Feeding Chickens for Free in our Sustainable Permaculture Garden Food Forest

Описание: I have chickens living in our sustainable permaculture food forest and I would like to grow them free chicken feed. A usual hen eats 1/4 pound of feed per day if required to stay in a coop and run all day. Without the food forest and lake supplementing their feed, they would be expected to eat almost five pounds of feed per day. My 19 hens are currently eating less than 1 pound per day total. There are 19 hens and 4 chicks (5 weeks old). All of their chicken feed and yard found food is sustainable organic and the lake is spring fed and surrounded by state forest.

In early 2020, I was shocked to go into the grocery store and not be able to buy many meats. The store shelves were pretty bare. That really pushed me to evaluate our food stores. We have a whole home generator with enough LP buried underground to last our household a month if we are careful with consumption. This will be enough time to pressure can all items in our deep freezes. We currently have on hand about 1000 pounds of chicken, 200 pounds of fish, a small amount of venison and about 100 pounds of wild boar. While I regularly can fruit preserves and also pickle items for shelf storage, I mostly deep freeze my meat stocks instead of canning them for shelf storage.

Should supply chains fail again for whatever reason, I need to be able to have the chickens feed themselves off our yard and the lake. They will then feed us with eggs and meat.

For the hens, we currently feed New Country Organics without wheat or other gluten grains. This costs $40 for a forty pound bag. We currently put out a pound of feed and the hens do not finish it by nighttime. For a hen that is hard molting, I provide extra protein to help her rebuild feathers quickly. I also put out black oil sunflower seeds (BOSS) mixed with dried bugs in the morning. I use this mixture wherever I want them to work in the front yard. After placing that down, the chickens will dig in that area all morning. This year was a transition year for the hens as I put out less and less feeds and moved to planting sustainable items and lake products.

Other free chicken feed in our Florida sustainable permaculture food forest that are always available:
Black Soldier Flies
Sorghum grains/seeds
Papaya
Seminole Pumpkin ripe fruit, seeds and leaves
Blue Plumbago
Clover, Stinging Nettle, Sunflowers, Grasses and grass seed
Tadpoles in the spring
A large variety of fruit that is in season all year

Other items I provide from the lake almost daily:
Duck Weed
Minnows (cast net)
Food processed fish parts of Bluegill (summer) and Crappie (winter)

So my goal is to move to no feed starting in 2022. I will still bring in feed for baby chicks for the first couple months but they only go through about a quarter cup of feed per day for four chicks. Some of this is to help the mother hen recover after she sat on eggs for three weeks. I will also likely bring in feed for the meat birds but will limit it and encourage grazing. Peppers and those with a homestead should work toward the goal of no more chicken feed too. This is a very frugal way to keep your hens happy.

My hens are currently providing 8 eggs per day. One hen is not laying as she is the mother hen. Six others are in process of molting. This leaves 8 eggs from 12 hens that would be laying eggs. I do provide oyster shell and crushed eggshells for the hens too. They produced 8 eggs yesterday and we are in mid November in Florida so this is reasonable. Limiting their feed has not impacted their egg laying.

Having a sustainable permaculture food forest with poultry, laying hens and wild boar and fish should feed us completely if we run into problems with the supply chain again. Preppers should take note of how easy it is to plant out some space to feed your hens and meat birds.

In order to have a sustainable permaculture food forest, you should encourage fertility. I practice organic farming and sustainable permaculture. This means you create no waste. All yard waste is recycled back into the soil. Soil health is the most important part of a healthy permaculture food forest system and easily processed in Florida where it is hot and wet.

My Florida Permaculture food forest is extremely fertile. I practice organic permaculture and sustainable gardening. I choose plants appropriate for my growing zone 9 or growing zone 9B in order to maximize productivity. My permaculture garden also includes flowers to attract pollinators, mixed with foods I can grow easily. I love farming and fork to table. To make this work easier, I plant mostly perennial garden plants with fewer annuals.

Southern gardens have longer growing seasons.
Hot weather gardening is different but easier in that you can improve your soil much faster gardening in the south.