. SO much splashed water, so much mess. Someday we may consider them as their own element near water systems, but not in this system I don't htink.
@@edibleacres We have ducks in a tick tock system with the center point being a small pond. The most import part is the meadow we bring them out to. ducks and geese eat a shocking amount of pasture.
Looks like a great system! Im new to your channel and was wondering what your favorite winter hardy breed is. I live not to far away in WNY and will be purchasing my first egg layers this year.
Welcome to the channel! We started with Black Australorps and have loved them, but then over time added random birds as they were available from folks downsizing or otherwise. I couldn't tell you what breeds we have but for the most part everyone just works fine with this system. A few birds don't thrive on it, but I think its more that they are quite old... Barred Rock, Australorp and Reds have been the real winners so far.
For the most part the smell is just fine... If/when there is an issue with odor we know we HAVE to add more carbon and get more air into the pile, so if we get the smell at all we focus on that before it gets bad.
And grocery stores. They'll have old newspapers, too. They'll have to ask their suppliers if they can give them to you (most newspaper companies take old papers back).
I'd prefer wood chips as my 'browns' since the cardboard would require processing and it has glues and inks that I am OK with for weed supression, but I wouldn't want the chickens eating.
Alot, if not most of the paper/cardboard produced these days is genetically engineered. Same goes for most of the "bio-plastics", as they're using starches and such from GE corn, potato, sugarcane....... GMO's can modify soil biota, often even once processed into something. Contaminated land. Eco-terrorism. It's a silent war and they have everyday people, unknowingly, or knowingly, doing alot of the dirty work. Everything must be questioned at this late stage. It's a very sad state of affairs. It's so important to save and preserve Non-GE plants, animals etc, while there is still some time - and research bagging and hand-pollination etc, as it's essential to avoid pollen from GMO's. All life is being replaced by synthetic creations and that's not an overstatement...although I wish it was.
They sure do enjoy the heat... Should woodchips be mixed into the new food scraps as they come in, or only after some composting has occurred? Those black hens are beautiful.
My ideal scenario is a deep bed of woodchips (2' or deeper is great) that we can dump fresh food scraps on. The juices get caught by the chips, and then over time we can turn it down the line, put new chips down and start again.
I don't love lots of ash mixed in where the chickens are eating, seems likt it wouldn't be wonderful for them, but as an alkalizing agent at the end seems reasonable, or mixed with woodchips in a pile...
Hi Sean, I've been watching You and the flock since Arctic Blast video. One thing bothering me is aren't You worried about loses of nitrogen (via ammonia) from the compost? The only limit there is available space, wouldn't it be better to add more carbon-rich material earlier to assimilate excess N? About the sheer amount of compost which would make many people jealous :) - I use this sort of not-yet-ready material for mulching garden beds. Since I can only use a compost bin and there's not a lot of immature compost, the layer is at most 2 in deep but making it deeper won't hurt I believe. You still lose a bit of nitrogen but that could be remedied by a layer of dried grass clippings or straw at the top. Looking forward to new ideas for composting. :)
I hear you 100% about losing ammonia and other nutrient and also creating excess heat/gas that isn't ideal. In our very limited space adding 2 or 3 to one of bulking material to the compost would soak it all up but then it would fill the space MUCH faster. As soon as we get a little break I plan to move it to our larger nursery to apply as a rich mulch so that leaching can feed the plants rather than ground water. Once it warms up the bulk can go down since we don't need so so much to keep it from freezing. That will help. The other day a friend dropped of 30 some odd yards of fresh wood chips so I'm using them like crazy now!
I know a rooster is helpful there, but to be honest that is really rare. We'd have a rooster if we weren't right on the road with many houses so close.
