Author: Anna & Mark

In Pastured
Poultry Profits,
Joel Salatin opened my eyes to the fact that I’ve been comparing apples
to oranges with my feed
conversion rates. 
He explained that the industry standard I’ve been trying to live up to
(2:1) uses liveweight of the chickens — in other words, how much they
weigh “on the hoof” with feathers, guts, and all.  I’ve been using
carcass weight in my calculations, the industry standard for which is
closer to 3:1.  That seems much more achievable…

…Especially if I
supplement our flock’s diet with cicadas!  Yep, I’m here to admit
that my feed conversion rate for this first batch of broilers is going
to have no relation to reality because the 17
year cicadas are
going strong this spring.  I suspect that if I had a way to let the chickens run free without
having them decimate the garden, I wouldn’t be feeding the flock
anything at all — our broilers snap up the cicadas like candy, and
there are so many of the insects that I can easily gather a jarful like
the one shown above in twenty minutes.



This living off the
“cream” is how Joel Salatin is able to cut the feed costs in his
Eggmobiles by 67%.  I’ll write more about his system in a later
post, but the point I want to make now is that everyone’s habitat
offers a different chicken-feeding opportunity, and you have to be on
the lookout for free food when it falls in your lap.  The cicadas
are falling in my lap right now.

Because I just can’t resist
throwing in numbers, here are some to think about.  An ounce of
cicadas (liveweight) consists of about 38 individuals, with the number
depending on how many are males and how many are females.  (I’m
guessing the big ones are girls, but thirty seconds on the internet
hasn’t confirmed this.)

My flock of broilers can
eat those 38 individuals in about three minutes, but only about 16% of
the humans I offered insects to were willing to taste
a cicada.



“They’re delicious,” my
young cockerels tell me.  “Just gulp them down whole!”  Even
our dog has been seen hunting cicadas, which is yet more proof that the
bugs are as nutritious as they are delicious.  If you don’t feel
like eating them yourself, take my advice and spend half an hour
filling a jar for your flock.

I wrote on our homestead blog
about our problems with chickens
flying over fences. 
It took a while to iron out the issues, but I’m glad to say that the
farm is now quiet and chickens are staying where they’re meant to
be.  In the process, I learned some interesting lessons about
rotating chickens through varied terrain.



From now on, I won’t try
to move chickens away from prime habitat (mulch under trees) and into
subprime habitat (open grasssy lawn) if they can still see the prime
habitat.  Instead, I’ll rotate in the other direction — starting
with subprime and working my way up to prime.



Or I’ll move the chickens to
a new location entirely after leaving prime habitat.  Once our
flock was transferred to a coop on the other side of the yard, they
didn’t try to fly over fences and return to the forest garden
island.  The temporary
fencing materials were just as ramshackle and sagging as before,
but with chickens, out of sight is out of mind.



Of course, it’s also
possible the chickens are quite happy in the berry patch.  Not
only is there clover-filled lawn between the rows, they can also
scratch up the straw mulch to their hearts’ content.  I’m just
glad I’ve figured out how to keep giving the broiler flock fresh
pasture without overgrazing any one area.