I got rid of all of my chickens last year when we decided to travel out of state for a few weeks. Then this year my 8yo wanted some hens so we got three Barred Rocks for her. We have all kinds of chicken housing her eon our farm, including chicken tractors, a chicken moat, chicken pens in the barn, etc. but I decided to use a little coop that we had on hand so that I could put it near the kitchen door to make it easy to feed them our kitchen scraps. This is the coop, and we added a little yard to it
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I intended to have them free range but needed to put up some fencing to keep them in their part of the yard. We had several days of rain and I never got around to it- by the time the ground was dry enough I noticed that the three little hens seemed quite content inside their little coop, and I didn't have to worry about the many predators we have on our place. So, they are in the coop for good.
I keep a bit of layer mash in their feeder, but to keep them occupied I put a lawn mower bag of grass/weed clippings in the yard pen every day, and I also add a 5 gallon bucket full of unfinished compost which is usually teeming with earthworms, bugs, and gazillions of little microorganisms which the hens eat. They also get whatever scraps and/or leftovers we have from the kitchen. About once a week, when I bring bones and suet home from the butcher shop for our dogs, I throw some suet in the pen for them. They are pretty content and we get an average of 17 eggs a week on very little feed, which is more than our family of three can eat (the dogs get the rest). Two of the hens are "around" a year old, and the other is "around" two years old- the seller wasn't sure about her.
I have fermented chicken feed in the past, when we had more birds, but haven't started any for this batch because they eat so little......
eta: About once a month I rake most of the old bedding out of the yard, leaving enough to cover the ground, and start adding new batches of grass clippings and compost. The old stuff goes straight out to the garden where it gets used as mulch. We have a huge garden and have not used commercial fertilizer in many years.
I noticed you joined us recently, My situation is different than most because I raise a lot of birds. I give the birds greens from the garden when in season. I rarely free range due to losses in the past from predators. When the garden greens aren't in season, I occasionally buy bales of alfalfa and give the alfalfa to the birds. Prior to the breeding season, I Put the birds on high protein feed starting about a month prior to collecting eggs for hatching. After hatching season is over and the weather gets hot, I switch the birds over to layer feed. When the birds start to molt I switch them back to the higher protein feed because the feathers are mostly protein. After the birds have went through their molt I switch the birds back to layer. The chicks are put on a higher protein chick feed until they are close to two months old them I switch them over to a higher protein grower feed. I do show my birds at poultry shows. Every evening when I collect eggs the birds do get treats of a mixture of grains and seeds. The amount of treats each bird will get doesn't amount to much. Most of the pens have 20/30 birds in them and I give each pen less than a cup of the treats. They have plenty of shade and each coop has an auto waterer so the birds always have water.
