The best way to illustrate how permaculture creates a self-sustaining environment is with one of its most popular aspects; the chicken tractor.
If you could set up a machine to weed your garden beds when you’re finished with them, get rid of the pest insects, slugs and snails, fertilise it, turn it over and over so it composts well, all for nothing, you’d probably be quite pleased.
If you could set up a machine to weed your garden beds when you’re finished with them, get rid of the pest insects, slugs and snails, fertilise it, turn it over and over so it composts well, all for nothing, you’d probably be quite pleased.
A chicken tractor not only saves you this time and hassle, it also provides you with eggs, a simple, easy, healthy meal, and meat if you wish to fully utilize every part of the system.
However, even if you never eat an egg or a bird, it’s still an incredibly useful garden tool, purely for its simple set-up and multiple functions. Here’s how it works.
1. Build a moveable “chicken tractor”, or better yet a “chook dome”. This is a simple, light contraption that if built properly requires just one person to move it around the garden. It is easy to lift and move but can be secured to the ground. It should provide shelter and come with waterers and feeders for extra protein.
In her book “Permaculture Home Garden”, Linda Woodrow shows how she built her chook dome using very few new materials and quite a few used ones. It has perches, a covered roof and a secure door, but can be picked up by one person and moved to a new garden area with very little effort and fits neatly over her round garden beds. This works well because round garden beds are a very efficient use of space, with very little waste for garden paths. For nest boxes, Linda suggests using old lawn mower catchers; they are a good size for most breeds, naturally dark inside and have a handle on top so they’re easy to move.
2. Match your garden beds to the tractor or dome. If they are the same size, you can easily move your tractor or dome and cover the garden area that you need work done on. If you have a new area that you want to cultivate, place your ark or tractor over it, spread straw, hay and some grains about, and leave them to get the fertilization and ploughing process started. By adding garden scraps (and offering them a balanced poultry feed), the birds will slowly start the process of soil improvement and composting on site.
2. Match your garden beds to the tractor or dome. If they are the same size, you can easily move your tractor or dome and cover the garden area that you need work done on. If you have a new area that you want to cultivate, place your ark or tractor over it, spread straw, hay and some grains about, and leave them to get the fertilization and ploughing process started. By adding garden scraps (and offering them a balanced poultry feed), the birds will slowly start the process of soil improvement and composting on site.
Be
careful with how long you leave the chickens in place; leave them too
long and the soil will form a hard pan and be too thick with manure. Add
a layer of hay every day, and you should get a good composting layer
forming, helping your garden bed to “raise” itself up with little effort
on your part. This is the beautiful part of permaculture; in a
traditional chook house, clearing out the manure would be a smelly
chore. If you let them free-range manure is just dropped at random,
often somewhere that is of no use to you (ie on the lawn) or is a
nuisance (ie on the verandah). By using a simple structure and a simple
idea, you can utilize all the good points of a chicken, with very few,
if any, negative points.
3. Other uses for a chicken tractor/dome include pasture improvement. A tractor or dome that is moved once or twice a day around a paddock helps you clean up grass grubs and other insect pests, it adds nitrogen to the soil and you don’t have to spend any time at all cleaning out the chicken run. Think of it like rotational grazing that you would naturally use with most other types of livestock. Depending on your livestock, you can use a dome or tractor for most types of farm bird or animal; turkeys, pheasant,
Isn’t free-range better?
While you may want your birds to roam around free, in some form of chicken tractor they still have plenty of room to move around and enjoy your garden. In a chicken dome they have room to fly and be even more natural in their behaviour, with the down sides; no worries about free-ranging predators, your vegetable, herb and flowers will be safe from foraging birds and you can control where their manure goes. It also means there is no danger of losing eggs to other animals or to a broody hen.
What should be in a permaculture chicken dome?
