[permaculture-oceania] Help needed in planning our PC farm

[Robyn Francis]

On 21/6/06 12:22 PM, "Darrington, Paul A"
<Paul.Darrington at bluescopesteel.com> wrote:
> 
> About the only unanswered question is that regarding which species of
> waterfowl, chickens & other birds work best in the garden & in an orchid.
> I don't expect anyone to be able to answer this, as there would be 100's of
> suitable species,
> but does anyone know of a good book on this?
> 
I have found ducks particularly good in the orchard, they do the same work
as chickens in keeping down grasses and most weeds. The main advantage of
ducks is they don¹t scratch so you can mulch your trees and it stays there!!
- actually they love sitting on the mulch at the edge of the drip
line/canopy and deposit their manure right where the tree needs it most.
Ducks are not quite as effective as chickens for eating windfall fruit. I
have a childs plastic wader for the ducks to swim, empty it once a week and
relocate it to the next tree before refilling with fresh water - this helps
spread their manure around.  I introduced the ducks when the trees were
around 1 year old. They did nibble on some lower leaves but that low pruning
can be a good thing.  NB The trees planted in the chicken forage forest
needed serious protection from the chooks scratching for several years until
they were established.
Ciao
Robyn