Saturday

Forest Feeding Chickens


In our quest for a leaner and healthier yolk, we have decided that just feeding the chickens good food wasn't enough, they need to exercise to aid their digestion, and to pump all the nutrients in their blood around their bodies. When a chicken feeds from a feeder, they feed until their gullet is full and then they just hang out, digest some, and poop a lot.  But when they eat in the wild, they peck once and scratch twice, repeatedly, all day long. Eating this way causes the chicken to eat more slowly and the constant exercise provided by all that scratching means that the chicken is better able to better utilize the food they eat. 
We decided to stop feeding the chickens in bowls, or even simply scattering grains on the bare ground. What we are doing now is taking a bag of mixed grains and seeds into the forest to scatter among the fallen leaves, moss and grasses. The chickens seem to get almost all the grains. (what they don't find should sprout, the grains are even better when they sprout.)
We have been throwing the seeds out in the woods for the chickens. We feed them in a random rotation to keep them from over scratching any one area of our property.

The chickens are actually requiring less seed overall, because they are getting more moss and other forest goodies along with the grains we throw, there has been a rise in egg numbers, the shells are firmer, and the yolks are darker and more translucent, and therefore less fatty.

Egg Shooters
We also noticed that the chickens seem to be having an easier time laying, because they are all spending less time sitting in the nests, they just hop up lay, and move on. Perhaps all the work spent scratching in the woods is toning up their egg shoving muscles.

2 comments:

  1. Do you have the forest fenced in?

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    1. We do have a regular stock fence around 3 acres of our forest. The hens can go around or over it, but stay inside the eating zone. The hens used to go wandering before the fence, but they only went far if they took a rooster along.
      The Roosters can't go through the fence and don't go over it, for some reason.
      Some hens cross the fence but, stay close to the it, I think, because they but don't like to travel without a chaparone.
      We keep the roosters well fed, so they don't feel the need to gather a bunch of hens and go off in search of a better spot. Keeping them well fed keeps down the fighting, as well.

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