A couple of months ago when I
ran my comparison
of chicken tractors, chicken pastures, and deep bedding systems, I felt like the last was
the least.  Since then, I’ve changed my tune.



To recap, deep bedding
consists of raising livestock on thick layers of dry bedding, like
straw, autumn leaves, or whatever you have on hand.  The manure
from the livestock mixes in with the bedding and starts to compost,
heating up the coop.  Meanwhile, you keep adding fresh bedding on
top, so the animals are never walking through their own waste.



Although I still don’t
think raising chickens on deep bedding without access to pasture is a
good idea, after a month in which snow kept our flock’s pasture nearly
completely covered at all times, I’ve discovered that our hens
thoroughly enjoy deep bedding in winter.  In fact, on cold, wet
days, they may not set foot outside the coop once, especially if they
can trick me into feeding them inside.



Meanwhile, the biomass-loving
side of me gets pure joy from scuffing my feet through the deep bedding
on the floor of the coop.  The top three or four inches are fresh
leaves, but below that is a dense pack of compost that will clearly be
a boon to my garden in the spring.  At first, I thought it was a
waste of good organic matter to use up two bags of leaves per month in
the chicken coop, but clearly I’m getting a value-added product out of
it.  I suspect I’m also capturing more manure than I have in years
past, which will mean less storebought compost for the garden. 
Clearly, deep bedding is a good tool to have in your shed, especially
in the winter.

A second flaw in our winter
forest pasture became clear over the last few weeks —
shade.  I thought I was clever when I put the chickens’ pasture up
against the hillside where steep slopes and a powerline cut make it
difficult to grow vegetables and impossible to grow fruit trees. 
At least that open space would be used for something.  But I had
forgotten that the north-facing hillside stays frozen pretty much all
winter.  Due to several small to medium-sized snows, the pasture
has spent nearly all month under constant snowcover.  That means
that our chickens have nothing to scratch at even if I hadn’t let them
overgraze the pasture down to stubble.



At
this time of year, I usually have the flock in the sunniest part of the
yard, and I’m considering adding a new pasture down there for the
winter months.  There would be no way to make it contiguous with
their current pastures, but it might be worth building a second coop
and herding the chickens through the garden to give them a bit of
winter sun and greenery.  As an added bonus, I could fence in a
few fruit trees and get the chickens’ help managing insect pests. 
Either way, I’ll keep the current pastures for summer use since the
shady spot is great during sunny days, and our everbearing
mulberry and Nanking cherries are getting well established and will
fruit in a year or two.