Author: Anna & Mark

Although most of us
think of chicks in the spring, it’s worth considering raising a flock
of broilers in the late summer.  Our
pastures hit a lull in midsummer, but as temperatures drop, the
grass starts to grow again.  Meanwhile, the vegetable garden is
churning out excess produce like mad in September and October, and
chickens love those rotten tomatoes and monster squash.  In fact,
you can often let chicks graze in a mature vegetable garden until
they’re two months old without seeing much damage.

Last year, I was very
glad Mark talked me into putting one more round of eggs in the
incubator in August, so I repeated the procedure this year.  In
our zone 6 climate, I consider Thanksgiving the deadline for getting
the last broiler out of the pasture and into our bellies, so I aimed to
have eggs hatch by the first week of September.  If you live
further south (or are raising Cornish Cross broilers to eight weeks
instead of heirlooms to twelve weeks), you could start your chicks a
bit later.

Our last round of 2012
broilers are still in the cute and fuzzy stage, but we’ve already moved them to the outdoor
brooder so they can enjoy pasture.  That’s one more
benefit of fall broilers — it’s never too cold to put your newborn
chicks outside!



(By the way, these
photos are last fall’s broilers.  You’ll see this year’s
Australorp broilers in later posts.)

Chickens and cover crops go very
well together.  Harvey
Ussery uses his
flock to scratch in whole
sections of cover crops when they’re mature, but our more patchwork
garden requires me to get creative about putting chickens together with
cover
crops.  Luckily, chickens and cover crops are both so flexible,
you can combine them in a way that’s bound to fit just about any farm.



This year, I’m letting a
couple of my cover crops go to seed, then I’m cutting them for bedding
and feed in the chicken coop.  The photo to the left shows the sunflower heads I clipped and hung for
our girls to peck at when they get bored — I left the roots and
stalks to decay in the garden and the empty heads will eventually
become part of the coop’s bedding.



Similarly, I usually tear up buckwheat as it reaches full bloom,
but I let one bed get away from me and seeds formed.  I don’t want
to let those buckwheat plants decay in the garden the way I usually do
since buckwheat seeds can be a weed problem, so I hauled the plants
into the coop to refresh the deep
bedding while giving
our birds a snack.



Of course, if you take
cover crops away from the garden, you don’t get organic matter buildup
in the soil, which is the technique’s primary purpose.  However, deep
bedding goes from the coop back to the garden in the spring, so those nutrients will
just keep cycling through the farm.



What’s your favorite way
to combine cover crops with chickens?