When grain/seeds break dormancy, enzymes convert starch into sugar (brewers know this as “malting”) so the embryo will have a huge energy boost to jumpstart growth. (This is why wheatgrass is sweet, btw). The sweet shoots, malty endosperm and rapidly growing root might contribute to the sweetness. The rapid uptake of excess nitrogen/ammonium must also help.
Highly recommend watching Chicken TV with youtubes closed caption - it keeps thinking that the birdsong is "Music" and the street noise is "Applause"! A delightful accident :)
So lovely to see (and hear) such happy chickens. Your composting system will be a game-changer for the way we’re doing things on our homestead. Thank you for sharing it. 🙏
Have you thought about starting some pumpkin seeds under crates for them? Mine love it when a pumpkin vine wanders into the run and I think that's going to be my project this week. That and some amaranth and sunflowers.
I'm careful to not let my chickens see these videos of your chicken yard. Else they would all be on the next greyhound bus to Ithica, NY no doubt! In other words, my attempt to replicate is discouragingly failing. :( But I have a lot of things in nursery beds, trying to get them up to size to insert. Hopefully this fall, at dormancy, they will be ready to plant the edges. I also have goats that share the space, which is a very sharp double edged sword. 😏
My hens join me whenever I'm planting, and they always peck at the soil (or clay). I have assumed there are tiny critters that they can spot but are invisible to me. My fervent hope is that they are eating ticks and tick nymphs!
I accidentally learned by dropping seed in my compost they'd grow and my chickens would eat it. My compost is in the chicken area. I sure wish I could get some grains like what you have. Those are beautiful grains to throw.
I have a bunch or barley seed ibises to use to make forage but then that got put on back burner with dog care. I might find an area out back to see if the barley will sprout for the hens.
My compost takes 2 years and gets a final bulk age. I got the pile together a month ago and there are sunflowers sprouting all along the base. There are a lot of unexpected benefits when you let life happen.
hi! Every fall I walk around with a mix seeds from the garden and throw them over walkways and woodchip areas. Its always neat to see what grows in the spring and how the landscape evolves year after year.
I know Brooklyn isn't necessarily in your neighborhood, but there's a mushroom farm Smallhold that I believe sends their mushroom blocks to the waste stream. If convenient getting those blocks in the compost and chicken yard would be very beneficial.
I would love to see a video on how you deal with all rodents/ pests like voles, rats, mice, birds, slugs and snails that are inevitable when you grow food or raise animals. Is it just sheer volume of planting that allows anything to grow despite the nature? I calculated i have lost a minimum of 50-70%of what I have planted to one or another of these this year, and it's a GOOD year. Those grains wouldn't have lasted a week or to have time to even sprout in my yard.
I’m a new subscriber and loved this video, I have five hens, only two laying, three are younger, you have a beautiful diverse bunch of hens, they are beautiful and healthy looking, well done !❤
My chickens can move rocks. It’s not hat they couldn’t, it’s more that I am surprised that they Did because some were bigger and heavier than I thought was possible for them. Yet, I was wrong. They were slung quite farther than I thought possible as well. Always entertainment when t comes to my chickens.
Have you ever tried seeding mats of purslane, it is not native to the UK but prefers Southern Europe ;however, the seeds grow vigorously here in the summer. Why I mention it, is because the eggs produced from birds that eat it are considered the best free rang eggs in Europe, and the chickens love it. One seed will give you a near metre wide, low growing succulent type mat. Humans can eat it as well, although personally I am not fond of it, in Greece where it is annual and abundant, people cook it as a veg.
Great reminder to appreciate purslane! We have it growing in our garden and enjoy eating it, it would be interesting to actually save seed and be deliberate about setting it out in new places!
For those contemplating similar, another worthy consideration is the breed of the chooks (chickens). If you can possibly get hold of some Hamburg hens, you'll immediately lessen the amount of feed they need: Hamburgs are first-order foragers and reportedly eat as much as 2/3 less of actual chook food. And . . . ummm . . . they like flying too, so clipping a wing every now and again is small price to pay for these magnificent chooks 🙂
I love it, your chicken yard is so full of life. Off topic, but will you be selling any sea berries this year? The elders and currants i got from you are doing great!
Do you have deep litter in the coop and where do you insert the coop bedding into this system when it comes time to clean out the coop? I would not be surprised to learn you’ve mentioned this in several videos, but I can’t think of a time when I’ve come across the explanation and I’ve watched a lot of your chicken videos.
We do do deep bedding... When we clean it out we try to find a place in the garden that needs a gnarly mulch and put it down directly. Sometimes it just comes out and gets mixed into the pathways. Turns to compost pretty fast that way
Love this method, Sean. This would be harder in a desert environment but still doable. I’m wondering, though, do you ever have a problem with rats? If so, how do you deal with them? Thanks
Great update. I am just about to start a composting system with our hens. We have 24 older and 20 younger ones on about 2000m2 in Spain. Here it is impossible or unaffordable to get organic compost. I was wondering if you could do another update on the composting system for "summer😅". 1doubt I have in doing these compost paths is if the compost gets hot enough for the seeds inside. How is the experience with your compost in terms of weeds in the beds where you use it?
