Jay Angler

Sunflower stalks will add carbon to your soil. Many areas of North American have lost a lot of carbon from their soil due to too much tillage. So I try not to dig my soil too much, but sometimes I need to so that good stuff goes where I want it. It's a balance.

Walter Byrd wrote:Should I run them over with a lawn mower to mulch? This turns them into powder.

I would worry you would loose a lot to it blowing away. Powdering a little of it to add to potting soil would be different.

Should chop them into small pieces and mix them with the soil? If so, how long? A foot long? An inch long?

I would try a foot give or take. I would dig as narrow a trench as possible, lay the stalk down in it, then cover it back over sort of like if you were planting a potato.

Have you visited our biochar forum? ( https://permies.com/f/190/biochar ) If you can get a lot of sunflower stalks, making biochar, activating it with compost tea + pee, and mixing it into your soil could really  help with soil building.

Linda Johansson wrote:I find it so interesting that everyone loves the feature of the birds hiding under the coop…that has been my biggest complaint with my trailer. They hang out under it, lay eggs under it instead of in the nest boxes, and the birds at the bottom of the pecking order tend to roost under the coop instead of inside for the night where it is safe. When I build my mobile yard I intend to make some changes such  that the birds no longer have access underneath the trailer.

Egg fishing - we took a second hand, plastic serving spoon and taped it to a stick with hockey tape (great stuff and copes outside for a couple of years).

Not going to bed - that's what hockey sticks are for. They're a great way to increase your reach and guide the birds the right direction. Bribery can also be considered. My chickens like to get a taste of the Khaki C Ducks soaked wheat ration. That would bribe them inside in a heart beat.  Although some of this problem could be the density, or the possibility that you've got a couple of nasty hens causing trouble and setting a bad example. Once a pecking order is set, there shouldn't be a lot of "pecking" unless there's some other issue irritating the birds.

Ra Kenworth wrote: Perhaps another reason to find a refuge among old growth in BC if at all possible -- the cessation of daylight saving time.

Alberta is already talking about joining us (fingers crossed), Saskatchewan never had DST, so that just leaves two provinces to "influence" before getting to your neighborhood.

Unfortunately, BC is getting rid of the "change", not DST. The people voted for DST by a large margin. It will make next Nov/December mornings *very* dark here as we tend to be very cloudy then. I'm already thinking of the "dawn simulator" lights that are available, to put in my bedroom. I had a Charlie Brown version decades ago when I had a worky job, and it really helped me get up in the morning.

Dave Kett wrote: But yes, those barrel stoves are aesthetically superior.

Alas, some of us have family members who care about such things!

Son - genuinely doesn't seem to care
Hubby - claims he doesn't, except he acts like he does... can be quite confusing.
Daughter in Law - wants it to look pretty - not to the point of the pretty thing loosing function, but definitely has opinions! Much less confusing than Hubby!

Linda Johansson wrote: The windows, I would cover with chicken wire so they could be opened in summer to allow lots of ventilation.

I have sworn off chicken wire and use what we call "hardware cloth" which is the welded square stuff in different sizes. I use 1/2" squares. We had too many coon failures with chicken wire, but they can't get through the 1/2" hardware cloth.

Big benefit of an upcycled wheeled vehicle (I've seen this done with vans for smaller flocks) is that birds can run and hide under it, if aerial predators do become an issue.  We happen to be in rat country, so we appreciate the good that the hawks and owls do in keeping them in check. One of my fondest memories was watching a *very* excited Owlet hop from foot to foot on a branch, as Dad Owl pulled bite-sized pieces of meat off a rat. I try to plan my infrastructure so the wildlife stay wild and my domesticated birds, stay safe.

Gordon Longfoot wrote: The pallet idea got me thinking, so I took a walk around the land. I'm already using pallets for one of my hog houses.

That's a happy looking pig! Are you aware that most North American pallets are "HT" which is "heat treated", but there are still some out there that use toxic gick to treat them, so when Hubby's collecting pallets we always check for the HT.

Then there's a good amount of dead Juniper trees. Some are fairly tall.

Standing dead trees in my ecosystem are very important for wildlife and will also help block the wind. Planting new stuff around them, might be a very good use for them. I have no Juniper on my land, so I don't know the downsides of this particular tree, so I would look up whether they acidify the soil, or have allelopathic tendencies when making plans. Even Black Walnut has companion plants able to cope with it!

The only issue I'm concerned with is tires leaking rust or toxic substances into my berry patch.

Yes, I would worry about that too. I've been slowly trying to remove tires from my land, and I don't have many dead ones, but we have a lot of things with wheels (an embarrassing large number if I start counting all the wagons, dollies, wheel barrows etc that are *never* where we need them!)
I would try to come up with a plan that doesn't involve tires near your food crops if you can.

