Right on schedule,
our last set of broilers started expanding their horizons on their
one-month birthday. Rather than hiding out under the
raspberries and peach tree by their brooder, the bold leader
brought his fellows under our trailer and up to the front garden
(and porch).
I figured mulch would get flung around
shortly, so Mark and I put the brooder back onto the yellow wagon
and dragged it to the forest garden, then ran a bit of temporary
fencing between
their new and old pastures. This
spring, I had less luck with this maneuver, but I think the issue
then was that I let the chicks get too big and bold before trying
to fence them in. Currently, our chicks seem to be behaving,
even though I didn’t even make a full circle out of the fence, so
they could just walk the long way around and go back to their old
stomping grounds.
I need to remember to
strike when the iron first gets hot in the future, because it’s
handy to be able to move broilers around through temporary
pastures without worrying about them flying the coop.
Hopefully this last set of broilers will behave for at least a
month before we have to shut them into a real pasture.