I think you have beneficial addiction. Sanzotta Logging & Lumber, near Red Creek, sells sawdust for bedding. You could also call Finger Lakes Forest Management & Timber Harvesting. You may be able to score chippings. Yes, worms would definitely eat the stuff that's stinking up the pile, if the chickens couldn't get to them. Red worms (or red wrigglers) can take a lot of that heat. When they can't, they go to the edge and come right back in. :)
you could also find out who is 'servicing" finger lakes racetrack" they've got MAssive bins of straw based manure being hauled out daily, usually short on places to tip.... they'll PAY you for the priviledge. ;)
Yes, sometimes. But they have never been a problem for us so we let them be. If anything, when they do come around they help to aerate the pile so they are welcome.
It can be bad if I have the ratios way off... Too much nitrogen and it's unpleasant. I can use the smell to determine how well balanced it is. When it's balanced it smells like warm rich earth.
Mainly we have them as laying birds, but I suspect this would work with any type of chicken. Could be they won't 'size up' very quickly if it was purely for a meat bird operation, BUT the birds would have WAY more nutrient, much higher quality of life and have really helped with making fertility while part of the system.
Worms show up, but you're right that a more focused design is called for here. This amount of material could be loaded with a fair bit of worms! You planning on making videos again this spring? I haven't seen any from you in a while!
Cardboard is possible. I don't know that I would love to have a lot of cardboard in the system where they are eating as I think the glues and inks don't thrill me as part of their diet, but certainly as sheet mulch or walkways in future gardens.
A few words on breaking up projects. I was a project manager for a defense company before I retired. One of the things we had to be cognizant of was Work Task Breakdowns. And we had to budget each hour that a given phase of a project would take.
So in my retirement, I like to break down projects into their "atomic" parts. And it shows around my farm. When I get going on one thing, and I get tired of doing it, I move on to something else for a while, then circle back around to the first thing, and so on. The small steps I take are all progress. And I am not moving forward on any fixed time crunched schedule, that might get moved to the right due to delays. Well, I am the delay. And you know what? It will get done eventually, or it won't. But I'm not going to stress over doing a huge project, when I can just "play" for an hour or two, then go "play" on something else for a while. It keeps me from getting overworked, overstressed, and burning out. So 20 or 30 scoops, then go on, do something else, and the next time you walk by, do 20 or 30 more. It will get done.
Thanks for the reassurance! I do this too and have got nagged by people for it. I’ll tell them that that is how the military does it.
How about you add filming your farm work and UA-cam video creation and and posting to your chores?!?
I subbed and waiting 🤪
I hear you! I joke that I have farming ADD sometimes because I can be doing something full on for 15-20 minutes and then I'm ready to do the next thing super intensely for a bit. I am my own boss, which makes it all possible. In a day I get a lot done, but it might be 15% of 18 different tasks! Over time it adds up to a ridiculous amount of projects and functional moving parts... SO LONG AS I make sure that last 15% comes back around at some point :)
I think chicken tv is my new favorite thing.
Folks seem to really enjoy it. I may end up having a playlist of just chicken TV videos and offer one a week for people to enjoy.
Yes, oddly satisfying ; )
Same here!
Way better than cable
I love how polite you are to your chickens. :)
yes, me too.
Imagine how much soil could be built in a short amount of time if the government subsidized this style of compost manufacturing on a larger scale
It would be jaw dropping. I am doing an update video today and I would say we are looking at 20-30 yards of compost coming out this spring from our .1 acre front yard...
government doesn’t want, too many methane gaseous and environment nerd will start screaming
I totally love your attitude, your approach, your perspective, on all you do on your land but especially the chicken. A cooperative system. Yes. Thank you.
pro trick: you can watch movies on flixzone. I've been using them for watching lots of of movies these days.
@Jacob Christopher Yup, have been watching on flixzone for months myself :)
Edible Acres Compost Buffet!
All you can eat! Full service salad bar!
Open sunrise to sunset, seven days a week, including holidays.
We cater to large parties!
I can watch chicken tv for hours and hours. I find it very relaxing.
Some days I think there must be something wrong with me. I could watch my mixed flock all day. Then I come here and see all these wonderful people just as crazy as I am. LOL Great content Sean. Love your channel.
