Rethinking the Chicken "Arrangement"

When we first got chickens, we had a a small flock of hens that lived in a chicken tractor out in the 3 acre pasture.  I would push the chicken tractor each day to a different spot so that the grass was 'fertilized' in equal fashion.  Of course fire ant mounds proved to be a formidable obstacle.  Sometimes I had to lift the tractor or push around the fire ant mounds.  The tractor had a door on the front of it.  Each morning I would let them out and they would roam on 3 acres.  At night, they would return to the tractor as there were roosts in the tractor and they would sleep on them each night. Sometimes I would close the door to keep them safe from predators, but most of the time I wouldn't.

Then we got more chickens and that meant that we had to build a second tractor, which meant twice the work and twice the time in moving them.  Oh, and twice the fire ant mounds to dodge.  Well, then we got more chickens and we adopted more chickens that people no longer wanted.  (Who can refuse orphan chickens?) Suddenly, our nice plan didn't work.  Our flock no longer fit in the chicken tractors.

A friend donated a hen house that he was no longer using (you can see the hen house in the background of the photo below.  It is the smaller red building.) and the philosophy of our operation changed.  Rather than foraging for food out on 3 acres of pasture, the hens became dependent.  They lazily loafed by the barn waiting for rice and laying pellets we fed them at morning and night.  They roosted in the roosts in the hen house. They stand at the barn gates begging for food and the cows step on them when coming in the barn to get milk.  Some of the injured chickens die, and some, like Jacob, walk with a limp from their encownter.... ahem, encounter with a cow.

Oh, sure, they would venture out in the pasture and forage and eat bugs and worms and frogs, but their default position was hanging out by the barn.  Soon they had scratched all the grass around the barn to resemble a barren wasteland.  They created the same parched, grass-less 'chicken-run' area you see above that we were trying to avoid.  The lack of grass creates mud.  Young tender sprouts of grass have no chance with all the chickens.  There are no roots to hold the soil together and when rains come, a large mud flat looms.  Lots and lots of mud around the barn.  I want to reverse this and return to how things used to be.  It won't happen overnight, but we're making steps:

Step 1: We moved the new chicken tractor that we built out on the pasture.  This will be the hens' new home that will lure (at least some) of the chickens out of the hen house.  If you look closely, you can see a cardboard box leaning against it. What is that?  Well, the box contains is Step 2.

Step 2: We purchased some electric poultry netting from Premier 1 Supplies.  This netting hooks up nicely to my existing electric poly-wire fence by attaching a 'jump wire.'  This netting keeps the goats and cows out of the hen area.  The goats and cows are opportunists that like to eat the chickens feed. The goats are mischievous vandals that would destroy the chicken tractor in three shakes of a billy goat's tail. That means no time at all!  I will move the chicken tractor daily and will move the poultry netting several times a week to rotate the pasture the hens roam on.
 

Step 3:  More than keeping the goats and cows out.  The electrified poultry netting keeps the chickens IN and away from the area where grass is not growing.  I will plant rye grass seed mixed with wheat seed and bermuda or bahia grass seed in the 'grass-less' area.  With the chickens safely within the netting, the young grass will get a head start and perhaps be able to grow and I'll re-introduce grass and eliminate mud from an trouble spot around the barn.

That is the plan.  The chickens, as of this writing, have not bought in to the plan.  I lured the chickens into the netting with feed and got two thirds of them inside.  The next day more than a third of them had flown over or found other ways under, over or around the netting.  I don't give up easily, though. I will try to capture them all in the hen house and clip their wings, READ THE DIRECTIONS THIS TIME about setting up the netting and then set up the netting more securely and try again.  Once I have them all inside the netting, I'll purchase the seed and plant grass. Doing this is not easy, but it is the right thing to do and will eliminate erosion, mud, the health of the animals and soil fertility out on the pasture.