How to avoid chicken pecking

February 14, 2013 Chicken behavior, Chicken Health 2 Comments
Chicken pecking on a foot

If you have more than one chicken (and you should since chickens are social animals), you will eventually have to deal with chicken pecking.  The end result is bloody, clearly bad for your chickens’ health, and also breaks your heart as a chicken keeper.  Many chicken keepers assume that pecking is a fact of life, but we’ve found that pecking can be completely avoided with a few simple steps.

First, it’s important to know what causes chicken pecking behavior:

  • In my experience, the most common cause of pecking is overcrowding.  Your chickens should each have 4 square feet of space if they live in a chicken tractor, but this number is much larger in a coop setting (6 to 10
    square feet per bird.)  Give your birds as much space as possible!
  • Chickens naturally peck at each other to establish a pecking order.  If one peck is too hard and blood becomes visible, though, pecking can spiral out of control very quickly.  Chickens are attracted to the color red and will keep pecking at a spot once it becomes bloody.  If a bird becomes bloody, separate her from the flock until she heals up.
  • In some cases, chicken pecking can be caused by nutrient deficiencies, specifically salt and methionine.  If you have a pecking problem that you can’t solve in another way, try giving your birds some dietary supplements.
  • High heat and light have also been shown to increase chicken pecking.

Chicken pecking outside its tractorThese are the reasons mainstream authorities give for pecking, but I’d like to add another — boredom.  Imagine you’re a chicken hanging out in a coop with fifty other birds, you barely room to turn around, and you have nothing to do once you spend fifteen
minutes eating up your food in the morning.  Chickens are meant to spend their days foraging for food and scratching in the dirt.  Of course you’ll end up picking on your neighbors, just to give you a way to pass your time!

 

We spend a lot of time watching our chickens, and have noticed that they seem to enjoy pecking at the chicken nipples, taking lots of short sips from the waterer.  Since we installed our homemade chicken waterers in our tractors, we haven’t had a single instance of pecking and our birds seem much happier.

99 cent pasture ebook

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What do chickens eat in the wild

February 14, 2013 Posts 4 Comments

Pie chart of the optimal chicken dietNow
that our introduction
to chicken tractors series has wound down, I’m going to
turn my attention to chicken feed.  Most backyard chicken keepers
probably go the easy route just like we do and buy commerical chicken
feed at the store.  This grain-based feed certainly isn’t the
cheapest option, and I wonder if it’s the healthiest.



Before delving into
traditional homemade chicken feed formulas and modern alternatives, I
wanted to take a look at what chickens would eat in nature.  It turns out that Jungle
Fowl (the
wild ancestor of the domestic chicken) feed primarily on
insects. 
Scientists who cut open the crops of wild Jungle Fowl found that half
or more of the mashed up food in there was typically insects and other
invertebrates (especially termites.)  Various plant matter was
also represented, especially fruits, berries, bamboo seeds, nuts, and
young leaves.



The upshot is clear —
if we want to wean ourselves off a dependence
on store-bought chicken feed, we shouldn’t be planting rows of wheat
and barley.  Instead, we need to find ways to provide our chickens
with copious insects, or at least some sort of feed high in
protein.  Stay tuned over the next few weeks as I highlight the
options.



Meanwhile, check out our
automatic chicken waterer, the other key to healthy
chickens!

99 cent pasture ebookThis post is part of our Homemade Chicken Feed series. 
Read all of the entries:

Fallowing a chicken pasture

February 11, 2013 Posts No Comments
Chicken going through a pophole

Last year, I concluded
that seeding
new species into a chicken pasture doesn’t work unless you can keep the
flock out of that pasture for several months.  Chickens love tender
new growth, and they’ll happily peck up baby clover and grass plants
before they get established.  So I’m continuing to set aside
Chicken Pasture 6 in 2013 in hopes of establishing a good colony of
clover.



To back up, we fenced
this pasture in 2011, but by the middle of the summer we discovered
that the plants coming up in the trees’ shade weren’t able to handle
much grazing.  By the beginning of 2012, the ground was pretty
much bare, so I seeded buckwheat followed by oilseed
radishes to improve
the soil.  This winter, I let our flock eat up the oilseed
radishes, and by early February the ground was once again bare and
ready for clover planting.


Clover seed

Although we can get
white and red clover seeds more cheaply at our local feed store, I
opted to try out some fancy varieties purchased online.  This
mixture of New Zealand White Clover and Strawberry Clover is supposed
to be low-lying and good in orchards, able to deal with shade and/or
sun.  The recommended seeding rate is a bit high for clover (20 to
25 pounds per acre), so I scattered the entire pound of seed in our
twentieth of an acre pasture.


Lichen-covered stick

After giving the pasture
the rest of the year off, I’m hopeful we’ll have a delectable stand of
clover for the chickens to start grazing in 2014.  I’d like to do
the same in two other pastures, but I’ve got to weigh the benefits of
food now versus food later, so it seems to make sense to take one spot
at a time.


Moss and lichen

Meanwhile, isn’t this
the most beautiful stick you’ve ever seen?  Lichen and moss atop
lichen atop bark….


Our chicken waterer is the perfect fit for
pastures since it never spills on uneven ground.  A bucket of
water can last a medium-sized flock for a month!