That is really warm compost! Chickens are easy to train with food like worms. My chickens love the tiller, shovel, turning fork, and my tractor with the bucket. Bring on the worms! I seen the steam when you were turning it. Personally I think chickens are happiest when they are busy doing chicken stuff. :)
Happiest and healthiest it seems.
I think your calm demeanor is reflected in your chickens.
I wonder if that has some influence on it.
So glad you show how to take a break in the cold weather for benefitting the chickens to scratch awhile before you turn more compost🤗(I think that's so important for some of us not to overheat our bodies for wellness in cold weather)
Sunday afternoon with Chicken TV. Mmm soooo nice. Thank you so much for showing the day to day of how compost can work multi-function duty on a homestead.
How on earth can anyone in his/her right mind give this video a thumbs down?!?!
chicken butt!...hahaha...thanks for the interesting glimpse into your winter system!...love hearing the cardinal singing in the background!...can't wait for spring and warmer weather!....:D
Best chicken TV on the internet! Keep it up. Well done!!!!
Definitely on the right track. They discovered the area where food was grown in the Amazon. The soil was black with biochar down to 10 feet.
sounds like the blue jays want some too!
This sight always warms my ❤️😊
I would suggest a manure fork with more tines closer together to make the turning process more effective. Great to see this system in place!
I love them floofing themselves up near the compost pile to get toasty.
Thanks for the tips!!
Love your videos!!
Some of my hens love Cilantro so much, their eggs taste like cilantro.
That sounds like a crazy flavor!
That is a really beautiful symbiotic system. I just got my 1st batch of chicks last month. I've got 4 week old buff orpingtons and buckeyes and 2 week old black australorps. My compost pile is about 6 months in. I am hoping that both of these efforts will come into harmony by September. Peace and blessings.
Wishing you and your hens all the best health and vitality. Kudos for getting into it and making it happen!
I miss having chickens! I enjoy your posts very much, keep 'em coming! Looks like everybody is fat and happy.
Them chickens look so happy & content ♥️👍
Those chickens seem so happy! I would too if I had a food buffet in a sheltered enclosure. Wish I didn't live In Canada, I would be your customer for your compost for my little garden. Where I live chickens are not allowed! Love visiting family in Alden, NY and you are not too far from there.
@@janew5351 City ordinances don't allow me to have chickens either ☹️👍♥️
@@janew5351 be happy that you in Canada , You can buy country house in Ontario Np
What a chicken feast! Those have got to be some great eggs!
I like of how well you treat your chickens
Thank you for the great videos. Please tell us what you do with 55-65 eggs a day when the girls are laying. TY.
We have much older hens, so we 'only' get 3 dozen eggs a day right now :) We share the
surplus with friends and family and also do some trading/bartering with eggs for other things we're hoping for food wise.
You might want to consider building one or two worm beds. Feed a little bit of your chicken compost into the worm beds after it cools to safe temperature levels,and you get extremely high grade worm casts,and enough worms to use as fish bait and as chicken treats.
Great reminder. It is on my list as something to do. Worms tend to show up naturally but the chickens are so intense that I think they get hammered before they have a chance to really evolve.
There's where the cardboard sheeting comes into play. ;)
This is one of the calmest large flocks I have seen on youtube. Do you sell a portion of the eggs harvested weekly? 65 hens must produce a lot of eggs!
They are much older hens, so they aren't super productive anymore. That said, we're getting 20+ eggs a day, so we eat a large amount and share a ton with friends and family.
It is such a pleasure to see chooks that are genuinely calm and satiated.
I have noticed the black hens tend to stick together a bit. Maybe they a came together from a layer farm?
Or maybe they speak a different dialect? ;)
It is certainly educational watching them work the compost and to see that a more natural diet yields calmer birds.
Perhaps it's the grain or soy products in commercial feeds that makes them antsy? Too much energy, perhaps?
In any case, you are to be commended for your management techniques.
Unfortunately in Australia, we can't access that volume of food scraps due to hygeine regulations.
