Someone on FB asked about if ducks or chickens are easier.

I figured my comment would make a good standalone post.

Neither one is easier.

Chickens put themselves to bed. Ducks need to be guided into bed for up to 2 weeks before they finally figure out there's a place they should be when the sun goes down.

Chickens lay eggs almost everyday. Ducks are kind of picky about that.

Ducks have a lot more instinct and are less likely to get taken down by a predator than chicken is.

Duck meat offers a far higher premium than chicken meat.

Baby chickens are so much cleaner than baby ducks. Baby ducks are nasty, nasty, nasty. You'll be cleaning out their living quarters three times a day by the time you're fully fitted out and you live outside full time.

Ducks are better at foraging and can live off the land with a small amount of supplemental feed. Unless you're going with practically wild breeds of chickens, you're going to have to provide most of their food even if they have access to forage. But very wild breeds of chickens. Don't like to put themselves to bed. They like to put themselves in trees. And thid shortens their lifespan dramatically.

Ducks need water. Lots of it. Chickens need some water to drink. Ducks need water to make a mess.

Chickens are way friendlier than ducks. There are constant posts in homesteading groups about "Why won't my ducks love me." Chickens will jump in your lap if they think you have a treat for them.

Chickens offer a lot of sex linked options so you can make sure you'll have only hens. Duck's not so much. Be prepared to get rid of your extra drakes because they will murder your hens. I find pineapple and soy sauce to be very effective in solving this problem.

Chickens love to lay and nesting boxes. Ducks love to lay wherever they happen to be.

Chicken eggs are 30% yolk. Duck eggs are 50% yolk. They taste identical but duck eggs offer a lot more of the same flavor and are far superior for baking and things like deviled eggs.

Duck eggs are bigger. About 50% larger overall. But again they don't lay as consistently as chickens.

As long as your chickens are getting sufficient daylight and feed they can lay all your round. Ducks like to shut down egg production during the winter.

Ducks are cold, hardy and work much better in northern climates with a lot of freezing days.

Chickens like to scratch the ground until nothing grows to find food. Ducks will destroy any area with too much water in it by digging their bills in the ground aerating it and still destroying it in a different way.

Ducks aren't likely to hop a fence and get into the neighbor's yard. Chickens will adventure everywhere.

Roosters can make your day miserable. Drake's are easy to push aside and won't jump up at you and attack your face.

We have both. We also have geese. We got geese because we were losing one to three chickens a year to hawks. After we got geese we lost zero chickens to hawks.

After geese are fully feathered out they can subsist entirely off of grass.

Geese do not scratch or put holes in the ground.

Geese eggs are gigantic at about 6 oz each.

Geese eggs are 50% yoke. One deviled egg made from a goose egg could kill a person with the cholesterol levels.

Geese eggs are awesome when soft-boiled so you can dip your toast in their yolks.

He's only lay eggs during the spring.. the rest of the time they earn their keep by protecting the flock against hawks and mowing your yard.

Geese get extremely aggressive in the spring time. They leave much bigger bruises than a rooster could ever hope to.

Geese are big cuddly monsters.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/3688630

> Is it safe to have livestock drinking irrigation water?

TL;DR: New research shows that biochar made from phosphate-poor feedstock encourages much more symbiosis with mycorrhizal fungi, compared to biochar made from phosphate-rich feedstock, which encourages very little mycorrhizal symbiosis.

Hi all. I have quite a lot of hairy bittercress in my garden. I think it rode in on the compost I got this year. Ive been removing it from directly around my pea plants but in the open spaces of the garden where its really taken off, Ive surrendered and let it be.

My question is this: Should I be removing it or should I leave it as a kind of live mulch. It doesnt appear to be hindering my peas or other plants in that bed but if it will do long term damage to the soil Id rather take care of it now.

Anyone have any experience with it. Is it worth the effort of removing or do I just let it be?

Thanks!

I am building a laundry to landscape greywater system. I have seen some people in some videos that are using T fittings as 50% splitter like in this image:

!

(taken from here)

You can see that the water that flows from the source pipe is being split to two destinations:

1. The basin that is watering each tree.
2. The continuation to the next tree.

My question is, is T fitting actually considered a 50% splitter ? Because I would imagine water will want to continue flowing in a straight direction, so most water will continue flowing and not "turn" 90 degrees in the pipe for the tree basin.

Remember that water is not going in pressure, but with gravity.

So why do I see so many of these designs and are they correct ?

Thanks

Does anyone have any good permaculture/permaculture adjacent podcasts that they would recommend? I've been listening to the Urban Forestry Radio podcast and am close to being caught up.

Steve Gabriel of Wellspring Forest Farm and co-author of "Farming the Woods" explains how to grow shiitake, oyster, lions mane, and stropharia (wine cap) mushrooms outdoors profitably.

Recorded at the NOFA Vermont 34th annual winter conference on February 15, 2016 at the University of Vermont in Burlington.

>Kernza is a newly-domesticated form of wheatgrass that was designed to be planted from a single seed and regrow on its own, year after year. This would make it unique amongst most other commercial or industrial crops, which are usually annual and need to be replanted every year. According to The Washington Post, annual crops require enormous amounts of water, fertilizer, and energy, not to mention the habitat destruction and soil degradation they promote. > >With Kernza, the growing process is completely different. The roots remain in the soil, storing carbon and regrowing the plants to be harvested the next year. This cuts down on soil erosion, fertilizer use, and energy requirements. And all of this amounts to a crop that is completely unique amongst other traditional grains like wheat or barley. > >Kernza has a sweet, nutty flavor that makes it perfect for making bread, cereals, and snacks. Though it isn't gluten free, it has less gluten than wheat, according to the official Kernza FAQ page. It can be used whole grain, ground into flour, malted, or directly added to beer and whiskey. > >The official Kernza website, brought to us by The Land Institute, has everything that anyone would need to know about Kernza’s amazing properties. Kernza has a deep-set root system that reaches more than 10 feet underground. This makes it an ideal net sink for carbon and a potential option as an effective solution against our current overabundance of atmospheric carbon.

Andrew Millison presents a detailed and clear path for anyone assessing their site for water management.

I love his presentation style - perfect for visual learners - plus he really knows his stuff.

Hello! Thank you for creating this community. I hope these sort of text discussion posts are okay.

I'd like to know - how do people here practice permaculture? What sort of habits have you created? What sources do you learn from?

I'm a suburb-bound person who is constantly trying to bring more permaculture practices into my life, and spaces that show me what others are doing really help.