The Chicken Rotation

We keep our main flock of chickens in the field behind our house.  If you look a little closer, you can see some of them hiding under the red chicken tractor.

We keep them in the chicken tractors so that we can rotate them around our fields.  Neither of the coops has a solid bottom – this way, we are able to fertilize the fields as we move along.  It also cuts down on cleaning time for me!

We just hook them up to the “Mule”, and off we go.  Once we’re in the new spot, just sprinkle a little oyster shell and some grit, and the chicken rotation is complete.  Open up the lids of the nesting boxes, and you’ll see them busy making breakfast!

Another benefit is that we often follow the cows.  The chickens are interested in insects that tend to follow the cows and their manure, and they end up sanitizing the fields the cows have used, so that the cattle will be less likely to catch parasites when they return to those fields later on.

More on the cows in a future post…