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The New Mike
The New Mike
11 years ago

Thanks alot for this post. Great observations and I’ve been thinking very very heavily about my first animals and your observations I’m taking quite into consideration.

While I want some chickens, I’m not really too head over heels with some of the stuff about chickens. I also don’t really need the eggs (I get them from a friend who has probably the best chicken eggs ever seen). In fact I only want chickens to eat this damn carpet of weeds (otherwise known as grass) and eventually for the meat (very hard to get around here).

Now geese…… that is something that seems quite interesting. Particularly from the self protection. (still don’t have a great pyranese and even when i get one will take at least a year to get him up to speed).

The New Mike
The New Mike
11 years ago
Reply to  The New Mike

Would you mind commenting a bit more about heat? Did the geese have like an overhead roof while in the tractor? One of the biggest problems I’m seeing with doing tractor for chickens in particular here is the heat. I’m assuming at this point you haven’t seen a whole lot of issues with the geese and i’m sure the little water ponds really help!

The New Mike
The New Mike
11 years ago

Very cool! That is a lot of really good selling points that I think us southern types should know about. I can certainly not say the same heat durability as my damn cucumbers. (Although i’m starting to think it may be a root issue rather than heat… =( )

The issue of us continually having to leave the house is starting to irritate the hell out of me. (Its why i don’t have rabbits right this second or that darn dog. Everyone just seems to be getting married). You’re telling me I could leave for at least a weekend and not have to tend or move a bunch of birds around? (Provided they have plenty of grassy area, plenty of water and over hangs) Awesome….

Roundabouts
Roundabouts
11 years ago

Geese are so perfect. I just love them. You get meat eggs feathers security manure pest control. Plus there is a good amount of $$ you can get for their eggs if you blow them out. Eat the egg sell the empty shells. Plus they don’t fly as much like turkeys or chickens. Which means no poop on the pigs or the barn roof. LOL another story .

Free range is no more on our place. With free range you get poop EVERYWHERE! YUCK

The New Mike
The New Mike
11 years ago
Reply to  Roundabouts

Cool!
Why are the shells worth money?

Gotta have the wife start reading these posts…. so she can ease up on getting some animals (which I need some biological helpers REAL bad).

I’ve got grass thats 6” to 2′ tall and I don’t have time to mow it by hand with a scythe! (I refuse to cut grass when I have alot better things to do with my time… )

Jonathan Scheel
Jonathan Scheel
11 years ago

My experience is that ducks and geese do a much better job of eating grass and weeds. Chickens do a better job with bugs and worms. The hog panels are a great idea. We use them for every thing. They are so versatile. Also we recently adopted a 6 year old Great Pyrenees who had never been around other animals except other dogs and were totally amazed at how quickly he assimilated with the other animals. The sheep, chickens and ducks were all sleeping with him in the barn within 24 hours of his arrival. I still can’t believe it!

George McLaughlin
George McLaughlin
11 years ago

We LOVE the livestock guardian dogs. Used to have a Pyrenees. He was our first. He was NOBLE and great with the animals. By the age of four he was also quite protective of us and the property.

Our current dogs are primarily Anatolians with some Maremma, and one of them is 1/8 Pyre. They too are very very useful. The older has mastered guarding poultry against hawks!

As of this year we are certain that there is a mountain lion frequenting our neighborhood, and wild hogs arrived in recent years. These dogs let me sleep at night, only having to “grab the gun and get out there” every now and then. The Pyre would actually access a situation and call for me when he determined that they needed backup!

The New Mike
The New Mike
11 years ago

Can they be tractored rotated/mobbed together? Seems like a good combination.

The New Mike
The New Mike
11 years ago

So how do you have your chickens now? Doing like a coop and run type of setup?

I can definitely see the benefit of doing that at occasional times of the year for the concentrated wood shavings (what would be in my case) and manure.

One technique I was thinking about building into my larger system is a mollison like Chicken house connected to a “free range (for chickens)” type of system that is fenced off. They can come and go as they please and do what they will. I know they tend to destroy small trees so I’m not so sure how well that would work doubling as an orchard until they’re much taller and established. (I guess a Lawton style food forest eh?)

The New Mike
The New Mike
11 years ago

@ Jack

Interesting ideas. For some reason I have been having the hardest damn time getting some things to grow like sunflower. I probably need to over seed the hell out of it. But that’s quite an expensive endevour if you’re buying small packs of seeds from victory for 3 dollars a pack (like I did). Not one seed germinated. Sounds like you got your sunflowers from a nursery?

How densely are you planting those groups? Just the typical put a bunch in a container and handful throw them out? Are you planning on using the amaranth for something other than feed? I have been wanting to get some seed of it and try it out but I’m not really sure of its function other than being for what all other grains are used for (breads and what not). I probably should get on doing some setups like yourself in order to build up some supplies of feed for animals. I’m pretty sure all of the types you’re growing right now can be used with rabbits, which hopefully after the 13th of July (yet another wedding I’m going to in New Jersey….) I’ll be getting some.

