It's lovely to see the rescue hens happily enjoying their raw milk and other treats - those damaged beaks don't seem to hold them back any more now they're in such a rich and safe environment! Chicken Heaven.
I am so at school here. Can't stop smiling seeing your enthusiastic workers. They know that every move that is made will bring them treats, so they are surely "beaks-on" ... 😆 🤣 😂 ❤️ 💙 💜
Chicken TV ?? I watched this now 3 times and love it; To hear the chicken and see how relaxed they are and working away in the garden is awesome. I could set up a hammock and really unwind and relax listening to the chickens, their chatter would put me to sleep and it would be a good sleep for sure. Cheers
@@paperm2023 I know he has a lot of chicken vids, I was 1 of the 1st people that subscribed to there channel years ago and I never miss a single vid. Love there attitude towards gardening and respect for animal life. Cheers
@@antiowarr9467 when you said watched this 3 times, I assumed you meant watched chicken tv 3 times. Not watched this video 3 times, but if that’s the case even better!!
@@paperm2023 I watched all the vids and every chicken TV vid more than once. But this 1 I watched 3 times in a row lol lol Love the chicken vids. A find bunch of characters the birds.... lol lol cheers
Thank you for sharing. I'm happy to announce that after years of dealing with crappy potting mixes from the store, I am now setting up my dream chicken run, with this same composting workflow as the basis. I'm really looking forward to making my own potting mixes, and seeing my plants thrive, instead of stay stunted and stressed.
SO pumped with your every update. Tough I live in a completely different climate with access to very different plants, I've been learning so much, thank you for sharing everything with us.
Perfect timing to see this. We finally got out chickens 2 weeks ago having lovingly watched your channel and chickenTV for nearly 3 years now studying how we can adpat it to our context we've finally got there with our first 10 chickens. We plan to get more in the spring. They are already happily scratching through material looking for goodies and making us beautiful compost. Thanks for all your efforts and videos!
Cincinnati is my hometown and it's full of steep wooded hillsides with invasive honeysuckle understory I have a fantasy of buying one of these hillside lots and building a covered chicken run from to top to bottom. By inputting composting material at the top, we could expect chickens and gravity to do the rest.
Lovely! We've used a lot of your ideas and this fall we've expanded our flock's open pen outside their bombproof one. It now has a good compost pile, covered dust bath for winter, and lots of perches and places to hang on on nicer winter days.
Great video as usual. I already started to colkect leaves. Also remind my neighbours that there leaves are welcome. Since this year I habe access to sawdust - great resouce. Togehter with grass clippings....thank you Sean for all the lessons you teached me during the years.
Now that I have a good 4 or 5 inches of hay and leaves in my backyard run, I am finding myself turning it with a pitchfork daily and my 5 hens are loving it! They seem more interested in the dirt/bugs and what I’m doing with the pitchfork than in the fermented whole seeds and mealworms that I bring out to them. Thank you for the inspiration/instruction 🤙
I do the same thing with our trees. We have primarily evergreens, and I run a mulching mower over the pine needles and use them in the strawberry beds, and under the evergreens. The strawberries love them! Pine needles tend to mat and promote runoff if left alone, but mulching them improves the water infiltration, and helps to slightly acidify our very alkaline soil. Mulching recreates the natural processes (animal traffic, decomposition etc) but at a much faster rate. I’ll be seeing how strawberry transplants will do under the evergreen canopies next summer in pine mulched beds. So far nothing grows under the evergreens besides some wild barberry, so I hope it works!!
Where there is food there will be rodents but there will be also predators, so a balance would be desirable. I used to see some little mice around my cold compost but not in the hot compost. However, I have not seen mice lately, maybe because there are some bids of prey flying around and may be they got the mice.
They eat so well. I hinted to family members that have hens in a less ideal situation than yours to sprout a few greens (the hens prett much decimated the prairie they are on).... and diversify the environment in the coop and run... let’s see if they can conceive it...
