Forest pasture and flock progress

May 20, 2011 Posts 8 Comments

Black australorp chickOur chicken
pasture rotation experiment hit a snag in early May for
two
reasons.  First, when I let
our two and a half week old chicks out on pasture, they took to it
like ducks to water.  The trouble is that the chicks were too
small to contain, so they were able to go into whichever pasture they
pleased, slipping through holes in the chicken wire and coop
walls.  The flock never strayed too far from home, so they didn’t
get into trouble, but they did
graze all of the best spots in all of the pastures, nixing any rotation
data for this month.  It’s hard to complain, though, when their
storebought food consumption plummeted to half of its previous levels,
despite the chicks being considerably larger than they were a week
before.  (Look at the size of this chick’s crop after being
outside all day!)



Mean roosterMeanwhile, and less
pleasantly, our gentleman
rooster turned one year old and decided to reinvent himself. 
No longer mild, he took to rushing me every time I entered the pasture,
flogging my leg with his wings.  For the short term, I moved the
adult flock back into the far pasture they had just left (the true
forest pasture) so
that I didn’t have to walk in his personal
space, and once we no longer need his sperm, the rooster will be
heading for the chopping block.  I’ve read that it’s possible to
work with your rooster to make him less aggressive, but the truth is
that his genetics aren’t worth the trouble when we’ve got plenty of
amazing foragers growing up to take his place.


Our five gallon chicken waterer means I won’t have to go
into the mean rooster’s pasture for a month.

Assessing egg yolk colors

May 16, 2011 Posts No Comments
Egg yolk color on pasture

One of the best ways to
determine how much forage your chickens are getting from pasture is to
crack the eggs open and look at the color of the yolk.  I’ve found
that hard-boiling the eggs first makes comparisons simpler (and then
you can scoop
out the egg whites and yolks to turn into egg salad.)



Before running my egg
test, I hypothesized that our cochin would have the palest eggs
because she always looks a bit befuddled on pasture, showing up last
when I dump weeds on the compost pile.  Sure enough, her egg yolks
were on the pale side (although still pretty bright by store-bought
standards.)  However, I was surprised to see that the old Golden Comet who has recently started
laying again after taking a long winter vacation has eggs nearly as
pale.  (Actually, I’m not 100% sure of my ability to distinguish
between these two hens’ eggs since they’re both small and pale-shelled.)



Chicken hunting wormsOn the other hand, the young
Golden Comet and the other old Golden Comet have brilliantly
yellow-orange egg yolks.  I guess I should be focusing my incubation
efforts on
propagating the genetics of these two since they’ve proven themselves
to be prime foragers.



As a side note, I’m sure
you’re all aware that the brighter the colors of your egg yolks, the
healthier the eggs are for you.  But did you know that egg yolk
color stays bright until your hens have been off pasture for about 50
days, then comes back after only seven days on spring pasture?


Our chicken waterer keeps the flock well
hydrated during a busy day spent scratching for bugs.

Does pasture quality affect egg quantity

May 13, 2011 Posts No Comments

Eggs on pastureOur
chickens seem much happier in their new spring pastures, but are they
more productive?  Although I don’t have a non-pastured flock to
compare our chickens to, I figured that if the chickens laid more
during their first week on pasture than during subsequent weeks, then
the prime forage (mostly eaten during the first few days) is impacting
their productivity.



To test that hypothesis,
I graphed the average number of eggs laid daily each week. 
Unfortunately, the results are all over the
place, in large part because at this time of year, each week has more
sun than the last, which leads to more eggs over time.  I’d love
to think that the huge leap in egg production when I moved the chickens
to their true
forest pasture
(week 6) is due to the quality of forage there, but I know from
examining the eggs that this is merely when our fourth hen (one of the
old girls) finally shook off her winter slump and started to lay.



Chickens on pastureI’ve got a few avenues to
explore with the pasture productivity question.  First, I suspect
that I’m
currently giving our chickens more food than they really need, so I could cut back their
rations to tempt them to eat more pasture goodies and then repeat this
analysis.  It’s also possible that the chickens are finding more
on pasture than I think during the second week and that leaving them in
the pasture for a third week would be necessary to really see a decline
in found food.  I’ll toss around some more ideas and report back
if I come up with anything definitive.


Our chicken waterer never spills or fills with
POOP.