Adam Hackenberg

*I redact my statement about use of coffee grounds, and support the decision of adding sulfur. In use with correlation from a soil sample test result, usually from local university, I’m somewhat guessing this intel is from that sort of things. Use their recommendations as far as ph goes, did you get recommendations with soil results? Pouring out coffee grounds by eye may result in similar output to current conditions, as it’s not really a scientific approach, to produce stable outcome.

As an organic additive have you thought of using feather meal at all? Most organic farms, end up with to much P, this is due to the expensive cost of feather meal being non economical, therefore the repeated use of manure, giving that end result. Another option with minimal P is alfalfa pellets 2-.25-2. Not to mention there are cheap synthetic fertilizers, the main N one available lowering ph, that don’t contain P. My first plot I ever gardened, about half of it received to much P, it was easy to tell, by the way the corn grew stunted, I’ve been wary of phosphorous ever since. Another thought is coffee grounds are free, i stunted another patch of corn, by pouring out coffee grounds all over, but for you it may remediate the issue.

That’s the one thing I was disappointed with that ncbi article. It dealt nothing with parasites, they have all these tests they run, but much of their positive result could be due to to less parasitism, which they did not check for anywhere during the tests, or at least it does not appear that way.

I haven’t read the whole link, but like that type of reading. This an exert from link, dealing with microbial life and extreme conductivity of biochar, in the gut.

Inside the gastro-intestinal tract, nearly all feed-degrading reactions are facilitated by microorganisms (mostly bacteria, archaea and ciliates). Within those reactions, bacterial cells may transfer electrons to biofilms or via biofilms to other terminal electron acceptors (Richter et al., 2009; Kracke, Vassilev & Krömer, 2015). However, biofilms are rather poor electric conductors and the electron-accepting capacity is low. Hence, microbial redox reactions can be optimized by electron shuttles, such as humic acids or activated biochar whose electrical conductivity is 100–1,000 times higher than that of biofilms (Aeschbacher et al., 2011; Liu et al., 2012; Saquing, Yu & Chiu, 2016). Although the conductivity of non-activated biochar is lower compared to activated biochar, it has been shown that it can efficiently transfer electrons between bacterial cells (Chen et al., 2015; Sun et al., 2017). Bacteria were shown to donate an electron to a biochar particle while other bacteria of different species took up (accepted) an electron at another site of the same biochar particle. The biochar acts here like a “battery” (or electron buffer) that can be charged and discharged, depending on the need of biochemical (microbial) reactions (Liu et al., 2012). Moreover, as biochar can be temporarily oxidized or reduced by microbes (i.e., biochar is depleted or enriched in electrons), it can buffer situations with a (temporary) lack of electron donors or terminal electron acceptors (redox buffering effect) (Saquing, Yu & Chiu, 2016). A principal aim of feeding biochar to animals could thus be to overcome metabolic redox limitations by enhancing electron exchange between microbes, and between microbes and terminal electron acceptors.

I also thought it was interesting that low temp biochar acted like a battery, high temp acted as a conductor. I wonder if it’s low enough temp while burning leaves into charcoal?

I would suggest game chickens to lure in bird of prey, I have seen a hawk 3 times today, with them at range, last time I went out, they where still in a field, with the hawk, as soon as it flew away, they where foraging in field again, it’s like their almost friends, or know they can out fly it given head start. I’ll see the hawk often in the middle of field, today it swooped down and rested on a muscadine trellis pole.  Hawk activity increased quite higher, when I let them out of coop. I think another mention is they don’t hunt well with bushy habitat, prefer to hunt in open understory or in open field.  It’s a type of bird feeder, if you like hawks not much loss letting your friends eat dinner at your place.  Given it maybe more helpful to hawk to give them domesticated chickens, as he’s been hunting months, hasn’t got one bird… I’ll give you it’s a gamble like this when they will have chicks, but I have seen a hawk up close get beat back by a mama hen with chicks, somehow they’ve survived this way before. It was really neat watching a hawk eat one of my birds before.

Thekla McDaniels wrote:
The other thing I want to add is that back in the day, people would throw old nails and such under the hydrangea bushes.  Hydrangeas bloom bluish pinkish or purplish, and rusting iron can change the color.  When you put rusty nails under the bush, it raises the pH.  Acid soil pink blooms, alkaline soil, blue blooms.

If some one already said rusting iron raises the pH, I just didn’t take it in.  And I am guessing now, but I am thinking it wouldn’t be a permanent change in the pH.

That is backwards for the color to bloom. Alkaline makes pink bloom, acidic blue.
https://www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/chiwonlee/plsc211/student%20papers/articles09/haylee%20a%20wax/pH%20affects%20on%20hydrangea%20-hw.html

Another consideration is will your forage be green all year long? I’m lucky to have a field that stays green through the winter, if this is not the case or if you simply wish for more coverage for them, it maybe advantageous to plant annual ryegrass for them. If you do go this route it maybe helpful to keep them off the range until after it has sprouted. Another option is planting cereal rye, allowing this to form seed, cereal rye has high protein content for a grain, I’m reading mixed reviews but some state around 15 percent protein, meaning they can eat much more cereal rye then scratch grains and produce the same. You could plant them together, but you wouldn’t want to mow cereal rye like annual rye, if for producing seed, though the chicken would love cereal greens just like annual rye.

I do a similar thing, just more simple. I will deposit/take leaves, bits of soil, and leaf mold, from and to local forest. Even leaving old corn cobs in forest. I also deposit/take water samples from creek and bodies of water, even to and from puddles, to and from my koi pond. Many times I use ash as a lubricant for collecting and depositing water samples.  A lot of time my depositing and taking leaves is coincided with urine marking. Urine mark then deposit leaves on top etc. Short story is bacterial blueprints are individual in nature, meaning it’s an alternate way other then dna to catch perpetrator. I want my bacterial blueprint, bacteria associated with me specifically, to be as extensive on landform as possible.

Another factor to think about is predation levels. I only let game chickens free range, pretty fast, have seen a mama hen fight off hawk attack, never lost a mature game cock. I don’t necessarily consider laying and meat birds smart nor fit enough, to survive predation, when given a field. A hawk comes by near every day. If I free ranged my laying hens, it would be in a smaller yard then preferred for those reasons. On the positive I have seen a bird of prey eating a chicken, looked just like a dragon. Just something to think about is your ten and two.