Tenzin Norbu

This is in the selva alta norte of Peru. Rioja province, San Martin department.

If you're reading this and are interested, we'd be willing to consult with you and help advise you on your undertaking down here. We've pioneered this stuff and can point you in the right direction for lots of things. Not interested in making any money. Like I said, we just want people here doing good things.

Here's another video from the area. This place is about a five minute drive from the entrance of our property:
https://fb.watch/nsf6NGQFN4/

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Lovely photos.

I think you need to indicate where this semitropical forest is located.

Why are people so desperate to sell?

There is more to this than meets the eye. My 2c.

Honestly, I'm not sure they're desperate to sell. A problem here is that people often set an extremely over-inflated asking price and then sit back for years almost like they'd be better off playing the lottery. They don't adjust the price even after a couple years with no one interested. I've seen that a lot. My earlier comment was based on the fact that the people who run cattle on the surrounding pastures have all but eliminated their forested areas, and they won't be able to keep changing fence posts in the future. They're too cheap to buy good wood at market price, so they just keep destroying their forests until there's nothing left. Many neighbors are old, their kids aren't interested, etc. i.e. the usual story. Without fencing, they won't be able to keep running cattle, and these people certainly aren't going to invest the time, effort and money required to reforest the landscape. You'd think they'd just invest in T-posts, but those don't even exist here, almost like it's the stone age. I give it 5-10 years tops and all the neighbors here will be throwing in the towel. It's already at the point where we've had to call the authorities on them to change their fences. One neighboring property had cows enter almost one year ago, and we notified the owner. Well here we are 9 months later and we finally had to get the authorities involved so that they would do something about all their fence posts that have been totally rotten for at least one year now.

More than meets the eye, eh? Yeah it's certainly not Hawaii or the Bahamas. These people also aren't exactly Greg Judy either, so you inherit decades of ecological degradation, which probably affects the soil most harshly. Think very high aluminum saturation, zero topsoil, low pH, and most macro & micronutrients being deficient. The people don't ever irrigate or fertilize their pastures and they only supplement their cows with cheap table salt. That's the other factor. We had a dry year, and their pastures stopped growing, the cows don't have any shade in the pastures. Their water source is often the public creek or water way, and such public resources are going to be a hot topic in the future for law enforcement efforts due to the ecological importance of maintaining riparian buffers. The riparian buffers have pretty much been reduced to zero on many of the neighboring properties. During droughts like the record-breaker we're going through this year, some properties have very little water, and the cows basically congregate near stagnant muddy ponds. You do the math. Pretty hard to sustain that kind of operation.

Basically it's the sort of opportunity for a younger permulculturist who is willing to live off-grid and understands the costs and difficulties involved. Especially for someone who has always dreamt of owning a decent chunk of land but has felt pushed out of the market by the exorbitant real estate prices in their home country. I wouldn't recommend the area for someone who needs their creature comforts, but we do live pretty comfortably off-grid with our house having most of the amenities you'd expect from the suburbs of a country like the USA. If you're willing to jump in, it's essentially raw land. No plumbing, no access, no structures.

Some of our neighbors in our area are interested in selling their land. Property sizes are mostly 5-10 hectares. The people are pretty desperate and can't even afford to (or are not responsible enough to) fix their fences, so they would probably settle for some low-ball offers too. Most of the properties have access to creeks or springs.

The area is pleasant. Daytime temperatures usually 80-90F. Nights usually 60-67F. Very scenic. Nice city located 45 minutes away.

Properties are cheap. I can't quote any accurate prices right now, but we paid about 1600 USD per hectare a little over three years ago. I would assume everything's still less than double that amount. The area is in the foothills of a mountain.

The reason I'm posting is because my wife and I would appreciate having like-minded neighbors. We're the odd outsiders working on a reforestation project, while the local folk who primarily moved here from other parts of the country practice deforestation, and it is depressing to see all their slash and burn practices. We're not interested in an eco-village or anything like that, but just would appreciate people with more environmental consciousness moving to the area and helping to keep it beautiful.

I'm attaching some photos from our property. Most adjacent properties share this same view.

