Chickens in the Oat Field

Large Hen-a-bago on the oat field

We have moved our large Hen-a-bago up to the oat field we sowed last fall. The chickens seem to enjoy rooting through the greens and picking at the seeds. In the few days they have been up there they have already mowed down part of the field from scratching and picking at the oats. This is a good example of rotating our pastured chickens in order to given them fresh feed, work the soil, and keep our bug population down!

Look just to the right of the grass edge where the chickens have scratched down the oats and picked away at the soil!  

The red roof at the front of the picture covers a dust box Charlie made.  It allows the chickens to have dust baths even on rainy days when the ground is wet & muddy.  Daily dust baths are important for chickens as a means to prevent infestations of mites and other parasites that like to find a host on which to live.  We fill the dust boxes with a mixture of peat moss, wood ash from the wood stove and diatomaceous earth.  We have to refill it regularly as so much "dust" leaves the box in the chickens' feathers as they leap out, fluff themselves and then settle down somewhere comfortable to preen.  It reminds me of children carrying sand from the sandbox home in their shoes.  

Partridge Rock pullets in the oats

And another wandering in search of bugs or a tidbit none of the others has found.

Sowing Oats

We recently tilled up one of our upper fields and sowed oats by hand. The oats are a cover crop on a field we are restoring to use for our vegetable garden next year.  If the birds don't eat all the seed before it can germinate we will be giving the soil protection from erosion as well as providing nutrition to the soil and to our chickens this winter.

Charlie filled buckets with the seed.

Then each person took a bucket and, while walking alongside one another, broadcast the seed into the field.

                                                       Charlie, Nathan, Emily and Mike

Then we rolled the oats into the soil. Charlie fashioned a log to roll behind the tractor in order to compress the seed into the soil.

May the oats take root in good soil, making it better and preparing the way for good crops in the years ahead.