Combining free range feeding with crop production? Anyone here doing it?

[Winter Creek Coop]

Dogs will likely be used for ground predators, the flying ones concern me as much or more that the furry ones do. We have a good population of hawks and eagles around us.

We have lots of hawks and a few eagles. We did have some hawk attacks but the birds were way to heavy for the hawks but they did cause some injuries. Oh by the way, several of the CornishX hens were laying by the end of the summer.

 

[Kirkwooder]

We have lots of hawks and a few eagles. We did have some hawk attacks but the birds were way to heavy for the hawks but they did cause some injuries. Oh by the way, several of the CornishX hens were laying by the end of the summer.

Do you even have a rough idea of your feed conversion rates? The average Cornish X will consume 2# of feed to every 1# of bird (roughly) through the first 8 weeks. Do you think you went through this much feed

 

[Kirkwooder]

Also, was your entire cash crop accessible to the birds. If not was there a difference in the quality/quantity of product?

 

[Red-Stars-in-RI]

Check out rotational grazing on pasture with chicken tractors, Joel Salatin style. Lots of folks doing that with good success for hundreds to thousands of birds - layers or meat birds. The key is moving them often and giving the grass a chance to recover.

The problem with crop land is that the birds will tear things up. You’re also somewhat constrained by what’s ripe when.

That being said, a pasture system with supplemental food from the crop land (and then letting the flock in for fall cleanup) might work really well. Winter storage crops like pumpkin and squash would help with any winter feeding.

 

[Winter Creek Coop]

Actually once they were feathered decently they went to to the field and only ate snacks, so to speak, in the morning and evening. Honestly I bet past the first 4 weeks 80+ percent of their food was foraged and was mostly grasshoppers. They were incredibly fat. My bought feed per pound was pennies. I fed scratch in the morning snd evening and they ate grasshoppers all day.

They had access to the whole outdoor crop. Without them I would have been screwed as far as the crop went. So it was a win win for me. I wish I had numbers for you.

When I have raised captive cornishX on grower feed it was close to the 2 lbs feed for each 1lb of carcus weight. But to do that yiu have to be dialed in on your feed and conditions. If they are cold or hot or stressed a lot it hurts your conversion.

 

[Winter Creek Coop]

Oh also, my crop is tall enough that the birds don’t mess with or damage the plants.

 

[Winter Creek Coop]

Check out rotational grazing on pasture with chicken tractors, Joel Salatin style. Lots of folks doing that with good success for hundreds to thousands of birds - layers or meat birds. The key is moving them often and giving the grass a chance to recover.

The problem with crop land is that the birds will tear things up. You’re also somewhat constrained by what’s ripe when.

That being said, a pasture system with supplemental food from the crop land (and then letting the flock in for fall cleanup) might work really well. Winter storage crops like pumpkin and squash would help with any winter feeding.

He is the authority on the subject for sure.

 

[Kirkwooder]

Check out rotational grazing on pasture with chicken tractors, Joel Salatin style. Lots of folks doing that with good success for hundreds to thousands of birds - layers or meat birds. The key is moving them often and giving the grass a chance to recover.

The problem with crop land is that the birds will tear things up. You’re also somewhat constrained by what’s ripe when.

That being said, a pasture system with supplemental food from the crop land (and then letting the flock in for fall cleanup) might work really well. Winter storage crops like pumpkin and squash would help with any winter feeding.

I do this now with somewhere between 200 and 300 meat birds, and a dozen or more turkeys every summer. I have really good success with feed conversion rates of nearly 1-1. I use mobile coupes and graze my birds over my lawn. The lawn grows at an unbelievable rate after the rotation.

My interest is in raising birds and increasing crop production together. Pasture is great but offers no other product. The green grass in the yard is cool, but wouldn't it be better to increase whatever crop you're raising and have an additional product to market?

Free ranging layers in a hop yard for instance. Will the hop plants produce better if they have a flock in the yard? Will a vineyard produce more, or better quality, grapes with a flock of birds free ranging up and down the rows? Can the tonnage of hay be increased when subjected to a free range flock? If you free range a sizable flock in a corn field can you use less herbicide and produce the same or better per acre than without the flock?

 

[Winter Creek Coop]

I think its a great idea as long as you can get thr timing and security worked out. They will themselves eat and step on seedlings. So they have to be somewhere else during the early stage. But it sounds like you want to put in that level of thought. Chickens for pest and vegetation control is a great part of an organic operation too. Good luck. Keep us posted on how it goes.

 

[Red-Stars-in-RI]

A few more thoughts:

• How about orchards? Chickens would do great in that scenario - not damaging the crop, but eating grass, cleaning up fallen fruit, eating pests, etc. I've seen people have good luck with putting rocks around the base of young trees/shrubs to keep the chickens from digging up the roots.
  
  
• For tall crops like corn, you could let your chickens free-range underneath looking for pest and eating/scratching up weeds.
  
  
• What about splitting a field in two...one half is chicken run, the other half cropland. At the end of the growing season...switch. Chickens clean up the garden waste and next year's crops get some nicely fertilized soil. In this scenario, you could work in a "chickens on compost" setup as well.
  
• Other than that, it gets tricky...mini chicken tractors between rows of a row crop? Chicken tractors to clean up garden beds in a system where you're doing succession planting?

Obviously, with most crops a chicken will tear it to shreds and eat it, before it's even gotten chance to thrive if they get early exposure.

Interesting to see what can be done, though...good luck and keep us posted on any experiments.