Our current philosophy on how we go about creating food for our table and possibly food for others, puts us in a position to hold a lot of birds in a small space and put them on new fresh grass every day.
Today we were able to put our cornish cross meat birds on pasture in their new home. Typically, you want to wait until they are about 3 weeks old to put them on pasture. But with our temperatures in the low to mid 90's, we don't have any problems with doing it a lot earlier.
(Sorry for the sideways pictures. Still trying to figure out how to send pictures from my phone.)
The chicks do have supplemental heat in case they need it. The black rectangle is a heater and shortly after I took this picture, they were and have been roaming all over the tractor already eating snippets of grass and are not cold. They still like to take a nap all huddled up, but ultimately I believe they like their new domain. The blue tarp is temporary, as the white tarps have been shipped, yet not arrived. Hoping for those in the next couple of days.
The ducks aren't much different. These are pekin ducks and have acclimated just fine to their new house as well. We have another large John Suscovich tractor we are building for them as well, it's about 80% complete at this time.
Of course, we put our quail in tractors as well. You can read about that here: https://steempeak.com/homesteading/@squareonefarms/pasture-raising-quail
All in all, we really like this setup for our birds. So far, we seem to see very healthy and happy birds. We are increasing the fertility and improving our soil. And of course the product, whether meat or eggs, that these birds produce are so much more healthy than a 100% commercial feed diet. Absolutely everything about this setup has worked out according to plan so far. We will have a lot more knowledge about it by the end of the summer, but for now, this is how we intend to raise almost all of our birds.
We do have another setup for some other chickens and we use it to make our chickens clear, till and fertilize future garden/growing spots. It's called the Chickshaw 2.0, made famous by Justin Rhodes. We use it to collect eggs, house the birds and surround it with poultry netting in a very specific spot. You can watch me build it below.
Very nice. We just processed our first batch of Cornishcross last Sunday. They dressed out at about 5.5lbs at 7.5 weeks. Nothing better than fresh chicken that you raised and know where it comes from
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That's pretty good! With this being our first year with pastured chickens, I'm hoping we learn a lot and can get 5-5.5 lbs. We have raised them in the past in pens and had kind of a bad experience with them. So, we took last year off and this year we are going full steam ahead with both chicken and quail as meat birds. So far, we're really happy with it. Our quail have done fantastic and we are hoping for the same result with chickens.
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I have never tried quail. What breed are you using?
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Jumbo Coturnix. They are the biggest of the quail and lay eggs very regularly. I don't know if we will ever try any other breed.
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Very cool! I agree, free range, or pasture ranging chickens are healthier and happier for sure! Mine just free range all over the place, but I keep trying to talk my husband into making some kind of thing like this, or maybe a chicken tractor to drag around to confine them to certain areas. For now though, they are everywhere. :/
Nice video! Very clear step by step!
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Thank you! The two different tractors we use have very different uses. We use the John Suscovich chicken tractor for eating grass, localizing the manure and creating simply a healthier and happier bird. The one in the video is just a coop on wheels that they can lay eggs in, but we use it to keep them in a broader area and "free range" with limitations. Depends on what you're wanting as to which way you can go. Either way, we have free ranged our chickens for many years and they inevitably end up where they aren't supposed to be (eating the garden, pooping on the porch, etc.). So, keeping them contained and mobile has ended up working best for us. Thanks for stopping by!
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Yes, I saw how that one was a mobile coop, which is cool in and of itself. You could use temporary fencing to move them around in different areas, or if you have lots of acreage, just move the coop around and let them manage them selves. Its interesting, the many ways people can raise livestock to suit their needs!
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