Otherwise I'd love to do this method.
What a bummer there are legal issues around this.... I wonder if you can simply do it and be off the radar?
The black hens you saw may have been from one group we bought a ways back. They've been in their own crew for a while!
Truly a beautiful system.
That is one of coolest compost piles I have ever seen. I am going to try that on a smaller scale
I would believe this is scalable without a lot of problems...
Love your system! Hopping to do this when we finally get our flock
I made a mini version of this tunnel for my girls. It just has leaves in it and they love it! Thanks for the idea! I recall you mentioning tossing some seed in yours to produce sprouts for the ladies. What is it you add?
We mainly add what I call 'blow off grain' from a local organic flour mill. They have a machine that blows off weed seeds and misshapen grain seeds and bag it up. Ends up being mainly wheat seed with lots of other 'weeds' that the chickens seem to love as sprouts. You may be able to find something similar?
Kimchi for Chooks! Looks good. Happy, well fed hens.
one question I have, when you collect leaves from the community, are you worried or are there any health issues if they also rake some dog waste in with the leaves?
I'm not worried about that. Chickens are insanely hearty if given fresh air, clean water, safe sleeping and a wide range of food and context to work in. With enough carbon around I suspect it all gets broken down/absorbed.
What if the hen walkway from coop to Compost Mountain/shed had mini compost mountains along either side of their walkway? It might create a heated walkway and coax more out of the coop as there would be some warmth right outside the coop and on the way to the compost mountain food source. Great video.
Wow looks so cold, brilliant compost pile👍😍
I love my 35 chickens so much, I almost want to give them to you. :)
We recently learned of your amazing channel and immediately subscribed. We heard you talking about possibly getting rid of your roosters. It seems you’ve done that? If so, can you answer a few questions?
1) Has the need for hen saddles gone away and how long did it take your beautiful hens to recover and grow their feathers back?
2) What was your deciding factor to get rid of the roosters?
3) Did you merely diminish the rooster population if you didn’t get rid of them? If so, what is your hen:rooster?
4) Have your hens suffered at all or started acting unnatural without the presence of a rooster?
Thank you so much for your time and efforts!
1) No more saddles needed
2) By a long shot, the determining factor was a neighbor complaining. We don't want trouble or to have people calling in inspections and oversight, or suing, etc., so they complained a good amount and we decided to be done with roosters
3) 65:0!
4) I get the feeling they miss the energy of a rooster sometimes, but overall there is nearly no conflict with our hens. I attribute that to a diversity of activities they can choose to do and an over abundance of food resource available. With one feeder of crappy pellets and nothing to do I could imagine our hens being VERY rough on each other...
EdibleAcres Thank you so much. We have over 150 chickens at the moment. We run a no-kill organic farmstead. We do have many roosters as we allow our broody hens to experience “motherhood” as they naturally would. We don’t want to deprive them of that
We’ve had some issues with roosters piling up on our beloved ladies, waiting in line two and three at a time. Our hens are starting to look awful! Their backs and heads are bald!
Yesterday, I pulled a rooster off one of our favorite Rhode Island Red hens and her side was split open profusely! She looked like a package of chicken breast at the store, her muscle exposed. Oh, it’s so awful. Thankfully, we were able to treat her and we’ve got her protected for now.
We love all of our chickens, especially the roosters. None of them are anything but gentleman and wonderful toward us. They are just super hard on the hens.
Thank you so much for this response and all that you do! I love your site and will go there frequently to hopefully buy some of your beautiful plants before they’re all sold out!
If possible, could you do a video on propagating blackberries or goji berries from cuttings? That would be amazing! God bless you, Sasha and all of your beautiful hens!
@Amy אָהַב It sounds like making some decisions about culling the most aggressive roosters would be appropriate. If they are brutalizing your hens then that makes a lot of sense. We had many roosters at one point and they made life for the hens really bad. We harvested all except one or two and they have provided many incredible, nourishing and deeply appreciated meals AND took the pressure off our poor ladies so they could have a more relaxed life. Very much felt like the right move. Do you eat chicken from elsewhere or? I'm a little confused how you have 150 chickens but never cull any?