John C Daley wrote:Are you aware there was a settlement of Australians in your country back in the 1800's looking for the ideal land. It fell apart with arguments though, I think.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Paraguayans

Not to mention Galt's Gulch.

OP's setting sounds very similar to my setting in the high jungle of northern Peru. Especially the part where she mentions the 700m hike uphill to get to the house. Bingo.

Tenzin Norbu wrote:

sree dharan wrote:Tenzin, where are you located? Are you in an equatorial area?

Yes.

I know most everyone is going to jump on this as THE cause: We caught our puppy eating a couple eggs recently.

I still strongly believe that the birds were just not producing. These aren't specific breeds. Just criollo chickens. I think it was protein deficiency. Now that some have started laying again it is obvious that they just weren't producing before. Even one of the most stealth layers is now singing loudly in the morning, which she wasn't doing throughout the previous months. Lots of singing as of this week.

As someone else suggested, it is possible they were moulting. I don't have much experience to know how identifiable that is. Also the break in laying coinided with our very wet rainy season. Could be coincidental, but maybe also a cause.

Update: They are now producing lots of eggs. No question about it. They definitely were not producing before. Probably nutritional. Probably protein deficiency as others suggested. Or maybe it was just a lull.

Andrew Mayflower wrote:I have no idea if they're available in South America, but Freedom Rangers are a popular alternative among homesteader types to cornish cross for a reasonably fast growing (but not freakish like cornish cross) broiler that will forage effectively.  Mine usually average a 5lb carcass weight at 10 weeks old, 6.5-6.75lbs at 12 weeks.  I usually order all males, if I had a straight run the females would probably average a pound less than the males at the same age.  If you have the ability to be flexible, harvesting the males at 10 weeks and the females at 11-12 weeks would result in them all being about the same carcass size.

https://www.freedomrangerhatchery.com/shop/product/freedom-ranger-chickens/

You might contact those folks and see if they either have a licensed breeder in South America or if they know of a similar/comparable breed available there.

It doesn't look like those are available here. Would be great though. That's only two weeks slower than cornish cross.

sree dharan wrote:Tenzin, where are you located? Are you in an equatorial area?

Yes.

I know most everyone is going to jump on this as THE cause: We caught our puppy eating a couple eggs recently.

I still strongly believe that the birds were just not producing. These aren't specific breeds. Just criollo chickens. I think it was protein deficiency. Now that some have started laying again it is obvious that they just weren't producing before. Even one of the most stealth layers is now singing loudly in the morning, which she wasn't doing throughout the previous months. Lots of singing as of this week.

As someone else suggested, it is possible they were moulting. I don't have much experience to know how identifiable that is. Also the break in laying coinided with our very wet rainy season. Could be coincidental, but maybe also a cause.

Matt McSpadden wrote:Hi Tenzin,
I can't answer all of your questions, but I can throw out a few things.

First, for people who are not aware, there are different strains of the cornish cross meat birds. All are quite extreme when compared to heritage breeds, but there are some that are less extreme and do not have the same leg problems. While I have never raised these ones, I have heard from people who have raised them, that you can reduce the leg and heart problems by feeding them less and forcing them to walk more. It does slow their growth a bit, but also reduces those health problems.

For people who don't want to raise those ones, I would be looking at the Cornish and the White Rock (which are crossed to create the Cornish Cross), as well as something like the Red Ranger or Freedom Ranger. After those, I would be considering some of the dual purpose like Australorps or Orpingtons or White/Black Giants. I'm sorry I don't know what the spanish names would be or if they are available in South America.

Having said that, are you stuck on chickens for meat? I would think geese (or maybe ducks) could be a better fit. I don't know about the beans, but I know Geese would eat corn just fine. And the geese would probably be fine with grass and corn depending on your climate. For instance Emden geese could reach 20-25lb live weight in 3-5 months. Pilgrims geese could get to 13-14lb in 3-5 months.

