How it all started
Having chooks all started when I decided to do a composting workshop. I have always been a fan of Geoff Lawton and really liked his idea of using chooks to make a perpetually moving composting heap.
I built the first tunnel and serendipitously, I received a call from a neighbour who had some feral chooks that needed removing. How fortunate. I collected the chooks, added them to the new tunnel and then thought I should make another tunnel so I could rotate them.
Since then a number of other ideas have percolated and there are now four 12 metre tunnels with a 2mtr x 8mtr chicken taj mahal for roosting and egg laying. All the tunnels have gates each end, making it easy to rotate the chooks.
Veggie Tunnel
Above is the vegie tunnel which feeds me & gifts greens to the chooks. Over time, one of the other tunnels will become the veggie tunnel and this will be a rotation bed for the chooks.
Vegie Tunnel also gifts greens to chooks
Seed Sprouting Process
Sprouted grain nearly ready for chooks to come in.
I feed chooks on the ground in tunnels encouraging them to scratch, then when they move to next tunnel, I water to sprout seeds left by chooks!
I’m working on around 5 to 7 days & then next tunnel is chook ready!
Work done to tunnel chooks moved from
Then there’s the tunnel they’ve been in for 5 days! I’m putting mulch hay, cut grass into tunnels for biomass to cover ground.
Fermenting Chicken Feed
It is difficult to keep chooks without adding mash or seeds to their food intake to keep them healthy and laying. I was finding that all the grain mixes laying mash has about 25% filler that the chooks won’t eat when it is dry.
I looked for some ideas for reducing the amount of feed they ate and found that fermenting the chicken feed could do that. A blog post from Homestead and Chill had some good information.
Image of grain quantity…a 900 gram yoghurt container holding 740 g of dry grain.
I place the grain into a 5 litre CoYo bucket and cover it with water to ferment.
I have 3 buckets fermenting and a 4th bucket for the next day when I put dry grain in and pour excess liquid from the days fermented feed. This gees up the ferment process.
Four Bucket System.
The lidless bucket is for tomorrow morning when I feed # 3 to chooks. As stated above, the lidless bucket will get the grain and water added to it and the lid from bucket tree. They will all be pushed to the right, waiting for the day’s bucket to be added onto the sink.
Buckets move like a conveyor belt.
Note. All the grain mixes laying mash has about 25% filler that chooks don’t eat when dry.
Fermented they’re eating it all.
I’ve been feeding 2 pots of dry grains per day to 10 chooks.
I reckon it’s looking like I’ll now be feeding 1/2 a container less grain per day.
Today is day 2 of the experiment!
Fermenting, vegetables, & sprouts!
What a system for chooks!
Shane Joyce