(Finally) Moving Pastured Hens to the Pasture

For way too long we've had 23 laying hens and two roosters in our chicken tractor in the yard.  Each day I would push the tractor to fresh grass and the chickens would promptly eat it all, plowing the ground rivaling any farm implement John Deere could imagine.  You can see the trail here in the side yard facing north.

The photo below shows the trail of the tractor facing east.  The chickens denuded the ground, creating an erosion problem in the yard.  They should have been out free-ranging in the pasture months ago.  What happened?  These are some chickens we hatched out in our incubator and then raised until they began laying eggs.  We butchered the roosters and then next step was to move the hens out to the pasture.

And then minks started killing our birds out in the pasture.  The population dropped from 60-something birds to 9.  It was a hen genocide.  We were reluctant to move our hens out to the killing fields after taking care of them for so long.  So we delayed moving them until we ran out of excuses.  Last week we pushed the tractor into the pasture, toward the barn and right beside the hen house.

The hens were confused.  They didn't know where to roost or where to lay eggs.  They got out of the pasture and collecting eggs became an easter egg hunt.  In the evenings, we would lock them up in the rabbit hutches that are lined with hardware cloth.  Up to this point, it has proved to be safe from minks.  Over the period of about a week, the hens learned to lay eggs in the laying boxes and get into the roosting spot in the rabbit hutch.

You can see the chicken tractor pushed right next to the hen house on the western side of the barn.  The photo also shows Belle keeping a sharp eye for her birds.

Today we folded up the tarp and put it away, now that the hens have made their long-awaited transition to the pasture.  We began to talk and plan about hatching out some new hens from our eggs and/or raising some meat birds in the now empty chicken tractor.