Forest pasture moonscape

Chickens runningPeople
seem to have such an easy time turning their chicken run into a
moonscape, but it’s been a struggle around here.  We started our
chickens out on an
800
square foot pasture full of weeds
, planning to have the birds
denude the ground so that I could plant some grains while moving the
flock to another paddock.  Over a month later, the pasture was
still quite green, so we chopped off two-thirds of the area and let the
chickens continue to graze on the small portion remaining.




Three more weeks passed,
in which our cockerels did a little work on the pasture, but mostly
entertained themselves eating up the wheelbarrow loads of garden weeds
I tossed into their enclosure nearly daily.  So Mark and I took
some time to root out the perennials
White Cochin hen with Rhode Island Red chick on pasturewith
a shovel — goldenrod, deertongue (a native grass), young trees, and
poison ivy all bit the dust.  Finally, the ground is beginning to
look bare.




I want the chickens to
continue to eat up any new sprouts for another week or so, then we’ll
rotate them into the other two-thirds of their original pasture. 
The
mother
hen and her chick

have been having so much fun in there that they barely eat any
storebought feed.



Our
homemade chicken
waterer
keeps drinking water clean.

Latest Comments

  1. Dave V June 14, 2011
  2. anna June 15, 2011

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