June 10, 2008
June 2008 - Issue:002
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Backyard Chicken Predators
I had a query recently about how to keep snakes from stealing eggs from a hen house. It made me think that it may be worth talking more generally about the whole topic of protecting chickens.To ensure a safe and healthy environment for chickens, we need to start by looking at this topic in its broadest sense. This is important because many of the things we do can protect against more than one hazard.
Creating a Safe Environement
Without a safe environment we cannot achieve true Free-range, because the hens will be reluctant to move far from the cover of their roosting shed. We need to consider their needs in terms of heat and cold, water and feed, aerial and ground predators, as well as the potential stresses from crowding.Begin by watching your hens. How far do they range and in what directions? They will probably spend a lot of time under trees and shrubs, where they can scratch and dust-bath in safety. To encourage them into other areas, provide additional shelters to which they can retreat.
These additional shelters will provide both protection from aerial predators, as well as extremes of the weather.
Perhaps the most difficult thing is to protect against terrestrial predators like snakes, foxes and cats. Of course, you culd just keep them in a cage, but that sort of defeats the purpose of free-range.
In the garden, perhaps the best strategy is to lock up the chooks securely at night and provide a bit of supervision during the day, while they are out ranging. Many free-range farmers now rely on trained dogs or alpacas to provide this function. Naturally, this may not be the answer at home, but night is still the main time to worry about.
Snakes, though, are something of a special problem - at least as far as the eggs are concerned. Chickens are actually fairly good at protecting themselves from snakes (especially when they have numbers on their side), but not so their eggs.
However, I think many gardeners would probably feel they deserved more protection from snakes than the eggs! This being the case, one possibility I have seen is to make use to the territorial habits of most snakes.
If you can identify the places where they come and go (say a gap under the house), bundle up some bird-net like that used to cover fruit trees and stuff it loosely in the space. Then give it a poke every now and then and hit it with a large blunt object if it moves.
Snakes, of course, cannot crawl backwards. So they get caught up on the way through, making them a bit easier to 'dispose of'. Naturally, a more environmentally responsible method would be to simply call someone who is experienced in locating and removing snakes from urban areas.
Organic Garden Composting
Many people have a compost bin or tumbler that takes care of kitchen scraps and a few other odds and ends, but what if you want to produce genuine organic compost in quantities sufficient to use on the whole garden?We have just revised our composting page with some simple instructions, a very helpful video and an e-book review. The e-book is especially interesting as it details the biodynamic method of composting. Referred to as "Colloidal humus" this compost is very different in form and function to what you might normally think of as compost.
To read all this new information, simply use this link.
Companion Planting
We have also added a lot of new information to our page on companion planting, but rather than just another list of which plant goes with what, we have tried to focus on how companion planting works and how you can use this knowledge to recognize potential companions without having to search through lists.There is still more to be added, but you should still find it an interesting read.