25 Chickens – 25 Cents a day (and they make TONS of compost!)

25 Chickens - 25 Cents a day (and they make TONS of compost!)

http://www.edibleacres.org – Our permaculture nursery
https://www.paypal.me/edibleacres – A simple and direct way to ‘tip’ to help support the time and energy we put into making our videos. Thanks so much!

We’re raising our chickens in a model inspired by Vermont Composting Company and adapted to our situation. By bartering for whole organic grains from wonderful local farms (Farmer Ground Flour and Potenza Organics) we’re able to provide our chickens a great foundation diet.
We incorporate truckloads of lawn leaf bags, woodchips, manures, and compost from local sources in windrows in our chicken area. We add mixtures of whole organic grain to this. With the heat from the compost and the stirring action of the chickens and the hay fork, they are able to eat beautiful ropey sprouted grain, earthworms, red wigglers, veggies and food scraps and be active and outdoors all winter.
I’d estimate a cost to us of about 25 cents a day in sunflower and millet which we buy in bulk to add to their diet.
This system could be cost negative if you had relationships with local restaurants / farms / co-ops to barter or be paid to handle their compost. Last year we got 0 in credit per month from a local restaurant to take their scraps. We had to stop because it was too much food for our chickens! We need triple the birds to handle the food we were paid to take!!!

Edible Acres is a full service permaculture nursery located in the Finger Lakes area of NY state. We grow all layers of perennial food forest systems and provide super hardy, edible, useful, medicinal, easy to propagate, perennial plants for sale locally or for shipping around the country…
http://www.edibleacres.org/purchase – Your order supports the research and learning we share here on youtube.
We also offer consultation and support in our region or remotely.
http://www.edibleacres.org/services
Happy growing!
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20 thoughts on “25 Chickens – 25 Cents a day (and they make TONS of compost!)”

  1. I have done very little but watch your videos for the last few days. Boy am I excited! The information you share is priceless, as is the culture you've created. I do hope you written a book and will provide the name so I can order a copy, and I also hope you'll continue to make videos on a regular basis. I've got to finish catching up on the videos, but I'll be back. Thank you for doing your thing! I love it!

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  2. Go ahead! Pamper your chickens! They deserve a bit of pampering for everything they do for you. : ) I am putting some of the ideas I've gotten from you into practice in my garden. I have 13 Black Australorp chickens in my garden and get a great deal of pleasure watching them do their thing. They aren't laying yet but they should be laying in a couple months. They free range in my back yard ( and today they found a break in my gate and free ranged in my neighbors' yard!! ) Fortunately I have good neighbors who shoo'd them back into my garden. Thanks for making and sharing your videos. I'm learning a lot from you !

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  3. Lovely. Really exciting to see a method that is purposefully going into the direction of zeroing out bagged feed cost. Ithaca is a unique place where bartering is normal. The rest of the country seems locked into treasury IOUs. Best wishes!

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  4. If they eat bugs how do you deal with parasites? I've stomped some spiders only to see worms come out…..I can imagine that is with almost any bug as well…

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  5. do you deworm your chickens? if you have them grazing in the same area you would eveutually have to worry about worms.

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  6. I like what you got going here. Were in a drier climate and get free wood chips delivered to mulch the lot. Chickens love pecking through that all day. I was considering a pile system like you have, but I dont have a source for free/barter grain and theres not as many leaves in the woodchip loads to compost as fast.

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