<DrumBeat: August 27, 2008 The Oil Drum Hurricane Gustav and Energy Infrastructure - Early Open Thread>

100 comments on Dammit! We Wasted a Day of Sunlight!

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PriorityX on August 26, 2008 - 9:43pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

An excellent book for information on the resources required for raising meet animals and the nutritional values of various food groups is "Crisis Preparedness Handbook" by Jack Spigarelli. The feed requirements for animal from rabbits to cows are daunting. For example, enough rabbits (12) to provide an average of 1.5 to 2 lbs of meet per day requires 3.5 tons of commercial feed per year! Or you can make your own feed from corn, grain sorghum, hay, oats, soybeans, and wheat. The acreage to grow that amount of feed is substantial. A dozen laying hens to get close to four dozen eggs a week require 1,200 lbs of mash per year (page 171.)

The space needed to raise meet animals is not very large, it's the land required for the feed which is in scarce supply.

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noutram on August 27, 2008 - 8:36am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

If there are any Bio-Engineers out there perhaps you should get cracking on a new animal that 'eats sunlight'. As a starting point may I suggest a cross beteen a chicken and a billiard table...

Trust me, these 'Pool-Head Chickens' are going to be the norm come the revolution and their legs will be tasty too given all the xtra weight...

Nick.

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FrankRichards on August 27, 2008 - 9:21am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I raise chickens. Our dozen hens get no grain from green up (April) to 'no more bugs' (October), and about half the listed amount of grain the rest of the time. They do get kitchen scraps, but that's just preprocessing the compost.

Also four eggs/week is poor laying. Rather than almost four, you should get over 5. And a dozen chicken dinners per year: six retired layers, and six cockerels that you raised along with the six replacement pullets.

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PriorityX on August 27, 2008 - 11:56am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Thanks for the good news. I was a bit bummed with the numbers in the book. I did some more research and found an article with two key pieces of information.

http://www.countrysidemag.com/issues/90/90-3/Jim_Hogue.html

The article is about Carl Hammer in Montpelier, VT who raises 1,400 chickens on primarily restaurant garbage! Even better, was the method for protecting his free range flock from predators. He relies on a single German Shepard.

One fact I have not found yet is the ratio of birds to acres during the spring, summer, and fall that allows for enough forage food that supplemental commercial food is not needed. I'm sure that ratio has a wide variation depending on the makeup of the land. Lawn, hay meadow, meadow no longer hayed and left to grow, shrub growth area, and forest area.

On another note, back in the seventies when we raised a couple of pigs we feed them primarily with day old donuts from Dunkin Donuts in Essex, Jct, VT. We typically picked up two to three bags a day. If I remember correctly, the bags were about 3' tall. I also remember eating quite a few before they got to the pigs:)

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FrankRichards on August 27, 2008 - 4:45pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Our flock ranges over about two acres. That's pretty much a circle around the coop and includes about everything: lawn, garden, forest (the neighbors) pasture and barnyard. We collect expired food from the local food bank for our pigs (and other animals -- sheep like broccoli the way pigs like chocolate donuts). We've been known to eat a bit ourselves too.

Our winter feed bill for the chickens would likely be higher if they couldn't scavenge seeds from the hay and risk their lives robbing the pigs.

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100 comments on Dammit! We Wasted a Day of Sunlight!

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