Chickens are a natural, organic form of pest control. They eat mosquitoes, black flies and other insects so life is more pleasant on the farm and in the country without the need for insecticides. With their help we’re able to be naturally grown. Chickens are a great form of natural, organic pest control.
In addition to their insect patrol work the chickens also scratch the soil smooth, eat some plants and break apart manure patties out in the fields. All of this helps to contribute to better pasture quality and makes it so that we don’t have to use machinery on our swiftly sloping hillsides.
We keep heritage layer hens and they lay up a storm during most of the year without any feed beyond what they scavenge. These eggs are an excellent source of protein for our weaner piglets. Did you know that cooking an egg doubles the available protein?
bummer I was hoping the chicken section would be as good as your pig blog. In time I suppose.
Peace
Brian
Check out these posts about chickens for lots of articles on how we run our poultry. For us the chicken’s primary job is organic pest control. As a bonus they provide eggs which are a great source of protein for piglets, dogs and people. In the end there is the stew pot – our chickens are not the meaty roasting chickens but rather the heritage laying breeds that forage so well for themselves.
Gosh I didn’t know that about cooking the eggs!! I’d always assumed that raw was best (since that’s what the body-builders seem to do – yuk) but could never quite bring myself to eat/drink what I felt was slime!
What specific names are your heritage breeds chickens? I have Americanas. Marans, and a few sexlinked (Comet and Cherryegger) chickens and I am not getting many eggs even though they are completely free ranged plus get grain everyday. I have around 30 hens and 3 roosters and get 5 eggs a day. Any suggestions?
We have Americana, Buff Orpington, White Orpington, Rhode Island Red, New Hampshire Red and a few others. They might be laying eggs some where you’re not finding. If the egg count is low in winter then you may need to give them light.
Do you use a natural wormer for your chickens? I would like to keep using the eggs during treatment. Is that possible?
We don’t worm our chickens. I don’t know if perhaps in a warm climate it might be necessary. Primarily we use managed rotational grazing, winter, good health and garlic with our livestock for de-worming. Rarely is anything stronger necessary. Part of that is because we live in a climate that breaks the parasite cycle so nicely every winter. For more about how we approach worming see this post about Worms au Natural.
Mr. Jefferies,
I am absolutely inspired by your blog and all the wonderful idea that you have across the board. I havent been able to find much about your intensive grazing management. If you have and I missed it I do apologize. I am lookingto find out what goes first in a leader-follower igm plan. I am thinking of putting nubian goats with miniature jersey then follow with buff orpinton chickens and ending with a mix breed of yorkshire and tamworth pigs. What do you use? The farm is in Tennessee so the climate is a bit different, but ideas would be absolutely helpful.
Thanks,
Starla
We graze our sheep and pigs together using managed intensive rotational grazing except during lambing season. The chickens, ducks and geese naturally follow. We don’t do a forced segregation follow. See these posts.
Walter,
what exactly do you mean by ‘a forced segregation follow’? do you have an eggmobile without poultry netting or no eggmobile at all?
Also wondering about the dogs protecting the birds. I know you can do it, but my worries are that I have 2 LGD’s guarding the sheep one pasture ahead of the birds, and if I bring in another LGD for the birds, the new dog will just want to go play with the other two rather than protect birds? Is the answer to just have the 2 LGD’s protect both birds and sheep collectively by having a passable (for the dogs to crawl under) cross fence?
While I’m asking questions, if you don’t provide any supplemental feed for your chickens, how many chickens per acre are you comfortable with?
Have you tried not supplementing your hogs with store bought mtl?
You are amazing, thanks for all the info you provide. !
Forced segregation following is when you keep groups fenced apart. e.g., the cattle graze paddock A and then you move them on to paddock B. Then you put the sheep in paddock A. When you move the cattle to paddock C you put the sheep in B and move the pigs into A. Later you move the cattle to D, sheep to C, pigs to B and put the poultry in A. That is forced segregation following. That is way too much work. It is also not how the grazing herds naturally function.
What we do is we manage the grazing of the larger livestock. In our case that is sheep and larger pigs, grower through breeder. I don’t even worry about the piglets as they follow the herd. They’ll creep to some other places which is good. The ducks, chickens and geese naturally follow the larger grazing animals without my needing to manage them. This is much easier and more like natural grazing patterns.
Our working dogs guard and herd all the animals. I don’t have one specifically for doing just one job. They’re more powerful and flexible, have longer working lives, if they are cross trained. As they get older they do more gentle tasks such as watching piglets and poultry.
In the winter we feed our poultry primarily meat – something we have – since the deep snows make other foods inaccessible. In the warm months they eat insects (their primary job), grubs, worms, break apart manure patties and eat plants (grass, clover, etc). I don’t have a number for you on birds per acre since we don’t operate that way. We have had as many as 400 layers in a flock fanning out about 500 to 700 feet from their central roosting spot. Some also sleep in trees. If you used a 500′ diameter circle it would come to 20 acres for 400 birds or about 20 birds per acre. Hmm… that does not sound right as I do not think they were ranging across that much space. So much for back of the napkin scratchings. The area they cover is not perfectly circular. Based on what I know of our field sizes I would say that they were ranging over more like seven to ten acres so about 40 birds per acre. That’s about 1,000 sq-ft per bird over the warm months and is sustainable with them co-grazing with other animals. Take that with a grain of salt or two. It will vary with your climate, soil, etc, etc.
I don’t know what “store bought mtl” is. We do not buy grain or commercial hog feed so the answer to your question is probably yes.
We have raised three sets, no, wait, it was four sets of pigs just on pasture. They grow more slowly taking around eight months to get to finisher size and are very lean. Virtually no back fat. If I had nothing else I would do this.
By adding dairy to their diet they get the lysine, an amino-acid, that is low in pasture and their growth rate increases so they get to market weight in about six month which is the same as with grain fed diets. The dairy also gives a delightful sweet flavor to the meat and fat. We have a free source of dairy from a butter and cheese maker just across the mountain from us. If I did not have that I would start my own dairy just to get the milk to feed the pigs.
We also now grow a lot of pumpkins, beets, turnips, sunflowers and such during the summer in the pig’s winter paddocks. This uses the wonderful nutrients the pigs have provided and turns that into food for the pigs in the late fall and winter.
Sometimes we also get other things as described in the diet section of the pigs page. A bit of dated bread makes a wonderful training treat since the pigs rarely get it. This helps with weekly loading of pigs for market. Look around your area for what resources are readily available. There is much that otherwise goes to waste which makes great livestock food. By feeding it to animals you can keep it out of the landfill and keep it from going down the chaos slope.
Do you lose a lot of chickens to predators? We just recently lost 10 birds, including our 3 Buff Orpington hens and the B. O. rooster, and one Australorp hen. What do you do to keep the birds safe?
Dogs.