Chicken pasture contest
So
you lost your bet on the Kentucky Derby? Don't despair --- we're
holding a betting contest you're much more likely to win! And
this one is chicken related --- aren't chickens better than horses?
If you're interested,
you can read about our
plans for creating several rotational pastures for our broilers, complete with food-bearing
perennials. We'll be rotating our chickens through future
pastures every couple of weeks so that they don't demolish the
vegetation, but we want them to scratch this first pasture up pretty
good so that we can sow it with grains for their winter diet.
When will the ground become bare enough to plant in?
Post your guestimate
date in the comments, and whoever is closest will win bee
balm and Egyptian onions. Both plants are hardy
perennials that need next to no care and either attract bees and
hummingbirds (the bee balm) or feed you for ten months
out of the year (the Egyptian
onion.)
For
the scientific minded among you, here's some more data to help you
choose the very best date. Our chicken pasture is about 800
square feet and holds 25 birds who will be six weeks old on Monday, May
3. They've been eating at the pasture since April 23, and have
already started to scratch their most traveled spots bare. On the
other hand, they have been concentrating their attention on less than
half of the area so far and haven't really found the far corner
yet. I've been adding wheelbarrow loads of weeds every few days,
and am feeding them about a gallon of food a day. (They're hungry
little birds!) All of the photos in this entry were taken Friday
and are relatively representative of the pasture at this moment.
It's built around a big wild cherry that is starting to leaf out, so
the vegetation is weeds that do well in partial shade, not grass.
The fine print: The
ground will be considered bare enough when I randomly decide it's bare
enough. Only one guess per person, please!
Or explore more posts by date or by subject.
About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Just leave your entry here --- that way no one else will try to choose your day.
Don't leave contact info, though --- I'll post the winner and will have him or her email me.
Looks like we'd better start working on the next paddock's fence given Tracy and Zimmy's bets!
I'm going to guess June 15th. Just because it was my first instict.
My husband doesn't have a blog, or online account, but he was reading this post with me, and wants in, lol. Anyway, using a complicated mathematical transferance system involving our seven hens and their tractor coop, his guess is May 31st. He's Ben James, btw, if by some chance he's right and you have to announce it. Oh, and if you would rather we don't have two guesses in one comment, or two guesses for one couple, just go with his. I'd be proud and excited if he won and I could tell him.
Fun game!
THE 8 THE DAY BE FORE MOTHERS DAY....................
roseanell mom