Love watching you, especially your zero waste chicken strategies. I’m aiming to feed my chickens like you do: food forest, food scraps and grains from locally sourced grocery stores, (plus the occasional handful of commercial feed) and I’m wondering if you do any separation whatsoever. I’m finding myself separating the known foods that aren’t good for them like avocado and raw beans from the totes I get, worried that my chickens (3 months old) are too young to know the difference. What do you think? Should I continue separating, or is a little toxicity here and there worth the education the birds will receive? Thanks!
When you only partially cover the seeds, it makes your hens work for their meals. This as to their feeling of contentment. Less opportunity to squabble.
I love watching your chickens! How big of an area do you have for your chickens. I just got 15 and would love to not buy too much grain from bags. Thanks!!!
Pretty darn shaded in this chicken yard. The sprouting process doesn't need huge light, you are mainly getting them just to sprout and grow a little, not fully mature...
A friend gave us a few pounds of field corn but I thought I would have to grind it (well, put it in a cloth and use a hammer on it because I don't have a grain mill), but I hadn't thought to soak it. How long does it need to soak before it's edible whole?
I just love their area and how you put down the seeds to be eaten or grow. I do the same in my bearded dragon tank for the clean up crew, two kinds of isopods, springtails and the mealworms and the beetles. This past time i didn't soak the mung beans and lentiles, just broke up the substrate and sowed on top and sprayed down twice a day. After a week I turned them over and did a mixed of small microgreen seeds. Half the tank is arid and the plant side is the rest. I will have a field of powdered orange isopods just covering the plant side out in the open, eating away. Have you ever seeded black soldier fly larvae into the compost? The chickens will love them too.
Sean i have been watching for a while! Thank you! I am starting with just two chickens, gifted to me. I am sprouting lentils they love them. Spreading the sprouts around where i want them to work more. Also growing wheat, oats and barley grasses in trays. That is also working good. When i heard in this video you had 60 chickens! I was wondering the amount of outside space they had. Plus more about their coop. Please.
@@edibleacres I'm doing some now. Recently dug a duck pond with a bog, and am using their kiddie pools for duck weed. Will see how it works, Have fence around them for now. Day 2.
how do you prevent all the grain and seed you have stored from getting moldy? I'm sure you keep the bins under a roof/out of direct weather but I imagine its quite humid in the summers.
do you have any suggestions for keeping weevil populations down in your storage bins? some suggestions i've been giver are storing grain in an air tight container then adding a couple ounces of dry ice (CO2) and the other is bringing the grain down to 0 degrees F for a few days to break their life cycle.
Yikes, yeah, I'm not sure I have good suggestions there, I don't know how to be helpful. I wonder if dietary ready diatomaceous earth could be put to use as a dessicant for the weevils?
New subscriber! I’m wondering do you leave some stuff out like tomatoes plants or you just trow everything in there and they’ll leave the stuff thats toxic? I would love this system but im scared i trow something in there they shouldn’t eat because I’m not aware of it.
If we know it isn't great for chickens we try to avoid putting it in, AND we aren't very intense about it... That said, we aren't putting tomato plants or raw potatoes or coffee grinds in there when we can avoid it. If some sneaks through the chickens are smart about it, but it's nice to avoid.
It astounds me how you're able to turn these waste streams and low-cost ingredients into, for lack of a better phrase, living capital that you then turn into products for sale. I have a feeling that if one were able to properly estimate the value of your permaculture as capital (in terms of its ability to foster production), you would be paying into a much higher tax bracket.
How do you keep flies down? Also, do you clip their wings so they don't get out of the fence? How tall is your fence? Maybe not related but I notice that when plants start to root in a vase, the water no longer turns nasty.
Did you ever had problems with rats? I’ve setup a similar system but it just attracts rats. It’s smaller, I only have 4 chickens. It worked for some time though.
Sorry that this doesn’t have to do with this video but What is the best permaculture or rare plant nurseries in Massachusetts also will you sell Perenial kales.
@@edibleacres I went to his place he had rare plants I couldn’t understand him so I left he was nice just didn’t talk to us at all I found other rare nurseries that were better russels gardens, Mahoney’s, Logee’s greenhouse, morning star nursery Vermont. Morning star nursery guy was much better and had rarer things cactus, Korean mulberries, himlayan mayapples, fruit bushes he talks very well. Do you have any other places in mass or northeast near mass thank you for the response. Logee’s was also very good they had rare fruits worth trying to grow tomarillo, hardy pineapple guava, schisandra vine, rare figs. Russels garden had cold hardy bananas I bought 12 sea kale plants from them I would have never even thought they would sell them.
The guy was nice in all but and he had a beautiful plants and stuff but he couldn’t talk to us I feel sorry for him but sometimes places need good and bad reviews. The guy at morning star nursery was like the guy in south Hampton he had a lot of knowledge I think you would like there very similar.