Cute little chicks! Aweeee I am curious if you grow mimosa trees in your gardens to help with nitrogen fixation. Thanks for the awesome compost video!!! And chicken tv :) I have a huge flock myself still love watching chicken tv here :)
We have a similar "problem"... need to move chicken dirt out of the hen yard before it freezes! Not a problem, of course. The real problem is my age, which prevents too much digging in one day ...
That is a genius work my friend! you are recycling greens and browns generating best compost while raising healthy checkens and be rewarded with egss & meat, i want to ask if you could share a simple drawing of this system that is easy for us to follow and build ? Or if you have a book that describe what you are doing in order to make this system successfull?
The hens all look lovely! 3/4 of mine are molting, and look quite sad. I am finally starting to grasp how your compost "travels" through the chicken yard.
We have hens that molt this time of year sometimes and every time it happens I think we must be doing something wrong since they look so bad, but then I remember it just happens!
when you bring in new adult hens to your coop, or you introduce them to your flock, do you do so slowly or just let them in? Do you have a problem with them fighting?
My gosh, what beautiful soil/compost! I have a question about a system like this though - there are items that shouldn't be given to chickens like moldy things, coffee grounds, etc. - seeing the amounts of food waste in the video, you're probably not going through and picking stuff out. So do you just trust the chickens to avoid what they shouldn't eat? Or is it more of a "a little won't hurt them" situation? I'm setting up a compost pile in my little chicken yard and I was confused about how to handle this issue.
We have learned that if we offer a very wide range of mainly very good things, with some bad stuff like coffee, onion peels, etc., they are just fine working around it.. Avoid it when you can, don't stress when you can't.
would you feel comfortable sharing how much mature compost you get out of this system each year, and roughly the square footage of your entire chicken yard enclosure?
also, I dont know the specifics of how feasible it would be and what equipment you would need, but, I think setting up permanent cameras in the chicken run so we could watch what they do, would be awesome. Im pretty sure all of us love chicken tv, lol.
Looking at his system makes you think it’s a large area, but his entire yard is 1/2 acre. The chicken area borders a very busy road. Bet it’s about 1/10 of an acre, about 4,300 ft or less.
@@kenyonbissett3512 yeah, I thought it was a quarter acre, but, we usually looking at specific spaces, and not the whole area so I could never get a gage on it.
There is no such thing as too much chicken TV. :) Next spring I'll integrate cattle panel and milk crate areas in their enclosure, and figure out a way to enlarge their territory. Harvested Boston Marrow pumpkins which I don't really like, but which they love, so I'll press to commandeer an area of field that'll be planted with something like corn. There are no community sources of organic anything anywhere near here.
@@edibleacres That's exactly what we started doing last summer. Lettuce, borage, and anything extra went into their enclosure. There's an area that's 6 inches thick of compost they're still working on. :) Next spring we want to raise some chicks and renew the flock.
@@edibleacres Oh definitely. I planted some of the garden with them in mind, and I'm certain I can devote more garden area to them next summer, since we're aiming to add 4 3'x50' or so beds. The three sisters should be a big part of that.
Hello, Sean and Sasha: i am in Mendocino County in Northern California, and all signs are pointing to a frigid, rough winter ahead. We ought to be well into the wet season (the rain used to start just before Halloween) but no such luck. However, life continues. Can i ask the name of that breed of chicken (little Mama), if you happen to know? I have a few hens that are aging out, and would like to see if my local feed store can order some for me. Thank you in advance!
They have a greenhouse for ’day sunbathing’ area in the winter time and generous food to burn calories, and insulated coop. They look adolescent to me, in 3 weeks time when the real cold hits they should be fine.
Just curious what breed of chicken mama hen is??? She is super pretty. I have a small system i have designed around your, 6 hens in a urban backyard. We appreciate all you have shown us!!!
Hurry up and flip my compost piles humans, I want some worms and grubs and bugs….😂. Aside from the milk do they get any other animal protein, or are the grubs enough? I’m thinking they are enough, they look very heavy birds.
It's lovely to see the rescue hens happily enjoying their raw milk and other treats - those damaged beaks don't seem to hold them back any more now they're in such a rich and safe environment! Chicken Heaven.
