Kiboko Jones

William Bronson wrote:

You could make the cylinder half as long and twice the diameter.
I think a bigger "wheel" like this would roll even more easily.
Since the birds won't be inside, once the cylinder has been moved, we can lay it on one of the circular sides.
A 62" diameter x 4 foot long cylinder would provide almost 21 square feet of flat enclosed space, with plenty of headroom for turkeys.

I am picking up what you are putting down. A single hog panel is 16' long by 4' wide. rolling the hog panel tip to tip and then securing rebar in the design of spokes on a bicycle would make for a much more simple design where I don't have to bend the hog panels into a half circle along their length.

one side of the "wheel" could be open and that is the side that lies on the grass, and the other could have plywood or plastic panels to act as a roof when the wheel is laid down.

I do think a large wheel would make it easier to go over the obstacles I described too.

I appreciate the suggestion and think that I will probably pursue this option over my original design.

Tereza Okava wrote:i know this does not answer your question but I made something very similar for my small rabbits, when I first got them and I was worried about predators. It actually worked quite well, but the whole mess would have been so much easier to use if I had used something stiffer (pig wire would have been ideal, but I used a chickenwire weight instead, money was a factor...)-- your design looks much better thought out than mine!!
Also it was not as easy to get them out as I had hoped, but that may be a rabbit problem rather than a poultry problem.

In your case, I would consider having some sort of shade cloth to bungee on top of it.

Hog panel is exactly what I plan on using due to its stiffness and strength. I didn't include the tarp in the design, but it would absolutely be something I would have over top of them, it gets pretty warm out here in the Valley.

The key difference this year vs the other years has been feeding at night. The turkeys reach their enclosure before I do because they know it is dinner time lol.

Thank you for your input, I much appreciate it!

Hardware cloth is definitely a better option because we do have raccoons in the area. So far we keep getting hit by coyotes and foxes, this year more than any of the past ones.

I need something big enough for both chickens and turkeys to be moved with (not at the same time, but used for both animals), but that also will go over a berm or grass bunch with relative ease.

It would be nice on processing day also to be able to put the tunnel on some kind of sled and drag the chickens to the processing area instead of capturing them and hand loading them into cages.

Thank you for your input William!

Hey there Permies,
I am located in Northern California and I have been running chickens and turkeys for meat for the past three years. Out here in CA we flood irrigate our pasture that we run the birds in, and I have several complications that make standard chicken tractors a problem:
*berms in the middle of the pasture used to guide and hold water as it seeps into the ground. These berms make standard tractors very hard to get up and over when moving birds from one section of the pasture to the other.
*pasture has several deeply rutted areas from me being an inexperienced tractor operator and the ground being too wet when running it in late '23. The ruts capture chicken tractor wheels and allow birds the opportunity to slip under the tractor and get out...or predators to sneak in. Our pasture was 30yrs old and terrible quality, so I reseeded and disced 1.5yrs ago.
*Grass and foliage grows so high in the summer that moving tractors over thick clumps of grass is incredibly hard.

I have tried normal tractors: the A-frame, Salatin's box,
Some not so normal: a low to the ground "sled" tractor that I designed that did okay, and a fortress on wheels that weighed approx. a baby elephant.

I came up with this idea recently and before just going and building it (like I did with the other ones), I thought I would see what other people with experience raising birds thought.

We let the birds roam in an electric fence during the day hours, and then we feed them at dusk to get them to go back into the tractor on their own without chasing them all over the place. The birds would not be in the tractor when I roll it.

Thank you for your time!

Ben Zumeta wrote:I have gotten a lot out of Bill Zeedyk’s work on high meadow and wetland restoration:

Ben,

The internet has been down at work, and that coupled with the virus has just slowed my day down to next to nothing. Luckily you passed this video info on to me. WOW! this guy has so much knowledge it is just absolutely incredible. The amount of change he brought to the wetlands he worked on must be very satisfying for him to observe.

Thank you for passing this on Ben, truly just an interesting hour of info from Bill.

Roberto pokachinni wrote:

Beavers!

At one time, that little creek was inhabited by the critters, as was every other waterway, large or small, on North America.  As a keystone, engineering species, beavers did more to build this continent than any other animal (bison included).  I hope you see a family of beavers move into your watershed and make their way to your stretch of creek.  May their tribe increase.

One reason that your creek gully is so deep is likely because the beavers have been removed, that their dams have been removed over time from lack of beavers maintaining them, and as such when the water levels are high the rushing water of the spring snow melt (or rain-storm water, flashing run-off) has been eroding the little valley bottom for a very long time, cutting it deeper and deeper.  This has dropped your surface water table.  The brown water is an indication of erosion.  Beaver dams (or any small dams) create pools of water but they also dramatically increase siltation and sedimentation of valleys.  They are also leaky dams so they never hold back all the water.  If you were to mimic them by making brush and rock dams, you will raise the creek valley bottom, and, eventually the dams will silt up the ponds.  You have the opportunity for more fun, by increasing the height of the dams in the future to renew the process, and as the dams progress upwards on the banks of the valley, the steep long drop will decrease over time, particularly if this is carried on by others after you are gone.  Beaver simplfy the process by making bigger dams than you would be able to easily do.

I don't know if they like to eat blackberries (which I think are introduced species that has gone feral, and are not wild local species), and I don't know if beaver's native food sources are even available in that valley anymore, as the Central Valley has dried out significantly and had it's plant ecology altered greatly since the beavers were removed.  Beavers need food, and they need stuff to make their dams and lodges out of (though some will den up holes in the creek bank without the need for much materials).  Beavers will not show up out of nowhere, they have to have a local growing population to want to risk exploring a new vallley from.  In some cases, beavers will return to an area after rehab work has been done to a creek.  The increased ecological community as well as increased depth are likely the reasons.  

Be the beavers you want to see in the world.        

This was more along the lines of what I was thinking when I originally posted the question. The creek bed is deep for a while in both directions and I thought it would be an awesome entryway to welcome critters back into a place where they can hopefully thrive once again.

Thank you for this reply Roberto.

S Bengi wrote:My gut reaction is to leave it as it is.

Personally I would extract water from it to water my food forest, fish pond, natural swimming pool and provide water for the animals. I would put a pump in there are take some water out.

For erosion control: https://www.fema.gov/pdf/about/regions/regionx/Engineering_With_Nature_Web.pdf

I wouldn't mind seizing water from it, but this creek is in my zone 5, a little under a 1/4 mile away. I work in pumps and am intimately familiar with what I would need to pump it anywhere useful, and i am not prepared to spend that kind of money for a semi-constant running creek.

Thanks for the input Bengi.

Hello all,

I have a creek that runs along the edge of my property and during a good snowfall season, it will run all year. A dry year, and it will dry up (California central valley). Trees line both sides of the creek bed, and the understory is wild blackberry bushes.

It's also 10ft or more down a steep decline, which leads to small beaches of mud and gravel.

I'm curious how I can best nurture this area? I was thinking introducing some cat tail and other vegetation that might start to create a habitat for beneficial small critters.

Should I mess with the ecology of that section of the river by manipulating it? I see no fish or life in the river, which is brown but clearish.  Would digging a pool to one side for filling during the wet months benefit or degrade the system?

Also, I am not asking what can I do to legally change the river bed / course, I understand that all info given is just opinion...

Thanks for any suggestions!