FREE-RANGE CHICKENS
(Page 5 of 9)
July/August 1984
By the Mother Earth News editors
A good field-training routine is to remove the feeder from the coop at night (the feeder only; never withold water from chickens). Shut the birds in till midmorning. Most eggs will be laid by then. Then attract the hungry flock into the field by leading them out behind a scant trail of food. Leave the empty feeder in the field during the day; then return it, filled, to the coop for an hour or so at dusk. The birds will follow their supper can in, even if they are eating off the land.
RELATED CONTENT
A beginner's guide to raising rabbits, including a rabbit barn, pens, feeders and waterers, breedin...
Country Lore: How you can keep all your fresh eggs for winter use....
Country Lore: A helpful hint on detecting rooster eggs...
Tests show free-range eggs are more nutritious and have half the cholesterol of supermarket eggs....
Mother's staff experimented with various methods of storing eggs with no refrigeration and for a lo...
If there's no natural stream or spring in the field for outdoor drinking, you can make one. Lay out a garden hose, set a bowl in the soil beneath the open end, and let the water trickle during the day. Lacking water afield, the flock will come in frequently, especially during summer heat, and may just hang around the house all day, eating money.
The Great Chicken Myth
Chickens will do a number on potato beetle larvae and other garden pests, right? And geese will eat the grass between the vegetable rows too, right? I guffaw my way through that one in an early issue of every new country-livin' magazine that comes along. Don't you believe it! In my experience, any barnyard fowl will do right only after it's defoliated the broccoli seedlings, pulled the crow's trick of yanking new corn to gobble the sprouted kernels, and nipped out the brightest side of every ripe strawberry.
To keep the flock from eating out the garden or stinking up the baby's play yard, fence it. I find that a string of poultry netting, hung loosely between stakes put in about 6 feet apart, does best. (It rolls up out of the way for tilling, manure-spreading, and all.) Chickens can't get a good foothold on really floppy netting (for what it's worth, neither can a woodchuck, unless it has a lot of time to ponder the problem). I clip the long feathers on one wing of any bird that takes to flying over, though I prefer to leave them able to fly as well as they can, for self protection in the fields. Then never, ever turn the birds into a garden plot, even in the fall, when there are heaps of soft tomatoes just begging to be turned into eggs. Otherwise, the chickens will head right for the garden come next spring ... lying in wait to attack when the dog is tied, all you folks are out fishing for the afternoon, and the peas are just up. [EDITOR'S NOTE. Some people are having success using poultry in the garden under certain carefully controlled conditions. See page 58 of this issue's mini-manual, "Sustainable Agriculture: Designing for Small Farms and Homesteads."]
Losses
In over twenty years of field-running small flocks of poultry in a half dozen isolated rural locales, I guess I've never had to deal with an epidemic because the foundation stock is sound, the air clean, the water good, and the diet hearty. I've never seen a tick; I imagine the chickens eat them. We did have an internal problem—coccidiosis—in a few birds once. This is a protozoan gut infection indicated by bloody droppings, and it can spread quickly. I cured it in a few days with medication from the feed store. With any flock wide symptom, I'd turn to the poultry section of the Merck Veterinary Manual first, and call my vet second.
Page:
<< Previous 1 |
2 |
3 |
4 | 5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
Next >>