I’ve also been meaning to get comfry going. I couldn’t get it to germinate (and/or stay alive) long enough by seed (started it late summer) so I think i might just do transplants of it and see how it does. I’d love to get some because I sure as hell need to get green mulches going. Definitely next spring I’ll be buying black locust trees. Hopefully a ton of them.

I’ve had OK success with buckwheat, but i”m finding its not ever getting very tall. I’ve been wondering if i’ve been OVER seeding it. Or if the ground just doesn’t have what it needs (heavy nitrogen or something else). I do find them all over the place in my beds (maybe birds picked up the seeds and dropped them) and they seem to do REALLY well inside my vegi beds….

The New Mike
The New Mike
11 years ago

“more seed then you can shake a stick at” thats exactly what I want.

Thanks for the tips on buckwheat. Definitely seems to have that very tiny root systems, which make it a dream for pulling up. We definitely are in a clay rich soil which after you get down about 3 -8 inches becomes kind of a pain in the ass. I never use a shovel anymore, just the rogue hoe.

Either I remember you posting about comfry tractors, or I read it on permies but I definitely thought about that. What a pain in the ass to start, but I like the idea its rugged. More and more I’m looking for ways to provide shade and get heat tolerant plants. Well they dont’ mind the heat, just not the direct sun. Hell even the top of my tomatos are taking a beating all to hell (the fruits) from too much sun.

Thanks for the posts, they’re definitely going to save me a ton of time, and wasted resources. I’ve already wasted probably 5 pounds of buckwheat seed over the clay, compacted soil issue. All the more reason I need comfrys and other deep rooted plants. I guess I could always re “till” up some of those patches of grass I have (that I already did once for a 30 x 30 patch of buckwheat) and throw out radish seeds everywhere….

txmom
txmom
11 years ago

Comfrey tractor, I’m thinking that can be done with other plants too. I have some passion flowers I left in pots and forgot to move, nor did they flower that year. When I went to move the pots, they had rooted into the ground. This year I have plenty of passion flowers wondering around my back yard and happily blooming. I don’t believe they grow as fast as comfrey though.

RationalHusker
RationalHusker
11 years ago

Hey, Jack. Sounds like geese would be great to introduce into the garden, but would I have to wait until after harvest is done in the fall (perhaps protecting an area of fall crops) like I do with my chickens? I’d like some pest control in the garden for potato bugs, horn worms, etc.), but have to fence out my chickens or they’ll scratch young plants out and eat others (greens, brussel sprouts, strawberries, etc.). Occasionally I’ll “pulse” a couple through for an hour or so if they happen to come by when I’m working in it so I can make sure they don’t do any damage. Would geese hit my plants pretty hard, or do they stick to grass? Also, have they shown any agression to you?

Jonathan Scheel
Jonathan Scheel
11 years ago

I have read that you can train ducks and geese to “weed” your garden by feeding them only weeds from birth. They then eat only the weeds and not your garden produce

John
John
11 years ago

Looking great Jack! I need to get my geese in a paddock shift like that so they stay off my Swales. Make sure you keep working with them and fairly tame, I just let my geese free range and now I can’t catch them to save my life on 7 acres…

KC
KC
11 years ago

They are looking good! They’ve grown so much since I was there!

Dheerecrossing
Dheerecrossing
11 years ago

I’m so glad you published this. I am honored that you used my photograph at the top of the page. I was wondering how these little guys were doing and I’m surprised to hear that they are making about the same amount of sound now too.
These are a great addition to the homestead and it’s also pretty cool to see all that green in the garden behind them.

Dheerecrossing
Dheerecrossing
11 years ago

Should already be in your inbox sir.

Dheerecrossing
Dheerecrossing
11 years ago

I’m also going to send Jack a photo I just snapped of my sunflowers. I had one in my garden last year and let it go to the point of drying out and letting the birds have their way with it. Once it was ready to fall on its own, I pulled it out and threw it in the compost pile.
I since moved the compost pile but this is what happened this year in the old spot. The seed came from Baker Creek. These are all yellow but last years flowers were red, orange, yellow, and a mix of all three. I’d say these are about 12-14 feet tall.

BeninMA
BeninMA
11 years ago

I wonder if you’ll get much cooking fat from pasture-raised geese (?). Of course, whatever you do get will have a great fatty-acid profile compared to commercially raised geese.

BeninMA
BeninMA
11 years ago

Jack, there’s evidence that Frenchmen who eat a lot of goose and duck fat have the lowest rate of cardiovascular disease (the animals eat grass, but are finished — even force-fed, for foie gras — corn and fat).

When researching this, I found that someone in Spain has discovered how to create foie gras without force feeding. It’s basically a permacultural approach that takes advantage of the fact that, in nature, geese freely gorge themselves in the fall. They won’t do this on traditional farms, because they know they don’t need to fatten up for migration. These two links explain it all:

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_barber_s_surprising_foie_gras_parable.html

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/452/poultry-slam-2011?act=3

Cal
Cal
11 years ago

Wonder how geese would do in our pecan orchard. Do they actively eat pecans? If so would need to corral them into other areas when harvesting. Now if they could be trained to keep deer away….