It got bare fast!

[Our Roost]

25 chicks and 2 peking ducks got introduced to their 20x55ft. run a few weeks back. It went from a luscious green coverage to a well pecked baren ground almost before our eyes! Nothing left now but soil. We are not in a panic but are concerned as if this is a problem for the chickens and ducks. We havent tryed free grazing them outside the run area and dont know if they will return to the coop if we opt to do that. I guess this is why farmers rotate their stock to different pastures. There is plenty of feed, water, and occaisional bugs in the run area for them to forage on but no green leafage. Does anyone spread hay and some type of seed rye seed around to regrow the area? Any suggestions would be appreciated. Maybe this is normal.

 

[devora]

Very normal, no worries.

You won't be able to regrow in the run unless you remove the birds (like the pasturing you mentioned).

Free range is great and they will love it.

You can also grow pallets of greens. And scraps, they will eat food scraps. So that spinach quiche you were gonna put in the compost, hey, give a bird a taste.

 

[centrarchid]

With all my pens, units are moved periodically to protect ground. When hens getting supplmental eats to produce quality hatching eggs, moves almost daily.

 

[gardendufus]

Something I'm trying that I found on here. I dug in an 8 X 4 area, planted it with grass seed. Then put together an 8 X 4 frame out of 2 X 4's, covered it with hardware cloth and layed it over the planted area. I'm still waiting for it to grow out, but theoretically, when the grass grows high enough to come through the hardware cloth, the birds can eat what comes through, but cant scratch it up by the roots and make it bare again, the grass continues to grow and provide fresh greens.

 

[Mattemma]

When my run area went from grass to mud I put wood chips over it.Now the hens are somewhere else,and I have time to reseed the wood chip run. I have some sunflower and flax already growing in there!

 

[dace316]

I made little garden boxes with 2x4s and hardware cloth and planted wheat grass under it. The chickens can nibble the tops but can't scratch out the roots. I'm going to build a few more in random places around the run. Before winter, I will take out the boxes and let them go nuts.