hello this is angela with Parkrose permaculture i am down in the chicken and duck run of my portland
oregon permaculture garden i wasn't really anticipating making a video today but uh i was
down here harvesting some fruit and i thought i would respond to a question from one of my patrons
which was what are some really good plants to grow in the chicken run and i've talked in the past
about chicken and duck proof or resistant plants that i grow but i thought i would talk about the
mutually beneficial relationship between a few of my fruit tree crops and my ducks and chickens
so i've spoken in the past about how i have my chickens and my ducks foraging in the orchard
in my backyard now i only have a quarter acre but i have more than 40 fruit trees
and nut trees and that's because i really pack them in here you can see this medlar behind me
and over here i have apples and over there there is a scrub jay who's not happy that i'm down here
i have these fruit trees packed in really close together and i do a lot of pruning
to make them all fit but i love the diversity that they bring to my diet
they also provide shelter shade for my ducks and my chickens they help protect them from the hot
rays of the sun because chickens are a jungle fowl they do prefer the understory the chickens
and ducks feel safer in the shelter of the trees they aren't harassed by hawks or things like that
there is a lot more going on here than just the trees providing shade and shelter from predators
there is a lot of mutually beneficial activity happening between my poultry
and my fruit trees in my orchard so let's talk about a couple of those really quickly
so the first benefit that my system experiences is the addition of the nitrogenous manure from
the ducks and chickens the fruit trees love it they deposit it directly around the root zone of
my trees i don't have to do anything the second benefit is that the trees themselves are a food
source for my poultry now i imagine that i'm going to be really diligent and get every piece of fruit
in my orchard harvested for human consumption but again that is just my imagination in reality what
happens is a segment of the fruit harvest every year escapes my grasp i either get busy with
real life or there's wind or some of it is bird damaged what have you and it falls to the ground
or i knock it to the ground if it's split or damaged and it becomes feed for ducks and chickens
it's a great way for me to have the chicken clean up service come in and eat up that fallen fruit
and keep the orchard cleaner and provide a free source of food i try not to buy poultry feed i try
to produce on-site as much of my poultry feed as i possibly can so that is an additional food source
and the two trees i want to focus on today are ones that are in peak harvest right at this moment
and they set so much more fruit than our family can eat and it's also fruit that ripens very very
quickly and so i miss some of it some of it gets over mature chickens and ducks don't care they'll
gladly eat it and enjoy it so these are both crops that chickens and ducks enjoy with relish they
will just gobble them up and so you may have ducks in a duck pond and not have chickens these are
trees you can incorporate into a duck system as well as a chicken system or a mixed flock system
first treat that i want to focus on today is the fig behind me i have two figs down here i
have negron and i have desert king both great figs now i was really neglectful in my pruning of them
in the last year so they're much bigger than i would normally keep them see if you can see
my fig goes all the way up here and all the way down i normally try and keep all of the
fruit within reach but uh that didn't happen this year so normally i keep my figs pruned
really small desert king can easily get 35 feet if you aren't diligent about pruning and i got
a little bit neglectful i tend to be a little bit of a haphazard orchardist luckily for me
even though my fig has gotten crazy big
the branches are quite flexible and that means i can just pull them down to where the fruit is
and harvest easily without getting on a ladder i do want to be careful that i don't snap them but
if i bend them slowly and easily i can get them all down to where i can reach so negron figs are
a dark purple fig and they're kind of small as you can see you can tell when they're ripe because the
neck of the fig bends into a j shape this right here is the abscission layer between the tree
and the fake if you try and harvest the fig when it's under ripe it will ooze a lot of white latex
when it's ripe that j neck is very bent and the fig will lift off easily see no ooze
so here's the ripe fig this will be perfect great for eating today
one of the things i love about negron figs is they are very split resistant
so the second kind of fig that i grow is desert king and as you can see it is a little bit more
prone to splitting on the bottom which means that the chickens inevitably end up eating more
of these now you can see these really ripe figs that are hanging here and how the neck
is really bent and the figs are really droopy i'm gonna pick these i'll show you these are a
much larger fig than the negron fake and the inside is a very bright pink
when harvesting your figs you want to lift gently up and separate again if the fig is
ripe the abscission layer will not ooze a bunch of white sap that's particularly helpful for those
of us that are quite sensitive to latex any figs that are bruised and damaged or split or
bird-packed i am going to feed to my chickens so let me show you really quickly
there's the inside of the fig so the next tree crop that i grow in my chicken run
for the benefit not only of my diet and my family's diet but also for my poultry
is the mulberry mulberries are a fantastic option ducks and chickens love love love the fruit and
they produce over a long period of time they also drop fruit easily and if you are not on top of the
harvest they will hit the ground where they will stain sidewalks or any structures that they touch
so having them in the chicken run means that the chickens and ducks clean up all of that stainey
fruit and get a nutritional benefit from it now i've spoken in the past about growing
mulberries and how technically the leaves of the mulberry are supposed to be a high protein
chicken snack my chickens don't like them apparently you can dry them and grind them up with
your other poultry mash to add extra protein to their diet but i have enough other sources of food
that i would prefer to feed my girls things that they really enjoy and not um kind of
zombie apocalypse rations if i don't have to here you can get a good look at the unripe fruit
ripening fruit ripe fruit so when you look at the mulberry here the stem runs the entire length of
the fruit so when you eat them you'll find that stem running lengthwise down the fruit and that's
totally normal that's how it's supposed to be again it should come off easily some folks like
to take their treat and put a tarp down and then shake it you'll also notice that they
stain your hands significantly and that's just the reality of growing and enjoying mulberries
when these get over ripe and drop to the ground the chickens and ducks gobble them up
so thank you for watching i hope that gives you a little bit of inspiration for plants that you
can grow in your orchard where you pastor your ducks and chickens in order to have a
mutually beneficial relationship in order to do what we call in permaculture stacking functions
where my fruit trees are not only providing me with food they're also providing my poultry with
food and they're also providing my poultry with shelter at no extra effort on my part and then
my poultry in return are producing eggs out of the berries and fruit that they eat and they are also
producing nitrogen-rich manure to help the trees grow so my system has a feedback loop in which
all of the parts of it are benefiting each other and we have a stronger more dynamic more abundant
more resilient system in the end if you enjoyed this video please be sure and give it a thumbs up
and consider subscribing to my channel i also have a patreon down in the description thanks you