Author: Anna & Mark

A
couple of weeks ago, Mark figured out that the old
boards tacking down
the bottom edge of our pasture fence were attracting scads of
earthworms.  He tipped a board up and the hens came running,
eating up the worms in seconds.  Ever since, he’s made it a habit
to flip up a board or two when he goes in to gather the eggs in the
evening.  I keep thinking that we’d run out of worms, but new
worms keep appearing to take the old ones’ place.



The trick to attracting
earthworms seems to be placing a moist object
on top of bare soil, and damp cardboard is even more effective
than boards.  We’re currently experimenting with laying down
sheets of cardboard in the pasture to create a worm buffet for the
flock and will let you know if we come up with anything higher tech
that works better.

Our chicken
pasture rotation experiment hit a snag in early May for
two
reasons.  First, when I let
our two and a half week old chicks out on pasture, they took to it
like ducks to water.  The trouble is that the chicks were too
small to contain, so they were able to go into whichever pasture they
pleased, slipping through holes in the chicken wire and coop
walls.  The flock never strayed too far from home, so they didn’t
get into trouble, but they did
graze all of the best spots in all of the pastures, nixing any rotation
data for this month.  It’s hard to complain, though, when their
storebought food consumption plummeted to half of its previous levels,
despite the chicks being considerably larger than they were a week
before.  (Look at the size of this chick’s crop after being
outside all day!)



Meanwhile, and less
pleasantly, our gentleman
rooster turned one year old and decided to reinvent himself. 
No longer mild, he took to rushing me every time I entered the pasture,
flogging my leg with his wings.  For the short term, I moved the
adult flock back into the far pasture they had just left (the true
forest pasture) so
that I didn’t have to walk in his personal
space, and once we no longer need his sperm, the rooster will be
heading for the chopping block.  I’ve read that it’s possible to
work with your rooster to make him less aggressive, but the truth is
that his genetics aren’t worth the trouble when we’ve got plenty of
amazing foragers growing up to take his place.