Clucking among the vines 8 June 2006

Chris Mullineux welcomes both winter rain and a new idea for his organic farming
at Tulbagh Mountain Vineyards

Winter seems to have arrived spot on time in the Cape this year. The cold and super rainy conditions we’ve recently experienced are most welcome, especially following the last two dry, dry years. In comparison to the 225 mm that fell in the last two weeks, our farm received less than 250 mm rain the whole of last year – really pushing the boundaries where vines should grow!

And though it generally has been very dry the last while, our farm received especially little rain. Looking westwards from the mountain, we would often watch cold fronts rolling in from the west, only to see them split in two, and pass rainless over our heads. In fact, we started suspecting our organic programme was working a little too efficiently, and that the vines had somehow become so in tune with their environment that they were managing to prevent disease by preventing rain.

Speaking of organics, our assistant winemaker came back from California with a superb idea for pest control, an idea that anybody can use. Chicken Tractors. I hadn’t heard of these until a couple of weeks ago, but as it’s one of the most original ideas I’ve come across in a while, we’ve thrown ourselves into building one.

Now, in case you have imaginings of us trying to save money on diesel by harnessing a flock of chickens in front of a plough and whipping them into action, and before you call animal welfare, I should explain.

A chicken tractor is in fact something that is towed behind a tractor. A moveable chicken coop of sorts. A chicken house on wheels.

The idea is to bring chickens into one’s vineyards so that they can roam about, scuffing up the soil, eating snails, mealy bug and other nasty insects, and composting the vineyard floor at the same time. We have flocks of guinea fowl on our farm that do just this, but they confine themselves to parts of the vineyard where there are trees nearby for shelter in case of danger, and at night. They do a great job in about a fifth of our vineyards, but don’t dare venture into other areas for fear of attack from a host of predators.

You obviously can’t release chickens to fend for themselves in a vineyard. Though they’re at home in a farmyard, they’re not that street-smart when it comes to the African wild, and if they weren’t eaten, they would probably wonder off and get lost!

Chicken Tractors solve this problem. In the morning you round them up from their pens, and bring them to the vineyards in the mobile coop. This you park near to where the vineyard team is pruning, skoffeling, etc, and you release your fowls to peck about all day on a smorgasbord of insects. At the end of their day’s work you simply put some grain in the Chicken Tractor, they jump in and you drive them home to safety.