Deborah Grace and Chicken Tractor
Deb, her husband Djubaya, and little Talise, keep 20 chickens on 3-acre rural residential property, 4 miles outside of Sebastopol, CA. They currently feed their chickens organic lay pellets from the local feed store, kitchen scraps, and garden weeds. They are interested in finding more local sources that provide good nutrition for good egg production. Her idea of chicken nutrition is organic feed, greens and as many bugs as possible. She wonders whether just greens can provide enough protein and nutrition for egg production. Local to her depends on what is possible, starting with her backyard, Sebastopol, Sonoma County, and then California.
Free ranging - They do free range the chickens part of the year and they have a chicken run in the center of their vegetable garden so they get weedings and scraps. They grow cover crops as part of their chicken run, as well. They are interested in better ways to free range. They have a chicken tractor, but the design doesn’t quite work for the number of chickens they have.
Growing food - They would be willing to grow food to let them forage, which is what they are currently doing with the cover crop, but feel it might require more labor than they have available to grow, harvest, and prepare feed. They are interested to know more about the things they can grow that the chickens will eat and receive good nutrition from and the process of preparing it as feed.
Gleaning - Their interest in gleaning depends on what and where it is coming from. They have occasionally come upon left over apples and such from local markets that they fed their chickens. She said as a regular food source they would need to become more organized about it, but food scraps maybe from Wholefoods, or other markets would be a good option.
Other notes - They want to avoid GMO food sources as much as possible, so they have been looking for a non-soy option for their pellet feed and wouldn’t be interested in say movie theater popcorn for gleaning for this reason.
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