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Permaculture Basics
- 1.0 Permaculture Basics (CliffsNotes)
- 1.1 Permaculture Literacy Intro
- 1.2 Greening the Desert
- 1.3 What is Permaculture?
- 1.4 What is it a Response to?
- 1.5 Ethics
- 1.6 Principles
- 1.7 Applying Principles & Ethics
- 1.8 Patterns
- 1.9 The Edge Effect
- 1.10 Making Connections (Stacking Functions)
- 1.11 Inhabit – Documentary
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Regenerative Soil
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Our Regenerative World
- 3.0 Our Regenerative World (CliffsNotes)
- 3.1 Our Regenerative World
- 3.2 Broad Climates
- 3.3 Landscape / Climate Effects
- 3.4 Microclimates
- 3.5 Trees
- 3.6 Carbon Cycles
- 3.7 Ecological Succession
- 3.8 Environmental Brittleness
- 3.9 CA Field Atlas
- 3.10 Permaculture Designers Manual
- 3.11 Regenerating Ecosystem
- 3.12 How Trees Talk To Each Other
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Ecological Gardening - Part 1
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Ecological Gardening- Part 2
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Ecological Gardening- Part 3
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Regenerative Agriculture, Homesteading & Ranching
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Earthworks & Water Harvesting
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Animals & Fungi
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Natural Building
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Appropriate Technology
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Integrated Permaculture
My understanding (so far) of raising animals in a permaculture system, is that we give animals the space to move around whenever possible. Yet rabbits are treated differently. Why? Existing in only 1.5 square feet of space (and five square feet at the max) seems like inhumane conditions, and sounds awfully similar to the conditions of a factory farm that Brett described in the introduction.
Rabbits need space for sleeping, hanging out, and room to exercise just like other animals. What am I missing?
{HHA Coach} I think you’re spot on in your observation, Kim! While it can be harder to contain rabbits & free ranging like chickens isn’t really a viable option, they absolutely deserve to live healthy, fulfilling lives. And I believe their meat and products will reflect that. Rabbits are actually quite intelligent & interactive animals. I think folks get overwhelmed with the perceived difficulty of keeping them from being destructive, overbreeding, falling victim to predation, fighting & interacting with wild populations etc. But it can be done and the rabbits deserve it by golly! I believe that if you’re going to have an animal for any purpose, it’s your duty to give it the best life possible. <3
I would recommend adding Justin Rhodes “Permaculture Chickens” YouTube video to this lesson. He covers it very thoroughly to include low cost feed options to supplement regular feed.
I´m new to keeping animals like these…would kitchen scraps be enough to feed chickens and ducks or would they need additional food?
Hey Hannah!
From your typical kitchen of a family of 4 there likely would not be enough scraps to feed a flock of say 4-6 birds even. It can certainly help augment their feed and of course provide quality nutrition but they will need more (pasture, compost piles to dig through are other ideas that are not just store bought feed). We have a lesson on composting chickens in Track 3 – check that out 🙂