the little old lady

Hah!  I was so caught up in all the forums I missed that! 

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

You already have guard animals....the camelids.  They are very curious and defensive of
their space.
If you design your chicken shelters with high roosts that they learn to fly to, the chickens
should be safe enough.  I gradually raise the roosting height by removing the lower
roosts.  Most of my hens can get up on an 8 foot roost, from the ground.

When my dogs are outside, without me, they stay on cables (we have a county leash law and a major highway).
I have a rescued feral dog, a pyrenees/border collie mix that will watch calmly as chickens eat her food and let them take dust baths, or naps, within two feet of her, BUT, every once in a while she decides to "play" with one. ??  So far, no blood.....or..... she totally ate the evidence.

I have kept as many as 80 chickens of various breeds, but the LEGHORNS were the first to not be invited back to play.  We learned in a hurry about skinny, flighty, big-combed mediterranean-type chickens.  I am hoping that they have a lot of friends out there that appreciate them, because I have learned that it is necessary to just say NO.
We live in a harsh, windy, cold climate and have learned to stick with the big girls.
We have better luck raising the heavy breeds with small combs that don't freeze.  I know they  eat more food, so aren't as cost effective as some chickens, but I figure that goes with the territory. 
Try this for happy winter chickens......feed them sprouts....it is just not that difficult to do large batches in a bucket and they get the sprout rinse water too.  We feed alfalfa hay, kitchen scraps, and small crabapples.  They live in deep piles of turned hay (a la Joel Salatin) in an unheated shed, roam free, and in summer they sleep in trees and then I keep the garden fenced, not the chickens.
If I were a chicken, I would want to live at my house.

o.k.  What is a black soldier fly composter?  Do I want one?  Does it compost the flies?

Oops!  Forgot to mention the reason I came to this thread.....is there a way to add
a "search" feature on this web site? 
I can see that even a search box would lead you all over the place, as topics intertwine, but couldn't it sort of help? 

I was cruising youtube about raku, outdoor heaters/kilns, sinus surgery, pet wounds, savonius rotors, bison hand pumps, ram pumps, solar hot water, earth-sheltered houses, and I ran into the downdraft stove video somewhere along the way.
I own a first issue of TMEN (and most of the rest of them.....along with all the rest of the back-to-earth mags)...and have been doing this stuff for a long time.  Love it.

go to the library and ask for the Denver Water Boards' three books on Xeriscaping.
READ!!!

Go to the library and ask for the Denver Water Boards' three books on Xeriscaping.
READ!!!

Go to the library and ask for the Denver Water Boards' three books on Xeriscaping.
They are a wealth of information.

Go the library and request the Denver Water Boards' books on Xeriscaping.
(They wrote three books, and made the word come into common usage,  I think it is Greek for "without water".)
READ!!!
Denver is generally a zone 4 (and maybe gets warm enough to be a 5 or 6 with protection from wind and sun).  These books will give you more choices than you have money or time for.
I live in Northern Colorado, in the sagebrush, Zone 3, and I use them almost exclusively.