A dome can have perches, a roof for shelter and shade, a couple of nesting boxes, feeders and waterers. If you area is cold, consider using hay bales to build a warm “house” and use an old piece of plywood or iron as a roof. Once the bad weather is over and your birds are happy to use their roosts, the hay can be laid down in the same area to help you create good compost.
More from permaculture co-originator Bill Mollison on the brilliance of the chicken tractor/dome model:
"Just look at all the ways you produce energy in this system: the chickens' body heat, the direct sunlight that reflects off the pond and hits the greenhouse, the radiation of the trees at the rear, the decomposition of chicken manure, and on and on. If you sit down and sketch this system out, you'll find that it's fantastically complex — with thousands of functional interactions — and will run itself . Operating on its own energy, the system automatically switches on and off. As the sun gets high in the sky, the greenhouse absorbs more heat . . . so the chickens get hot and go out, thus removing the source of animal heat. While they're outside, the birds forage in the forest and leave their manure to enrich the soil. After dark, of course, they'll go back inside to keep warm . . . taking their body heat with them.
Look at each chicken by itself and the variety of functions it's performing in this one simple model: In the coop the hen operates as a radiator, an egg producer, and a manurial system. In the forest the bird acts as a self-forager, a tree-disease controller, a fireproofer, a fertilizer producer, and a rake. One can use chickens to do quantities of useful work . . . in fact, I don't know what you can't do with chickens, once you get started! The ideal, of course, would be a system that requires no maintenance, which is a really difficult possibility to accept."
The Plowboy Interview, Mother Earth News, 1980
3. Other uses for a chicken tractor/dome include pasture improvement. A tractor or dome that is moved once or twice a day around a paddock helps you clean up grass grubs and other insect pests, it adds nitrogen to the soil and you don’t have to spend any time at all cleaning out the chicken run. Think of it like rotational grazing that you would naturally use with most other types of livestock. Depending on your livestock, you can use a dome or tractor for most types of farm bird or animal; turkeys, pheasant,
Isn’t free-range better?
While you may want your birds to roam around free, in some form of chicken tractor they still have plenty of room to move around and enjoy your garden. In a chicken dome they have room to fly and be even more natural in their behaviour, with the down sides; no worries about free-ranging predators, your vegetable, herb and flowers will be safe from foraging birds and you can control where their manure goes. It also means there is no danger of losing eggs to other animals or to a broody hen.
What should be in a permaculture chicken dome?
A dome can have perches, a roof for shelter and shade, a couple of nesting boxes, feeders and waterers. If you area is cold, consider using hay bales to build a warm “house” and use an old piece of plywood or iron as a roof. Once the bad weather is over and your birds are happy to use their roosts, the hay can be laid down in the same area to help you create good compost.
More from permaculture co-originator Bill Mollison on the brilliance of the chicken tractor/dome model:
"Just look at all the ways you produce energy in this system: the chickens' body heat, the direct sunlight that reflects off the pond and hits the greenhouse, the radiation of the trees at the rear, the decomposition of chicken manure, and on and on. If you sit down and sketch this system out, you'll find that it's fantastically complex — with thousands of functional interactions — and will run itself . Operating on its own energy, the system automatically switches on and off. As the sun gets high in the sky, the greenhouse absorbs more heat . . . so the chickens get hot and go out, thus removing the source of animal heat. While they're outside, the birds forage in the forest and leave their manure to enrich the soil. After dark, of course, they'll go back inside to keep warm . . . taking their body heat with them.
Look at each chicken by itself and the variety of functions it's performing in this one simple model: In the coop the hen operates as a radiator, an egg producer, and a manurial system. In the forest the bird acts as a self-forager, a tree-disease controller, a fireproofer, a fertilizer producer, and a rake. One can use chickens to do quantities of useful work . . . in fact, I don't know what you can't do with chickens, once you get started! The ideal, of course, would be a system that requires no maintenance, which is a really difficult possibility to accept."
The Plowboy Interview, Mother Earth News, 1980
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