That's an impressive list of seeds, but I am so not even remotely your ecosystem, let's see if some of our dryland plant people will post some ideas.

Kathleen Sanderson wrote:My recommendation is a chicken tractor. ...possibly one of the bigger ones made like an A-frame or a hoop-coop if you plan to have a larger flock.

I use tractors all the time. The hoop shaped, or knee-wall with an A roof seem to use space more efficiently.

... if your land is very uneven or steep, tractors probably won't work. Birds can escape under the sides of the tractor with even a small unevenness that creates a dip

This is less of an issue if you use a wide support to hold the wire at the bottom. Our big 10'x12' ones have electric fencing on the outside due to extreme predator pressure in our area. Luckily we haven't had a bear or cougar test it...
We also have some scrap plastic pipe we rescued and can put it beside the bottom of a shelter to block holes. I often use my small shelters for Moms with babies, so blocking holes is crucial.

One of the biggest cons is that they need to be moved regularly, with daily moves being ideal. They need to be built to be easy to move, or soon they won't be getting moved. If you will be moving yours by hand, it needs to be light enough for the smallest person moving them to handle easily

Yes!!! I can't reliably move our large ones despite Hubby trying very hard to keep them as light at possible. I have met way too many "portable" shelters that turned stationary unless owned by very large men (rather than this 115 lb senior.)

I put the doors on the top; if you build one of these, make sure you can reach clear to each end from your door, so you can reach all of the chickens in residence.

My shelters are quite different than yours. However, I had one that had design difficulties which I was trying to fix. It's a 4'x8' pipe structure with an 18" knee wall at the front. I only had material for a single door at the front. Yesterday I had to climb in to treat the girls for leg mites. Not fun! (Very treatable problem and they will be better soon.)

... but I found out the hard way that an attached roof turned such a light-weight tractor into a sailboat in high winds - several tractors flipped over taught that lesson.

We have had the wind blow over our large 10x12 shelters, so yes, this is a problem. We use giant nails 12" long to stake the big shelters down. My little ones are normally tucked away in the winter, but I have a bunch of dog X-pen sections and I will wrap a small shelter and stick water buckets around it to keep it from blowing if I've had babies hatch late in the season.

I had intended to add a bucket nest box... But a light-weight nest box, accessible from outside the tractor, would make it easier to collect the eggs, and would keep the eggs cleaner...

I have had no luck with the bucket nest box concept. I found the girls didn't like the curve and didn't like the slippery plastic. I gave a set to a friend, and her birds rejected them too.
I have learned to make very light weight nest boxes out of wood, and the girls love them.

Chicken tractors are more often used for meat birds than layers for reasons - like the age of the birds, the need for nest boxes etc. Layers are more commonly free ranged from a "portable coop" on sturdy wheels and pulled by something much stronger than me. But we have found ways to do this. It took a lot of experimentation and determination. As Kathleen says, the birds love the concept - fresh grass and bugs every day!

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Yeah I know I could build my own. That would be more fun. But I have a lot of calls on my time right now so I need to pick my battles.

This! There's a place for quick fixes, so long as the product one's looking at will do the job.

Shame they didn't include a panel designed to sit on top and hold a kettle! Hot soup, hot tea, stacking functions!

It strikes me from the background forbs and trees, that this seems more like a playhouse for children than a practical even temporary shelter for adults.

I am not convinced most "flat" material that wasn't some sort of plastic, would bend well enough. I have seen people bend solid material by slicing a *lot* of thin slices part-way through the wood/foam to give it that flexibility. One guy I saw doing so for a "tear-drop" trailer, had special tool bits to do so, then he put glue in the cracks, then attached it to a frame to dry.

The exception would be metal. I have some metal roofing that would do this job with the exception of the door overhang. However, our metal shed gets crazy hot if the sun is out, then cools off fast at night fall, causing all sorts of condensation issues. I've read this about motor homes as well - black mold can be a serious issue. A standard, pre-fab, assemble-it-yourself from a kit, wooden shed was recommended as a better alternative, despite the issue that they tend to rot in my climate... sigh... nothing survives in a part-time rainforest!

I live in earthquake country on the wet coast. If I need outside shelter, a Quonset shape, or standard rectangular with a simple peaked roof would be my go to. Yes, the one in the picture is cute as a button if you want something that will look good in the meantime, but true dome emergency shelters are usually done with bendy branches, followed by moss, tree bark, leaves for insulation, and whatever else is available in the ecosystem.

Even if outside, I would really want to use at least a short chimney, so that the smoke wouldn't be hovering around me. Granted, my ecosystem is notorious for down-drafts!