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Pasture raised eggs are the BEST! There are several customers that have told us that our eggs are the best they ever had. We pasture raise our layer chickens. Our layer chickens are happy and healthy. They love their freedom (but safe) place to roam.
Now, we know that this will not work for everyone. Depending where you live, what your pasture is like, and what predators are around should be considered before deciding to pasture raise your chickens. So far our chickens have been safe. We do lock them in their chicken house at night to help protect them.
We run goats in the same big pasture as the chickens. They are not always together, the goats get rotated weekly in smaller sections inside the big pasture and the chickens are mostly free range the whole pasture. Occasionally they are in the same section as the goats. When they are we must make sure that the goats cannot get into the chicken house and eat all their food.
Here are some things we have learned and do for our chickens out on pasture.
Chicken House.
We built a chicken coop on wheels. We move it to different parts of the pasture about once a week. This is so that the grass underneath the chicken house does not die and it generally gets messy right around the house. Moving the chicken house make the chickens hang out on clean grass. Cleaner chickens means healthier chickens. The inside of the chicken house does need cleaned out occasionally. The floor has small slats in it but it still gets messy. The nesting boxes also need cleaned out from time to time but that is just normal chicken maintenance.
At the time of writing this we have 29 chickens and1 rooster that live in this house. One of the really nice things about this chicken house is the rain barrel for water. The rain gutter puts the rain water right into a barrel that way we do not have to carry water to the chickens. This is really nice because sometimes they are far way from the house/hydrant. Now, it does not work in the winter time when it freezes but during the winter they chicken house stays closer to the water hydrant.
Moving the House.
Make sure you do not run any chickens over! We never actually had this happen but when you let a 11 year old move it with the tractor it is something we always remind him of. We have found that if we move the chicken house too far from where it was the chickens cannot find it to go into at night (Sometimes chickens are not the brightest). There has been several nights that we are out after dark chasing and catching chickens to lock them up for the night in their house. Something that does help if you know you have to move it quite far is to move them in the morning before they get out of their house.
Here is a link to a video on YouTube of our 11 year old moving the chicken house.
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