We have a gander and two females. I don't think we have a good male. He never mounts any of the females and became infatuated with one of the ducks. We give them corn and of course they have access to fresh grass. However, it seems like they don't really eat much of either. I'm not sure how they've been able to maintain their weight. We've kept them in a tractor, and after moving it, it's hard to tell if they've really mowed the grass or not. They are staying big though, so they much be eating something. We started with four females and the male. That was about one year ago. When we first got the geese, a couple of them started laying a few eggs. Nothing ever hatched. Since then, we've never gotten any more eggs from them. They are expensive birds. Not many people here could afford to buy them. Muscovies are popular but even slower-growing than criollo chickens. They take about a year to get fully-grown.

I think chicken is the only thing with a big enough market here to raise for a business. You can sell a regular criollo bird for about twice as much as you would pay for a factory-farmed cornish cross. But I don't think people would be willing to pay twice as much for a cornish cross that was raised on pasture in a tractor or free range. I'm sure people would assume they were being swindled. The key is finding something that looks similar to a criollo chicken and significantly different than a cornish cross so that people would align their purchase based on the appearance.

They have these available. Kind of expensive for the chicks. I don't know anything about them:
https://articulo.mercadolibre.com.pe/MPE-445412171-pollitos-de-gallina-gigante-de-huevos-verdes-_JM#position=5&search_layout=stack&type=item&tracking_id=a83f7cfd-15c8-4f17-972b-4b2d16e92afd

We butchered one of our hens last week and inside were many eggs that looked like she would've started laying within the next month.

Could be snakes. Snakes are common here: Boa constrictor, abundance of Bothrops atrox, and we've sighted a large specimen of Clelia clelia on occasion. But I figure we'd hear some commotion from time to time if there were a snake eating each and every egg. We haven't had a predator strike a bird in a long time. We have a nesting area in a dark, retired chicken tractor with nest boxes. Check mulitple times per day. The chicken sector is very well-manicured nowadays, and it's been a long time since we've seen any decent-sized snakes there.

Probably a protein deficiency: Kitchen scraps (mostly veggie skins), moringa, and corn kernels doesn't sound  like the best high-protein diet.

The soil in their new area was terribly leached when we inherited it. It is soggy and acidic. Recently we stopped noticing the visual signs of iron and aluminum saturation that were often present as a surface film in puddles of runoff water. That sounds extremely dire, but unfortunately is pretty common in tropical deforested areas. The fruit trees are starting to grow normally after being stunted. The chickens are now helping that process too, and it looks like the pH balance is being restored progressively. I wonder if saturation of such elements in highly acidic soils (pH 4-4.5) has negative effects on chickens. Don't think that is the problem with the eggs though.

Birds are visually healthy. Deep red combs, not obese, active, alert.

And what do you think is the name of each breed in Spanish in South America?

We have local criollo birds that we have been raising for the past two years. What this Ugandan fellow mentions are all things we have observed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlLLtYozLOk

They really do take at least 6-8months before you can consider harvesting them. I wish someone would have told us that before we started. Since we kind of do a Salatin style tractor and let them loose free range during the day, they have good sanitation and always access to fresh grass and bugs. They have not had hardly any disease problems, however I think it's due to the way we raise them and not necessarily their genetics.

We want a good in-between bird. One extreme is the cornish cross factory-farmed bird that takes 1.5-2 months, but is extremely fragile, requires nearly perfect conditions and a really well-balanced feed. The other extreme are these criollo chickens that take 8 months to get big enough.

The cornish cross wouldn't work probably for these reasons: The ground is soggy in many places and they will have to sleep on the ground (not a problem for the criollos). We currently move tractors every other day and the birds only use the tractors for sleep or shelter from storms. We want the birds out in the silvopasture orchard (the landscape is an orchard) so they can catch bugs and supplement their nutrition with fallen/rotten fruit. Cornish cross seems too cumbersome to effectively catch bugs. Plus the topography is steep and irregular, so I'm not sure their legs would tolerate it.

Wants: Birds that are ready from hatch to harvest in 3-4 months (or faster). Able-bodied to deal with the topography and scavenge a large portion of their diet. Able to succeed on just whole-kernel corn and cooked beans as feed. The orchard is young, and fruit probably won't be a reliable source of food for at least another two years.