I am so at school here. Can't stop smiling seeing your enthusiastic workers. They know that every move that is made will bring them treats, so they are surely "beaks-on" ... 😆 🤣 😂 ❤️ 💙 💜
We're glad you are enjoying seeing our friends at work!
Chicken TV ?? I watched this now 3 times and love it; To hear the chicken and see how relaxed they are and working away in the garden is awesome. I could set up a hammock and really unwind and relax listening to the chickens, their chatter would put me to sleep and it would be a good sleep for sure. Cheers
He has a LOT of chicken videos ua-cam.com/play/PLihFHKqj6Jeog3qoYlmhOPt_eElEhNMpH.html
@@paperm2023 I know he has a lot of chicken vids, I was 1 of the 1st people that subscribed to there channel years ago and I never miss a single vid. Love there attitude towards gardening and respect for animal life. Cheers
@@antiowarr9467 when you said watched this 3 times, I assumed you meant watched chicken tv 3 times. Not watched this video 3 times, but if that’s the case even better!!
@@paperm2023 I watched all the vids and every chicken TV vid more than once. But this 1 I watched 3 times in a row lol lol Love the chicken vids. A find bunch of characters the birds.... lol lol cheers
Same. It’s quite mesmerizing. I’ve learned so much here. The chicken sounds are quite lovely. You can feel their contentment.
Thank you for sharing. I'm happy to announce that after years of dealing with crappy potting mixes from the store, I am now setting up my dream chicken run, with this same composting workflow as the basis. I'm really looking forward to making my own potting mixes, and seeing my plants thrive, instead of stay stunted and stressed.
SO pumped with your every update. Tough I live in a completely different climate with access to very different plants, I've been learning so much, thank you for sharing everything with us.
Good stuff Sean! You have provided so much inspiration for our composting efforts and much more. Great channel one of the best!!
nice to see the new chickens getting healthy! best regards from Austria !
The mama and babies are just precious! My goal is to have a chicken composting system similar to yours but smaller.
Perfect timing to see this. We finally got out chickens 2 weeks ago having lovingly watched your channel and chickenTV for nearly 3 years now studying how we can adpat it to our context we've finally got there with our first 10 chickens. We plan to get more in the spring. They are already happily scratching through material looking for goodies and making us beautiful compost. Thanks for all your efforts and videos!
So excited for you!
I always love your chicken compost videos!
Love your composting videos. Looking to get chickens next year and try your methods.
Cincinnati is my hometown and it's full of steep wooded hillsides with invasive honeysuckle understory
I have a fantasy of buying one of these hillside lots and building a covered chicken run from to top to bottom.
By inputting composting material at the top, we could expect chickens and gravity to do the rest.
That would be amazing!!
Lovely! We've used a lot of your ideas and this fall we've expanded our flock's open pen outside their bombproof one. It now has a good compost pile, covered dust bath for winter, and lots of perches and places to hang on on nicer winter days.
Your commitment to generating compost is impressive!
Watching your happy hens brings me much peace. Thank you for providing such a safe and peaceful environment for them to thrive.
Really our pleasure
Great video as usual. I already started to colkect leaves. Also remind my neighbours that there leaves are welcome. Since this year I habe access to sawdust - great resouce. Togehter with grass clippings....thank you Sean for all the lessons you teached me during the years.
I love the sheer agility of your systems and how much value you squeeze out of them.
Great to see the chicken updates! I was wondering how you were going to get those trees out of that tight chicken wire.
I’m really starting to love hens! I never thought that I would after my 1st batch sucked! Now they are so nice! And friendly
We enjoy having them with us to be sure
Love seeing the chickens. Great video. Wonderful update. I’ve learned so much from your channel. ❤
Love updates of the chicken setup. This is the best chicken setup on the internet. 👌
Wow! Thats a claim indeed. I like it :)
We're trying our best and learning as we go, thats about all we can do.
Now that I have a good 4 or 5 inches of hay and leaves in my backyard run, I am finding myself turning it with a pitchfork daily and my 5 hens are loving it! They seem more interested in the dirt/bugs and what I’m doing with the pitchfork than in the fermented whole seeds and mealworms that I bring out to them. Thank you for the inspiration/instruction 🤙
So great! In many ways it really is a very very basic system that just works. So glad it is working for you and even more importantly, your hens!