EdibleAcres We are I guess “veggan”. We eat our own eggs because we know our chickens are loved, appreciated and cared for deeply. But we don’t partake of any animal slaughter or dairy or outside eggs for our nourishment. We have a small, organic farmstead with an orchard, vineyard and garden all using the Back to Eden method. Our children and I are really getting excited to start a permaculture food forest in an unused area of our acreage. So, of course, we watch your channel every single day in our homeschooling permaculture science class. 😃
Until very recently, we’ve had no issues with our roosters. We really have only three that seem to be causing the problems with our hens. With US...they are FANTASTIC!!! We love them so. They allow us to carry them, cuddle them and they love it. They are so sweet with us! It’s just such a hardship to think about releasing them to someone who might eat them.
But in the end, our hens are suffering and we have to find a solution for them.
We have read that separating them from the flock for a bit might help calm them down. We’re going to take a room from the rehabbed-house-to-coop and turn it into the naughty rooster den. It has a separate run, roosts inside, feeder, waterer, everything they need.
We’re going to pray fervently and hope that works to straighten those three out.
Thank you so much for your heartfelt responses! We all just love you, Sasha, your chickens and your nursery so much. You’ve blessed our family tremendously! THANK YOU!
Hello EdibleAcres, really enjoy your videos, thanks for making me dream.
I have a question as an unambitious hobbyist: I just want to grow and multiply some basil on my (south facing) bathroom window sill. My problem is that the soil I can get is very compact and quickly turns soggy even with sparse watering. Basil doesn't like wet feet, and all the sources I found recommend mixing in peat to loosen up the soil. I don't like that idea, seems unsustainable from what I heard. Any suggestion for alternatives?
Sand would help with drainage, or perlite, or biochar could all assist with better water flow...
Do you get broody chickens? Mine are always going broody, seems i have 4-6 broody at the same time.
We do. Right now we have about 6+ all broody! Super annoying!
The hen was correcting the other for dirtying up their fresh clean & warm, dry bedding.
💞👵
PS I'm new, today, so I ve only seen 2 videos. Why are the hens on the ground? Do they have high perches available?
A food scrap chicken paradise is what I see here.
Hey, Sean! Hey, Sasha! I’m just a little confused about which cattle panel tunnel this is; is this one multipurpose, or is it strictly for composting overwinter? Like, do you get all the compost out in late winter or spring and then set it up as a greenhouse to grow veggies or fruits? I’m just setting up something similar at my farm.
I loved the confusion in the beginning about the volume of compost ... turns out imperial units are shit for conversion, who knew :D
Nice big pile for sure tho.
Imperial units are mathematical perfection! I love taking a 1 and 15/16" board and shaving 3/8" off it! :)
Best chicken TV!!! Love it!
I love seeing what you do with the compost chicken system. My question is, how do you desl with rodents (mice and rats)? We only feed our own kitchen scraps to our home chickens and ate dealing already with mice. No way we could leave these ammounts of food out with the chickens without enabling an armada of mice to be born... Would love to hear you talk about that aspect.
Best.
Moritz
We see mice/voles/rats once in a while in the system, but so far we haven't had any issues with them. They show up, they eat for a while, they leave. The chicken presence is too intense for them to really easily set up shop or take over, so as of now they have only been a compatible side element.
Wouldn't a cat help to keep mice population at bay? We used to have a mice problem in our yard. This past year, neighborhood feral cats often stopped by for our meat scraps, and we have not seen mice in our garage or around the yard. Of course, it can be a coincidence but I much doubt that. Though I don't know how the chickens will feel having cats around. I don't have much experience with that.
Chickens eat mice...extra protein bonus!
Our chickens liked mice. Our guinea fowl was the one that got most of them however. Very adept at catching mice, lizards, even snakes.
