Author: Anna & Mark

I have a bad tendency to
plant edible
trees and shrubs in
the chicken pastures…then forget about them.  Some die from the
neglect, but others hold their own and eventually get their feet under
them.



The Nanking
cherries and Illinois
ever-bearing mulberries are in the latter
category.  It it hadn’t been for a late frost, both would be
coated in fruits, but at least we’ll get to taste the first three
mulberries this year (from a tree only one year in the ground!) 
Maybe in two or three years, we won’t have to turn
our laying hens out into the woods at this time of year — they’ll be happily
chowing down on mulberries.



We’ve had more failures
than successes, though.  Giant timber bamboo (Phyllostachys
vivax) lingered
for a year, then keeled over (probably because we’re near the northern
limit for timber bamboos).  My hardy almonds were eaten so hard by
Japanese beetles that they bit the dust too.  And several home-propagated
grapes couldn’t handle the neglect.



On the one hand, it would be
nice if I committed the time to babying these perennials for the first
year or two.  But  I’m also looking for plants who won’t need
much care beyond annual mulching (if that), so my neglect may be just
the ticket for figuring out the best pasture plants as quickly as
possible.



While I’m talking about
my experiments with pasture perennials, I should mention the species
that need more time before I’ll know whether they make the
low-maintenance cut.  We put in two Asian
persimmons (only one
of which leafed out) last winter, and a dwarf
Korean nut pine from
two winters ago is growing extremely slowly in another pasture. 
New this spring are Rosa rugosa and Siberian pea shrub.  Only time
will tell which ones turn out to be perfect plants for our pasture.

For three months, our
laying hens did great in their pasture.  I moved them to a new
paddock once a week, then Mark
came along behind me to mow.  That routine
prevented last year’s problem of the pasture going to seed during the
spring rush, but a new issue was on the horizon — lack of water.



We haven’t had a real rain
here in weeks, and our usually wet farm is bone dry.  Rather than
rebounding after being grazed, pastures are starting to grow up in
smartweed and other plants chickens don’t like…if anything grows back
at all.  Plus, without rain, the manure is building up on the soil
surface, which leads to flies.  So I decided to revert to my
winter escape hatch and let
the hens out into the woods.



We saved a rooster from
our first round of broilers to join the laying hens, and I’m hoping
he’ll hold the flock together during their summer vacation.  The
woods is just as dry as the pastures, of course, but there’s a lot more
space out there for the chickens to scratch through.

If you don’t have acres
of woodland handy to turn your chickens into, there are other
possibilities for summer escapes when the pastures are looking
over-grazed.  We water our vegetable garden using sprinklers,
which means that the grassy aisles are just as green as can be. 
In a pinch, we could separate our laying flock out into two or three
tractors and graze them on this lush ground.  Alternatively, we
could fence off a compost/deep bedding area and keep the mulch thick
enough that it wouldn’t matter if the hens scratched it bare.

Another alternative is
simply to improve the quality of the pastures.  I gathered most of
the compostables from last year’s pasture compost piles this spring to
feed the garden, but I missed one that had been scratched flat into the
soil.  There, dandelions and clovers are happily growing, several
inches taller than the surrounding pasture.  I’ve always read that
better pasture management means more forage, but it’s striking to see
the results of extra organic matter in person.  Someday, I hope
all of our pastures look that lush, even several weeks into a drought.