Comments on: In Search of the Fabled Permaculture Chicken/Greenhouse

By: Rien ne se perd, rien ne se crée, tout se transforme « 1+1=salade ?

Rien ne se perd, rien ne se crée, tout se transforme « 1+1=salade ? — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:47:02 +0000

[...] Pour nuancer cette invention ingénieuse, voir l’article In Search of the Fabled Permaculture Chicken/Greenhouse, de Rob [...]

By: splosh

splosh — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 18:38:49 +0000

hi
we tried the rabbit over worm compost and the emmonia made the rabbits eyes swell corsing blindness. So it might be another one to ad to the “Journal Of Failures” ,of what not to do.
Thank you all for such helpful posts.

By: Kira Hagen

Kira Hagen — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 09:29:35 +0000

I hate to say I don’t remember where I read about this, but I’ve heard of keeping rabbit hutches in the greenhouse to warm it. I believe they were open bottom units placed over worm composting bins, so that trimmings went into the rabbits, droppings went into the compost, and the compost was reused for the plants.

Trying an aquaponics setup with water taking solar heat and providing thermal mass might work to – you’d probably need cold water fish like catfish to make it work. If you used black tanks they’d soak up sun, and you could start vining plants to cover the tanks in the spring. For that matter, you could put rabbits over catfish… Anyway, just some thoughts!

By: Jill Robinson

Jill Robinson — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 23:16:44 +0000

I think Lee is referring to Solviva. There’s a book still available, and the website: http://www.solviva.com/. Very inspiring stuff!

By: Lee Mennell

Lee Mennell — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 04:28:47 +0000

I read an article in an “old” organic gardening magazine ( Rodales ) circa 1975 (I’m guessing) about a women in the Eastern United States who had a greenhouse business selling high quality herbs to restaurants. She had an attached chicken coop to provide heat and CO2. The article, if I remember rightly, discussed the difficulties in getting the system to work properly. There was some problems with the CO2, and maybe the dust. After much fiddling, balancing and I think some technology like fans and exhausts, they got it working – but it was not easy or obvious. I personally would love to find this old article. I think it is a great idea, but I remember this article had a lot of information about how it can all go wrong.
Lee

By: Vicki

Vicki — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 18:17:29 +0000

I would just like to say thank you for everyone who commented. I am in the process of designing a greenhouse to raise red worms in and am investigating ways to add warmth in the winter. Everyones comments has helped greatly

Vicki

By: Chuck

Chuck — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 05:32:44 +0000

I also had a combined solar greenhouse (10′ X 80′) and chicken area (the end 30 of the greenhouse). I had them separated with wire mesh, and the dust from the chickens was disgusting on the salad greens in the greenhouse. I had 50 chickens (as I can remember). So maybe with fewer it might generate less chicken dust. But that was the main problem for me.

-Chuck

By: susan socks

susan socks — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 09:04:52 +0000

I live in Vermont, USA, and have recently built a 20′x50′ passive solar hoop house. In the summer it provides a extra warm, sheltered space for heat-loving crops which otherwise would not make it in VT. The sides roll up manually, so it must be opened in the day and closed up each night. In the winter, we’ve got a dozen chickens in a chicken wire pen, to keep them from pecking the greenhouse plastic and eating the spring starts. This number of chickens definitely does NOT keep our greenhouse frost-free, but the chickens are happy and warm since they are out of the winter winds. They have a bedded pack in their pen…i.e. I chuck a few handfuls of hay into their pen every morning. They like to eat the seeds, and it absorbs the excrement. In time the pack also provides some composting heat for them. In spring, the chickens get moved outside for the season, and we move the bedded pack to the compost pile. We noticed a dust problem when we had 50 meat birds in the hoophouse, but with just 12 layers it is not noticable.

By: Richard Telford

Richard Telford — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 05:19:55 +0000

I built a greenhouse / chook house in 2000. The heat exchange happened with the nesting / laying boxes and also the dark gravel on the floor of the greenhouse. Download the pdf of the project here: http://www.permacultureprinciples.com/projects/alcachook.pdf
None of the plants in the greenhouse suffered from frost, but this was in Margaret River (near the beach) in Western Australia.

By: Keith Johnson

Keith Johnson — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 02:51:17 +0000

A chicken coop CAN be left open 24 / 7 IF you use a doorway like the one pictured here:
http://kjpermaculture.blogspot.com/2007/02/chickencoop-coonzapper.html
A low-strung electrified wire wraps around Darren Bender-Beauregard’s chicken coop in Paoli IN, and is attached to this metal plate at the entrance. The chickens hop up and are not shocked unless they have one foot on the ground…but they always hop up….unlike the unwary raccoon, possum, skunk, snake, etc., who learn REALLY fast not to repeat the attempt. Darren found he could leave the coop open full-time and never worry about predators.

By: Greenpa

Greenpa — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:26:04 +0000

Andy Langford- very useful information! Rob, and everybody- something WISE the Transition Movement could/should do- is keep a Journal Of Failures.