Our still young chickens (1 year old) completely ignore the mice. They are totally uninterested. Saw the mice and chickens side by side in the coop. I was very surprised. Our cat got a hold of the situation though after I showes him the rustling.
I wonder how this could easily be used to, say, heat a green house or the chickens or your own house (or all three!).
That is the next step with this all, is figure out how to work with the excess heat in more productive ways...
Find a sawmill in your area. We get coarse hard maple wood chips from a local sawmill by the trailer load. I buy large bags of Feather Meal to break it down. We could trade if you were closer, haha.
Sounds like a great system!
Do you have any videos on how you propagate from cuttings?
ua-cam.com/play/PLihFHKqj6JerMl-RTZRp1ZTgNDK9Oce-T.html
Propagation playlist of ours. You can check that out and find hardwood cutting and softwood cutting ideas we're trialling...
Hey,
What do u do with your compost at the end?!
Fluffy butts. I have 3 fluffy butts and Mr. Chicken who watches over them.
How big should a compost pile be to sustain lets say 30 chickens
Too many variables to answer that question, sorry... You'll have to figure it out as you go. If you look at our older videos we had about 25 chickens for a while, and you can see what things looked like then, in our simple system.
Hi love your channel ! Do you ever worry about rats with all of the food scraps I'm the compost ?
I think you have a huge amount of labour ahead to deal with your mounds of compost. Perhaps its time to think up a plan to mature it and dispose of it. Best of luck with that.
Of all the problems and challenges of the farming style we're developing, the 'I have truly more compost than I know what to do with' is my favorite one to try to work on! This spring we plan to put the word out to local gardening groups and food bank garden plots, etc., to come and help themselves a bit.
@@edibleacres that is a good idea!
@@edibleacres That is so generous of you! I would love to have your "compost problem". LOL My soil needs it!
Love the videos giving me so much food for thought on my new suburban homestead-to- be. I will be the first one to put a rural footprint on this suburban property. I'm only allowed five chickens though and they can only be Hens so I must select carefully. Are your black chickens Black Australopes? Any suggestions for first time new suburban homestead? I'm surrounded by many variations of trees which gives me a lot of leaves on the ground in the fall and instead of hauling them to the curb I was thinking of hauling them to the fenced in area attached to house that the previous owners used as a dog run which is about 4 ft high and runs the entire length of the house around 30 ft long and at least 12 ft wide. It has many cedar Play needles work and to the soil and various wild show growing. I think I am going to have an overgrown chicken coop in the middle of my property and workout from there. Much open yard that I like to turn into productive gardening and less mowing. Trying to fit the abundance of squirrels into my scheme 🐿️🌻🐿️
Yes they are Black Australorpes and YES to saving all the leaves... Move them into the chicken run and add more, they hens love them and they turn into beautiful soil over the winter with all the chicken play!
@@edibleacres thank you This is all very exciting even while being covered with snow here in Minnesota yet. Trying to think of some positive things to do to prepare for my new suburban homestead life. The area I was talking about seems to have very dark soil to begin with I'm not sure if the other owners had animals other than dogs there but it's well on its way and it's partly shaded most of the time so I thought that would be a good place for the chickens when they aren't in their coop. So now it's planning not planting but planning season, though I have put several slips of Christmas cactus in bigger pots but I don't know if I water too much or too little but sometimes I get up in the morning and disappointed to find stems have fallen on the floor during the night. I read not to water them until the topsoil is rather crusty. Finally just wanted to mention I originally from upstate New York, Cooperstown area is where I grew up 🌻🐓
Do you have any problems with rats or other pests? Here in Chicago, it's always a struggle to keep rats out of our compost.
Rats have a tendency to burrow down below and through the compost, which actively brings oxygen to the center of the piles, helping keep the microbes healthy and vibrant. not sure if problem or pest would be words I'd use. Different in different contexts to be sure
Offices always have mountains of shredded paper to be rid of, year round.
