Monday, April 14, 2014

Grow your own chicken feed, part 2

Last summer, I undertook an experiment to grow my own chicken feed to store for winter. You can read about that here http://backyardbiointensive.blogspot.com/2013/06/grow-your-own-chicken-feed.html

All in all, the project was a success, however I learned quite a few things that are worth writing down and sharing.

First off, I learned to categorize anything stored as either a staple food or a supplemental food. Certain things just cannot be collected/grown and stored in sufficient quantities to make up a staple food. They might work for someone with different resources or more land, but for me they didn't work out as well as I'd hoped. However, they were still a part of the chickens' diet through the winter, providing some diversity and additional nutrition.

Staple foods made up about 80% of the total diet. Staple foods were:

Pumpkins and squash
sunflower seeds
corn
kitchen scraps

Supplemental foods made up the rest of the diet:

alfalfa/clover
wheat
brassica leaves
raspberry leaves
dandelion

I had hoped to store 200 pounds of dried hay and greens. In practice, this turned out to be nearly impossible without buying alfalfa bales. I could do this, but it didn't prove necessary. Pumpkins/squash and grains were actually very easy to store enough of.

Here's what I actually ended up storing and using:

150 pounds of corn, some shelled, some on the cob, mix of sweet and field corn
About a 55 gallon drum full of black oil sunflower heads with seeds
400 pounds of squash and pumpkins
About 20 pounds of dried alfalfa and clover
5 pounds of shelled wheat
20 pounds of dried broccoli, cabbage, and brussels sprouts leaves
2 gallons of raspberry leaves
15 pounds of dried dandelion

Some of what I stored simply wasn't viable feed. Unless it was ground and pelletized they wouldn't touch some of the greens. I suppose I could do this, but I really don't have the means to do this easily. Whatever of it they did eat, though, was beneficial anyway. A good amount of the squash and pumpkins didn't get used, and ended up in the compost bin. I'd say upwards of 50 pounds. Also, most of the dandelion went uneaten as they wouldn't eat the roots which were the bulk of the weight.


Sunflowers: great chicken feed and beautiful too.


With this in mind, I'm revising this strategy somewhat for this year, having learned a few things from last year.

So this will be this year's chicken feed storage plan to feed 6 hens:

55 gallon drum full of sweet and dent corn
55 gallon drum full of black oil sunflower heads
20 large pumpkins and/or equivalent mix of winter squashes
20 pounds dried alfalfa and clover
40 gallon tub filled with mix of other dried greens - especially brassica leaves
ALL kitchen scrap
grit and calcium supplement

I should be able to grow all of this in the pumpkin patch and since I can grow pumpkins and corn and sunflowers together by co-planting, it will save some space. I expect to plant half the patch in corn and half in sunflowers, with pumpkins and squash interplanted.

Another thing we'll be doing, in order to get the most of our kitchen and garden scraps, is that ALL food scraps will go to the chickens to be picked over. Whatever's left after a few weeks will then be moved to the compost bin to finish composting. To do this, I've got a couple clean blue plastic barrels that I cut down to be large dishes, about 14 inches deep, that food scraps will go into. They can't scatter them too much in the coop that way, but still can hop in and dig for edibles. These dishes have drain holes in the bottom so that any liquids can drain out and be absorbed by the straw bedding in the coop.

Now, volume of feed isn't an issue. What about nutritional quality? Admittedly, this isn't the diverse mixture of foods that chickens would get during the summer, however this did carry our chickens through the winter in good condition, although egg production suffered slightly. Nothing that would justify increasing the cost of feed by purchasing it.

It should be said that the amount of time that goes into growing and storing this feed is not insignificant. If I was running a business and had to calculate the cost of my time, it wouldn't make economic sense to grow feed. However, because I view my mini-farming operation as a closed system and my main goal is self-sufficiency and not financial profit, this all works out for me. If you're looking for a way to save money on chicken feed for a small flock, however, this probably isn't the best way to do it. If you're looking to provide for your flock and your family without relying on someone else, then you're headed in the right direction.



Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Old Tires as Garden Containers?

I like to talk about gardening, plans for gardens, methods, etc. I talk to pretty much anyone who will listen. I learn this way. I talk about my thoughts and it helps me make them more coherent. I talk about others' thoughts and I pick up new ideas for how to do things.

One question that seems to come up at least a few times every spring is the question of using old tires as garden containers. Many of us have heard stories about growing potatoes in old tires, and no doubt many have tried this method. Invariably, the discussion ends up revolving around the question of whether this is safe - whether or not the tires leach toxic/carcinogenic chemicals into the food grown in them. I have read countless discussions, blog posts, articles, etc about this, and so far, nobody has convinced me either way.

The simple fact of the matter is, though, that you shouldn't ever use tires as containers, and it has nothing to do with whether or not they're toxic. It's because as far as garden containers, or raised bed containers go, they suck. Bbbbbut they're free! No, they aren't. And they suck.

There, I said it. Put this whole issue to bed. Tires make very poor containers for growing anything. Why are we still talking about this?

Tell me how this is better than just putting them in the ground? Photo Credit: Tony Buser


Here's why they suck:

A tire wastes a lot of space. An average tire is probably 25 inches across and round, having a 14 or 15 inch opening, it's MAYBE 1 square foot of growing space. If we learned anything from square foot gardening, or any intensive planting technique, we know that round is a waste of space for anything except single plants. In the case of single plants, like tomatoes, I'll call it a tossup with a traditional 4xSomething raised bed. For anything else, like carrots or lettuce, you're wasting space.

They're too small. Would you ever intentionally build a raised, round bed only 2 feet across? I wouldn't unless it was full of sand for my cat to crap in.

They're ugly. Yep. I don't want my gardens looking like a junk yard.

Would you buy anything from a farmer's market if you knew it had been grown in an old tire? One that maybe wasn't even washed out first? I wouldn't.

They overheat the soil. That black rubber heating up the soil in april and may is probably pretty nice to have. And the rest of the growing season it's going to scorch the soil inside it even where I live in zone 4. You'll have to water twice as much. If I was going to design a device specifically for the purpose of overheating soil and stressing or killing whatever I planted in it, it would be a round black container that had a lot of surface area and absorbed as much heat from the sun as possible - a tire.

A tire in the sunlight all day every day for years on end is going to decompose down to the steel belts in less than 10 years, assuming it was a used, discarded tire in the first place. It could be much sooner than that, too. When those tire planters are down to sharp pieces of metal sticking into your knees you're going to have to do something with them, and since the EPA says they are a toxic material, that means you have to pay someone to dispose of them for you. This brings us to the final point.

Used tires are not free. You might not pay for them up front, but you'll pay for them in the long run. Either because you'll have unsightly tires piled around your property after you quit using them for planters, or because you have to pay for someone to dispose of them. My local tire shop charged me $4 per tire to dispose of the old ones that came off my wife's mini-van last fall. At $4 per square foot of garden space, you could probably hire someone to build your raised beds out of concrete block and still be money ahead.

Does it even matter if they're toxic? If we're really thinking with our gardening brains we know that tires are a poor choice even if they aren't toxic.