Free Range Chickens by woodleywonderworks
Harvey Ussery, one of our favorite writers on backyard, sustainable chicken raising, has started a new project, called The Home Feeding Project. He shares our goal to become independent of purchased feeds, and is leading this project to compile the best information out there about how to create, yes, more sustainable chicken flocks.
As we’ve mentioned several times on this site, Harvey has an excellent website call The Modern Homestead. You can find the specifics about the Home Feeding Project here. If you’d like to email Harvey with your ideas you can email him here: feeding@themodernhomestead.us, or, if you’re really old school, you can mail him a letter at POB 67, Hume, VA 22639. And hey, if you’re going to go to all the trouble to send him some info, please, mention it to us too in the comments, that would be much appreciated!
Here are the details he’d like for you to note when sending him ideas.
- Some ideas are so obvious and commonly employed (”Feed table scraps to the chickens”) there is no need to mention them. Your unique twist on such widespread strategies may be useful, however. (”I’ve made an arrangement with a local diner to take their food wastes.”)
- It is as easy for us to grow seed crops like corn and small grains as for farmers, though harvesting, threshing, and storing such crops are likely to be obstacles. Are there ways to make such options more practical?
- If you do advocate growing particular crops for home feeds, please specify type (e.g. single-head sunflowers with large seeds, or multi-headed types with smaller seeds) and/or varieties you have worked with.
- Remember to place your practices in context: species of fowl you are feeding, size of flock, management model, etc.
- If you have kept statistics that demonstrate the effectiveness of your practices, please include them.
- Some bright ideas that failed to work out in practice may be worth sharing as well.
- Remember to include your location, and (if you know) your climate (plant hardiness) zone.
I first read about this idea in Backyard Poultry magazine, and most of the details came from Harvey’s website.
Gorgeous photo is from woodleywonderworks on Flickr.
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