@@edibleacres very enjoyable for me as well
I used to want to be a pampered house cat in my next life. Now I want to be one of Sean and Saschas chickens!
I do the same thing with our trees. We have primarily evergreens, and I run a mulching mower over the pine needles and use them in the strawberry beds, and under the evergreens. The strawberries love them! Pine needles tend to mat and promote runoff if left alone, but mulching them improves the water infiltration, and helps to slightly acidify our very alkaline soil. Mulching recreates the natural processes (animal traffic, decomposition etc) but at a much faster rate. I’ll be seeing how strawberry transplants will do under the evergreen canopies next summer in pine mulched beds. So far nothing grows under the evergreens besides some wild barberry, so I hope it works!!
Such Chicken heaven - a real inspiration Xx
So glad you feel that way!
Looking beautiful! I was wondering if you (or anyone here) had any issues with rats/rodents with the outdoor composting system? And if it matters?
Where there is food there will be rodents but there will be also predators, so a balance would be desirable. I used to see some little mice around my cold compost but not in the hot compost. However, I have not seen mice lately, maybe because there are some bids of prey flying around and may be they got the mice.
Our chickens eat mice, so no problem there.. Rats showed up way back when but they left after a while...
@@edibleacres I do not have chickens yet but planning to adopt some. I just need to build the chicken coop and run.
Chicken TV !! Baby Chicken TV !! Hooray !!
They eat so well. I hinted to family members that have hens in a less ideal situation than yours to sprout a few greens (the hens prett much decimated the prairie they are on).... and diversify the environment in the coop and run... let’s see if they can conceive it...
Maybe some of these videos can help them feel inspired? It saves a ton of money this way if that is a helpful selling point
Cute little chicks! Aweeee
I am curious if you grow mimosa trees in your gardens to help with nitrogen fixation. Thanks for the awesome compost video!!! And chicken tv :) I have a huge flock myself still love watching chicken tv here :)
We are too cold as far as I understand to work with Mimosa, but we have other nitrogen fixing plants we incorporate for sure
Love your videos and thank you for sharing this information with us
cute little dinosaures
Great setup & very spoilt chooks..I never knew they could have milk.
They certainly can have milk, and they love it. We give them older milk from a local dairy that we trade for
Quick question, do you collect the"drain" water from your compost pile and use it else where?
This is huge inspiration thanks 🙂
Love your stuff! Dairy is generally a no go for poultry though. They can’t digest it.
Chicken tv makes my day :-) Thanks!
Great update. How big is your chicken area please?
We have a similar "problem"... need to move chicken dirt out of the hen yard before it freezes! Not a problem, of course. The real problem is my age, which prevents too much digging in one day ...
That is a genius work my friend! you are recycling greens and browns generating best compost while raising healthy checkens and be rewarded with egss & meat, i want to ask if you could share a simple drawing of this system that is easy for us to follow and build ? Or if you have a book that describe what you are doing in order to make this system successfull?
Sean should write a book!
Excellent 👍
The hens all look lovely! 3/4 of mine are molting, and look quite sad. I am finally starting to grasp how your compost "travels" through the chicken yard.
We have hens that molt this time of year sometimes and every time it happens I think we must be doing something wrong since they look so bad, but then I remember it just happens!
At 8:20....is there a whole in the fence, or is that corner open?? That chicken came scurrying in. I thought it was closed off over there.
Hello there 👋👍🎃
Interesting looking bird. Looks a little bit like a hawk, in a way.
love watching the chickens eating out of your hand. 🪱🐔 🧡 😊👍👍
Yay chicken tv!!!!
when you bring in new adult hens to your coop, or you introduce them to your flock, do you do so slowly or just let them in? Do you have a problem with them fighting?
We just add them in but make sure to put a ton of new and wonderful food in just before so everyone is happy
Do the chickens fight much? Or would you say they are all pretty balanced because of there space and enrichment?