You've managed to give your friends a check mark by every step of Dr. Maslow's pyramid. Congratulations on having Self-Actualized Chickens! ;-)
more chicken TV. what are the chances you get some ducks? if you had access to an area that was pasture i'd say get ducks
Everything we've seen and heard about ducks... we wouldn't want them in with this flock. SO much splashed water, so much mess. Someday we may consider them as their own element near water systems, but not in this system I don't htink.
@@edibleacres We have ducks in a tick tock system with the center point being a small pond. The most import part is the meadow we bring them out to. ducks and geese eat a shocking amount of pasture.
Looks like a great system! Im new to your channel and was wondering what your favorite winter hardy breed is. I live not to far away in WNY and will be purchasing my first egg layers this year.
Welcome to the channel!
We started with Black Australorps and have loved them, but then over time added random birds as they were available from folks downsizing or otherwise. I couldn't tell you what breeds we have but for the most part everyone just works fine with this system. A few birds don't thrive on it, but I think its more that they are quite old... Barred Rock, Australorp and Reds have been the real winners so far.
@@edibleacres thanks!
thanks for sharing that video .but i have a question how you deal with the smell should be awfel
For the most part the smell is just fine... If/when there is an issue with odor we know we HAVE to add more carbon and get more air into the pile, so if we get the smell at all we focus on that before it gets bad.
Have you ever heard of chaffhaye? Thoughts?
I haven't heard of it.
How do you feel about cardboard, as I am sure the restaurants have plenty to pick up along with your buckets!
And grocery stores. They'll have old newspapers, too. They'll have to ask their suppliers if they can give them to you (most newspaper companies take old papers back).
I'd prefer wood chips as my 'browns' since the cardboard would require processing and it has glues and inks that I am OK with for weed supression, but I wouldn't want the chickens eating.
Alot, if not most of the paper/cardboard produced these days is genetically engineered. Same goes for most of the "bio-plastics", as they're using starches and such from GE corn, potato, sugarcane....... GMO's can modify soil biota, often even once processed into something. Contaminated land. Eco-terrorism. It's a silent war and they have everyday people, unknowingly, or knowingly, doing alot of the dirty work. Everything must be questioned at this late stage. It's a very sad state of affairs. It's so important to save and preserve Non-GE plants, animals etc, while there is still some time - and research bagging and hand-pollination etc, as it's essential to avoid pollen from GMO's.
All life is being replaced by synthetic creations and that's not an overstatement...although I wish it was.
came to see the compost, shocked by the 'two chickens' 😃
Very good idea.
Can I have your compost please? Lol
We're looking forward to sharing locally when things thaw out. If you are ever driving through the finger lakes of NY, bring some buckets :)
@@edibleacres hi! I was joking. I live in high East Europe mountains!
Happy Ladys
They sure do enjoy the heat...
Should woodchips be mixed into the new food scraps as they come in, or only after some composting has occurred?
Those black hens are beautiful.
My ideal scenario is a deep bed of woodchips (2' or deeper is great) that we can dump fresh food scraps on. The juices get caught by the chips, and then over time we can turn it down the line, put new chips down and start again.
EdibleAcres thank you.
Do the chickens live in there? Roost and stuff?
No, they have their own wooden coop only a few feet over.
Can ash be added? Also could hay be added?
After chicken done the job for final composting you can add
I don't love lots of ash mixed in where the chickens are eating, seems likt it wouldn't be wonderful for them, but as an alkalizing agent at the end seems reasonable, or mixed with woodchips in a pile...
Hi Sean, I've been watching You and the flock since Arctic Blast video. One thing bothering me is aren't You worried about loses of nitrogen (via ammonia) from the compost? The only limit there is available space, wouldn't it be better to add more carbon-rich material earlier to assimilate excess N?
About the sheer amount of compost which would make many people jealous :) - I use this sort of not-yet-ready material for mulching garden beds. Since I can only use a compost bin and there's not a lot of immature compost, the layer is at most 2 in deep but making it deeper won't hurt I believe. You still lose a bit of nitrogen but that could be remedied by a layer of dried grass clippings or straw at the top.
