Author: Anna & Mark

Remember how I told you that the
broilers had scratched lots of bare spots in the sloped powerline cut
pasture?  After
moving those chickens out of the pasture for the last time, I wanted to
seed the bare ground with pasture-type plants, but I didn’t have any
seeds on hand and didn’t want to go to the store.



As I pondered, it
occurred to me that our “lawn” was chock full of white clover and
broadleaf plantain seed heads since a drought had kept the weeds from
growing tall and we hadn’t been forced to mow in several weeks. 
(As the quotation marks around “lawn” suggest, we don’t keep up our
short grass expanses for aesthetics, just for utility, so if it doesn’t
rain, we don’t mow.)  What if I ran the mulching mower over that seedy area,
allowed the leaf matter and seeds to collect in the bag, and then
spread the result on the bare spots in the pasture?



A friend of Mark’s has used
this same technique to harvest shirley poppy seeds from a large
planting, so I knew the idea had merit.  And the harvest and
spreading went without a hitch.  However, that pasture didn’t get
the three fallow months I was counting on, and our
displaced hens made
short work of any seedlings.



Even though this
particular iteration of the experiment didn’t precisely work, I suspect
the idea has merit and wanted to share it.  The good thing about
harvesting your own pasture seeds is that you’re bound to be planting
varieties adapted to your local conditions, and you can also turn your
pasture into an herbal ley by capturing mixtures of
chicken-friendly plants rather than just grass and clover.  Maybe
next time I’ll spread the mulching mower contents out on a tarp to dry
in the sun, then store it for fall so I can put the seeds on pastures
that definitely won’t be messed with until spring.

A couple of weeks ago, I
wandered into the coop…and shrieked!  A big raccoon was
clambering out as I came in, probably attracted to the food
scraps I’d left in the deep bedding for the flock to pick
through.  The coon wasn’t very shy, and I had to chase it off the
roof with a potato fork.



At the time, I
considered getting the gun since raccoons can eat chickens and this one
had clearly decided the coop was its territory, but it seemed a bit
unfair to shoot a wild animal when it hadn’t actually killed
anyone.  Now I wish I’d been more hard-nosed.



A couple of days later,
I entered the coop to see this trail of feathers.  I counted heads
and everyone was accounted for, but the eggs had been eaten in the nest
box and the flock was skittish.

Another night, another trail
of feathers.  I assume our rooster fought the raccoon off each
time, but the chickens were clearly sick of their nightly battle. 
I didn’t realize at first that the problem was escalating, but then
hens started showing up in the garden in the morning, and when I went
down to visit them at dusk, I saw why — they were flying up to roost
on the honeysuckle-covered fence, considering it safer than their
perches in the coop.  One hen even flew twenty feet up into a
walnut tree.



At first, I tried to
chase the girls back off the fences and into the coop, but they were
having none of it.  So Mark and I moved on to plan B.  We’d
recently slaughtered
our broilers and
won’t have more until late August, so we laboriously snagged chickens
off the fenceline that night and moved them all to the vacant, safer
coop close to the house.  I’d wanted to let those pastures rest a
while, but I’d rather have my girls ruin the sward than
get eaten by a naughty coon.



Changing their
accomodations is only a short term fix, and we need to make a decision
on the long term solution soon.  We might upgrade the coop to make
it predator-proof, or I might try to find that raccoon and shoot it
after all.  (We’ve never had a coop visitor previously, so I
suspect if we get rid of this marauder, we may go another year or two
before anyone else moves in.)  I probably should also stop putting
the compost in the deep bedding, although I hate to do away with a
system that’s working otherwise.  Ideas?