My gosh, what beautiful soil/compost! I have a question about a system like this though - there are items that shouldn't be given to chickens like moldy things, coffee grounds, etc. - seeing the amounts of food waste in the video, you're probably not going through and picking stuff out. So do you just trust the chickens to avoid what they shouldn't eat? Or is it more of a "a little won't hurt them" situation?
I'm setting up a compost pile in my little chicken yard and I was confused about how to handle this issue.
We have learned that if we offer a very wide range of mainly very good things, with some bad stuff like coffee, onion peels, etc., they are just fine working around it..
Avoid it when you can, don't stress when you can't.
would you feel comfortable sharing how much mature compost you get out of this system each year, and roughly the square footage of your entire chicken yard enclosure?
also, I dont know the specifics of how feasible it would be and what equipment you would need, but, I think setting up permanent cameras in the chicken run so we could watch what they do, would be awesome. Im pretty sure all of us love chicken tv, lol.
Looking at his system makes you think it’s a large area, but his entire yard is 1/2 acre. The chicken area borders a very busy road. Bet it’s about 1/10 of an acre, about 4,300 ft or less.
@@kenyonbissett3512 yeah, I thought it was a quarter acre, but, we usually looking at specific spaces, and not the whole area so I could never get a gage on it.
Beautiful! @EdibleAcres Do you add any "green" material that the hens don't eat but will integrate into the compost? Thanks!
Sure do, lots of things! We don't discriminate.
@@edibleacres Is everything raw? Meaning, things like salad mixes with no dressings. Also, any concerns with slightly moldy foods?
There is no such thing as too much chicken TV. :) Next spring I'll integrate cattle panel and milk crate areas in their enclosure, and figure out a way to enlarge their territory. Harvested Boston Marrow pumpkins which I don't really like, but which they love, so I'll press to commandeer an area of field that'll be planted with something like corn. There are no community sources of organic anything anywhere near here.
We are lucky to have a bunch of local scenes that we can dip into their waste, but you can certainly support them with your own grown resources
@@edibleacres That's exactly what we started doing last summer. Lettuce, borage, and anything extra went into their enclosure. There's an area that's 6 inches thick of compost they're still working on. :) Next spring we want to raise some chicks and renew the flock.
@@edibleacres Oh definitely. I planted some of the garden with them in mind, and I'm certain I can devote more garden area to them next summer, since we're aiming to add 4 3'x50' or so beds. The three sisters should be a big part of that.
where do you get the seeds to mix in the compost, Sean? And what advantage does locust have for the chickens?
We buy whole seed from local farmers direct
I didn't know if you have mentioned about the mama chicken and the babies. Were they also rescue chickens or you had her sit on eggs to hatch them?
Hello, Sean and Sasha: i am in Mendocino County in Northern California, and all signs are pointing to a frigid, rough winter ahead. We ought to be well into the wet season (the rain used to start just before Halloween) but no such luck.
However, life continues. Can i ask the name of that breed of chicken (little Mama), if you happen to know? I have a few hens that are aging out, and would like to see if my local feed store can order some for me. Thank you in advance!
Those babies look so small and winter is coming.
Luckily compost piles will be cooking with heat and that will keep them warm 🥰
Momma will keep them warm!
They have a greenhouse for ’day sunbathing’ area in the winter time and generous food to burn calories, and insulated coop. They look adolescent to me, in 3 weeks time when the real cold hits they should be fine.
I'd like to see a top-down diagram of this system. It's hard to see how the flow works from the ground level.
Just curious what breed of chicken mama hen is??? She is super pretty. I have a small system i have designed around your, 6 hens in a urban backyard. We appreciate all you have shown us!!!
Someone local to us gave her to us, but I forget the name... Very friendly and beautiful bird
Hurry up and flip my compost piles humans, I want some worms and grubs and bugs….😂. Aside from the milk do they get any other animal protein, or are the grubs enough? I’m thinking they are enough, they look very heavy birds.
They get meat when it lines up and makes sense to offer...
❤ 🐓 📺
Do you not get flies? Or how do you deal with them?
I bet te hens eat any magot that dare appear !
I thought red oak leaves are toxic for compost, isn‘t that?
Possibly but we haven't seen that
Any problem with rats.