The rest of the world does NOT do this; and should- obviously. But we don’t. Think how incredibly useful it would be to be able to pick up a catalogue of past mistakes; and be able to build on them.

By: Jenn Hart-Mann

Jenn Hart-Mann — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 02:01:53 +0000

I am in the process of building something similar, except it is a composting greenhouse, meant to generate a hot/humid environment in the winter to break down compost (livestock manure, paper, grain, old hay, bedding). What I am wondering is has anyone built something like this for use with chickens. Seems as though very mutual relationships could exist: free chicken forage (eating grain from manure, weed seed, and bugs, digging compost, adding chicken poop, warming chickens, and warming compost area. Chicken house would definitely be housed outside greenhouse area and chickens could free-choice forage in greenhouse or go into the chicken run if greenhouse got to warm….?

By: Peak Oil, the Snake in the Loft, and the Chicken in the Greenhouse « Transition Farnham

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 10:06:32 +0000

[...] that this is the very same man who earlier in the week was wondering whether it is possible to combine a chicken house with a greenhouse. Welcome to the wonderful world of [...]

By: Andy Langford

Andy Langford — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 00:41:47 +0000

remember visiting Tid Tidy, poultry keeper extrodinaire at ‘The Anchorage’, Hamphire, England and permaculture designer around 1990, who had trialled a chicken greenhouse design over quite some time and who let us know that, for his design (vertical chicken wire screen between the chicken zone and the plant zone), dust raised by and from the chickens was a major problem as it had covered the leaves of the plants in the adjoining greenhouse both suffocating the plants and making them hard to wash for human consumption. This was a 25 bird size design. He was not inclined to do another one at the time.

By: Rob

Rob — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 12:37:31 +0000

From Matt Dunwell at Ragmans Lane Farm (www.ragmans.co.uk)(posted by Rob)

Well I guess all good parables have a bit of mythology to them – did anyone ever do that whole prodigal son thing?

Having had my adult life entirely disrupted by Mr Mollison giving a two week PDC course at Ragmans in 1991, I cast my mind back over the practical trials we have done over the years many of which stem from that two week adventure. The cupboard is bare when it come to chicken greenhouses.

We have done Chicken Tractors on a small scale, fed chickens from our pond (a bit) but not combined them with a greenhouse.

I think in general the chicken fable works well for most of the other elements, but one reason why they are not used widely in greenhouses might be that it is only a marginal benefit, and is outweighed by the design constraint of having your chooks housed permanently against a greenhouse. For instance the victorians found out pretty early on that heat from manure was the most efficient combination of animals and greenhouses, having composting muck heaps under their staging. This was then used on the beds in the summer. Perhaps this might be the most practical combination that fits into the chicken greenhouse story. So instead of helping with your greenhouse design I am proposing a heretical change to the chicken greenhouse parable.

It might be an interesting codicil when teaching to wait for the penny dropping moment to pass, then to allocate importance to the various different relationships within the system. Ie is the space under decking more important for storing pots/compost etc than to have a chicken egg box under there? If you need access through the greenhouse to get the eggs out would this be better used as growing space inside a small greenhouse. Ie trying to find that point in the design process where too many elements starts to seriously compromise how it all works. Etc etc I am definitely in grandmothers sucking eggs territory here.

Pictures of chickens sitting obligingly in the laying boxes that are then designed to tuck under greenhouse staging are a bit hopeful. In my experience you really want them to spend as little time as possible in the laying boxes, and in practice they roost during the coldest part of the night, when you would want them to heat the greenhouse, only to visit the laying boxes in the morning.

However in the spirit of adventure here are some thoughts -

I think putting the chicken coop against the greenhouse and taking out the wall in between is too much major surgery. On this small scale you could try something less committing like joining the two elements with a 100mm pipe (osma pipe ). This could run gently uphill from the coop to the underside of your staging in the greenhouse, and have a return pipe about 24” lower flowing gently down to the bottom of the coop. It would work better if you insulated at least the top half of the coop (above the flow pipe) to reduce heat loss. This would mean you could experiment with the system. If its too dusty, put a gauze over the flow pipe, if not leave it off for better flow rate. If you want to shut it off for any reason you could put a lid on it! Lagging on the pipes would help and the shorter the length of pipe the better. You would need to vermin proof it. If I didn’t work you would only need to put two patches of ply over the holes and you are back in business. If on the other hand it was a success, it might pay to think about how to integrate the two systems more – a sort of bit by bit design approach, with lots of escape pods if your strategy isent working. Worked for Darth Vader.

Keeping frost off the greenhouse is a great asset. Stopping it overheating is just as important, and a simple Jemba opener might be the ticket if the client is called away to high profile policy meetings and keynote speeches. (http://www.brooksidenursery.co.uk/jemp-vent-automatic-solar-greenhouse-window-opener-46-p.asp)

Good luck in your mission Rob

You are as ever forging ahead to the outer limits of the permaculture Galaxy.