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Pages collated by
Jill Bowis of
started November 1999
These pages are being made up from the wealth of practical and technical knowledge that can be found on the newsgroup. None of the topics are finished - they probably never will be - we always have something to learn. If there is something you wnat to know that is not here - get on the group and ask - they are a really friendly group and no question is too simple - and hopefully if it is complicated someone will be able to help find the answer. The group is made up from all walks of poultry keeping from 2 birds in the city to commercial egg and meat producers - and from all over the world.
FIELDS
Waterlogging
My field - used for free range
hens and goats is very very wet, with a lot of water lying about.
It is on a slight slope but its the top half that's holding the water.
Any ideas as to how to improve things?
Rod out your field drains, sounds
painful but it worked for us!!!
We had some broken drains, the
old clay pipes had collapsed forming a small lake, we waited for a dry
spell and dug down under the place where the lake had been, hey presto
we found a smashed section of drain, we borrowed some drain rods and cleared
the pipes out both ways as far as we could, next we bought a couple of
metres of plastic drainage pipe to replace the broken section, put it in,
packed some rocks around the new pipe for extra drainage and filled it
in.
This has improved our field
immensely, although it would be better if my neighbour would do his, but
then you can't have it all. If you do not know where your drains
are go out at night after a heavy rainfall and just listen, we can hear
ours trickling away, or go to your local archive and find the old plans,
they should be marked.
Do you have drainage ditches,
if they have silted up you should flash (dig) them out every few years.
We had a builder bring a JCB
into the field a year ago..........so maybe
that's what did for the drains!
Depends on your soil type - if
it has load of clay in it then it will not drain too well whatever you
do. (just make an indent with your heel, watch it fill with rain and then
watch it not draining!!).
A cheaper consideration may
be to 'mole drain' the field. The ideal solution would be to try and keep
everything off the land until Spring.
For the standing water, ditches.
Crops
I'd like to fence some off and
sow something to give green cover fast as possible - ideas please!
For winter forage, oats.
Just buy a sack of feed oats and broadcast it on the surface of the field
(and keep the chickens out).