Looking forward to new ideas for composting. :)
I hear you 100% about losing ammonia and other nutrient and also creating excess heat/gas that isn't ideal. In our very limited space adding 2 or 3 to one of bulking material to the compost would soak it all up but then it would fill the space MUCH faster. As soon as we get a little break I plan to move it to our larger nursery to apply as a rich mulch so that leaching can feed the plants rather than ground water.
Once it warms up the bulk can go down since we don't need so so much to keep it from freezing. That will help.
The other day a friend dropped of 30 some odd yards of fresh wood chips so I'm using them like crazy now!
Where do you get all the scrap food?
We share lots of notes, and there are great comments too, in this video:
ua-cam.com/video/Y5qyJcr6WJs/v-deo.html
kicking it coop style!
4:55 that's what happens when you don't keep a rooster. Whole pecking order gets disturbed. One must always keep a rooster in a flock.
I know a rooster is helpful there, but to be honest that is really rare. We'd have a rooster if we weren't right on the road with many houses so close.
I think you have beneficial addiction. Sanzotta Logging & Lumber, near Red Creek, sells sawdust for bedding. You could also call Finger Lakes Forest Management & Timber Harvesting. You may be able to score chippings. Yes, worms would definitely eat the stuff that's stinking up the pile, if the chickens couldn't get to them. Red worms (or red wrigglers) can take a lot of that heat. When they can't, they go to the edge and come right back in. :)
you could also find out who is 'servicing" finger lakes racetrack" they've got MAssive bins of straw based manure being hauled out daily, usually short on places to tip.... they'll PAY you for the priviledge. ;)
The way ur just moving 20ish scoops then breaking. U wont ever notice the work but itll be getting done.
Do you ever have any/see any rats?
Yes, sometimes. But they have never been a problem for us so we let them be. If anything, when they do come around they help to aerate the pile so they are welcome.
Aaahhh chicken tv.
Yeeeeeeee chickens
How bad is the smell in the green house?
It can be bad if I have the ratios way off... Too much nitrogen and it's unpleasant. I can use the smell to determine how well balanced it is. When it's balanced it smells like warm rich earth.
@@edibleacres Thanks for replying!
@@edibleacres How do you balance it ? what causes more nitrogen ? remedy you use ?
Chicken Nirvana
Why don't you make a hot bed for you're vegetables starts
I plan to do that for sure. Great application for at least some of this material.
Are they meat birds or layers? Or mixed?
does not matter
Mainly we have them as laying birds, but I suspect this would work with any type of chicken. Could be they won't 'size up' very quickly if it was purely for a meat bird operation, BUT the birds would have WAY more nutrient, much higher quality of life and have really helped with making fertility while part of the system.
You need some compost worms mate :)
Worms show up, but you're right that a more focused design is called for here. This amount of material could be loaded with a fair bit of worms!
You planning on making videos again this spring? I haven't seen any from you in a while!
Could you use cardboard? That would be easy to get from the recycling center.
Cardboard is possible. I don't know that I would love to have a lot of cardboard in the system where they are eating as I think the glues and inks don't thrill me as part of their diet, but certainly as sheet mulch or walkways in future gardens.
@@edibleacres I didn't think about the glues and inks. Good point.
@@dollyperry3020 chicken don't eat cardboard. food scraps and bugs.
CB is for mulching
@@davelawson2564 Well technically they don't eat wood chips either. But I get your point :)
@@dollyperry3020 Nobody thought about feeding them wood chips. you could try ! LOL !
Ask your neighbors to save their ash and charcoal for you...
Your chickens must be so fat with all that food 👍😀
bro, you see how your chickens are positioned on that hump? that's the Hierarchy of your Hens... checkout JADAM natural farming.
They have a roost design you'd be interested in
I should check them out, if you have good links to share please send them here so others can see them too...
why soy? no soy!