Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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Back Garden Organic Poultry

http://nickykylegardening.com/back-garden-organic-poultry

Written by Nicky Kyle

It's early December as I write this, there's a foot of snow on the ground and 
it's freezing hard!  Dozens of hungry sparrows, chaffinches, blue tits, 
blackbirds and starlings are squabbling over the feeders in the garden, and 
even a song thrush - normally so shy, is on the kitchen windowsill looking 
for food. It all looks beautiful through the window, the trees look as if 
they've been dipped in icing sugar and the hedges are spangled with frost 
glitter like an early Christmas card. The polytunnels are decorated with 
incredibly intricate frost-ferns like William Morris wallpaper, and I daren't 
even look at the lettuces inside them, even under fleece!  Brrr....Your hens 
will really need some TLC now if they're to keep laying in this weather!

The main thing with hens at any time of year is to keep them warm and as 
clean and dry underfoot as possible. I have my 6 hens in a converted small 
wooden dog-kennel, with a couple of orange box nest boxes, a perch and roof 
that lifts, so it's easy to get into and keep clean. I don't like those 
trendy looking plastic ones, I think they sweat and are cold compared to 
wooden ones. I take out the droppings every morning, to avoid a build up of 
ammonia which is bad for their lungs and can burn their feet and legs (in 
industrial broiler chicken houses the chickens routinely get horribly painful 
burns on their legs as they're crammed together with no choice but to 
unavoidably sit in their own droppings) I then put in a scattering of fresh 
shavings as these are good at absorbing any damp and fumes from the droppings 
overnight. They also need good ventilation but without draughts.

A friend of my son's made me a terrific set of four wheels for the house, so 
that I can push it easily round the garden every day to fresh ground. That 
gives them lovely fresh grass to graze every day, which they do eagerly, and 
also stops them 'souring' the ground. At the moment however, their run is 
welded to the ground by the frost, so can't be moved. Anyway there'd be no 
point as I would just be moving them to fresh snow - which they hate!  Half 
the run is covered with heavy clear polythene so there's always somewhere dry 
for them to stand around even if it's raining. In this weather I put some 
straw in that part of the run to keep their feet dry. Both the discarded 
straw and shavings can then be put onto the compost heap - they're a great 
compost activator and brilliant to get it heating up because of all the 
nitrogen in the droppings. The hotter a heap gets, the better it rots..

Putting straw in also keeps them busy scratching around for the green food I 
throw in several times a day, particularly if they can't be moved to a fresh 
patch of grass. They need plenty of green food to stay healthy and give 
wonderful orange yolks to the eggs. The hens convert all that food into 
perfect, nutritious little packages including protein, omega3 fatty acids, 
zinc and sight-enhancing lutein, which they're then transmitting to you via 
their eggs. It's so funny to see them rush to the fence when they see me 
coming with a bundle of greens, although it can be irritating when I go to 
shut them up at dusk - if they hear my footsteps they come flying out 
thinking "yippee, more goodies" - and I then have to wait another 20mins for 
them to settle down again before I can shut the door!  It's vital to shut 
them up every night even in small urban gardens, as they won't last ten 
seconds if the fox can get in easily and have himself an evening's 
entertainment killing them all. It's an urban myth that foxes only kill to 
eat - they do it just for the hell of it most of the time! To try to deter 
them a bit, it's a good idea to keep the hens a bit closer to your house at 
this time of year.

A lot of people think hens don't have brains  - but they are surprisingly 
intelligent, that's why I can't bear to see the poor things constricted in 
the incredibly cruel strait-jacket of battery cages, unable to do what hens 
are genetically programmed to do - make nests, scratch around, sunbathe, dust 
bath to keep their feathers in top condition, spread their wings and fly up 
to perch at night. They're very social animals, enjoying the company of 
others, so don't keep one on it's own, they need company. You can't breed 
those natural instincts out of chickens in relatively few years of 
domestication.That would take many thousands of years of evolution. Seeing 
how quickly an ex-battery hen will adapt to freedom and exhibit it's natural 
behaviour, after the first couple of days of stunned amazement, is quite an 
education, it makes one realise just how ingrained and vital for the hen's 
well-being that natural behaviour is. If you bear in mind that their original 
natural habitat is warm, S.E.Asian jungle, scratching around in the leaf 
litter under shrubby undergrowth for grubs and seeds, you can understand 
their basic needs far better.

It's vitally important now, and I think all year, to feed them a proper well 
balanced layers ration, with the right proportion of protein. That way 
they'll keep laying more reliably, just easing up a little in early Dec. due 
to the lack of light but getting back to normal in mid Jan. If you're only 
just thinking of getting some hens, I find the best time to get them at 
'point of lay'  is in mid July - mid August, then they'll go on laying all 
winter perfectly well without any artificial light. Most feed merchants are 
now selling organic layers pellets, they are a bit more expensive than 
conventional layers pellets but otherwise you'll be to eating genetically 
modified soya protein via your hens (which is in all conventional layers 
pellets and any other animal feed containing soya protein). GM products are 
not allowed in organic rations and all the ingredients have to come from 
certified organic sources, which by the way, also contain more good omega3 
fats (Newcastle University study). A young hen in it's first year of laying 
will lay almost every day. As certified organic feed retails at around 
18euros a bag at the moment, work it out and you'll find you're getting your 
eggs for less than a quarter of the shop price of organic or free-range eggs, 
and if you also either sell your surplus or barter to relatives and friends, 
even if you give them a discount you'll still be getting yours for virtually 
nothing - you can't beat that. Many people think that 'Free Range' is the 
same as organic, but the 'so-called free range' hens are fed on exactly the 
same layer's ration as battery hens (containing GM soya) and are allowed less 
room both in their houses and outside than organic ones. Whether you care 
about eating GM or not, there are many ethical questions also attached to the 
GM debate. That's a subject that I'll talk about in the future. Always keep 
the feeder in the hen-house to avoid attracting rats and to avoid waste.

The other thing that's most important is to make sure they've got clean fresh 
water available all the time. In freezing weather, tip the water out of the 
drinker at night, and refill again in the morning, otherwise it will freeze 
solid and you won't be able to get the top off to fill it up. It's also a 
good idea to put a clove of crushed garlic in a little bag of muslin, tights, 
or old net curtain, done up with a piece of string or a rubber band - to stop 
the bits clogging the water outlet - this is a good tonic and keeps diseases 
and internal parasites at bay. However, if you always keep them clean and 
move them to fresh gound as often as possible, those shouldn't be a problem. 
Wild birds can carry parasites and this is another good reason for keeping 
the feeders in the house, so as not to attract them. The garlic doesn't make 
the eggs taste!  Many years ago someone who didn't believe I kept my hens 
healthy with garlic called in unexpectedly one day and asked if he could see 
my hens - they were in a polytunnel at the time and the smell of garlic hit 
us as we opened the door! They were wonderfully healthy looking broiler 
chickens, a couple of dozen, mostly 9-10 pounders, sunbathing luxuriently in 
the warmth of the early spring sunshine, on deep straw in a spare polytunnel. 
They were reared for eating though sadly all that garlic didn't transmit to 
their flesh either!  So I still have to put the 'forty cloves of garlic' in 
with the traditional French recipe - worth a try though!!

By the way, on the subject of broiler chickens, most (uninformed) food 
writers will tell you that it's impossible to rear  'conventional' breeds of 
broilers outside on free range - and that they're more suited to be reared 
intensively indoors. That is complete and utter rubbish!!  In intensive 
broiler houses, they are forced to be unhealthy 'couch potatoes'- they 
haven't got the room or the opportunity to be anything else. The same would 
happen to us, if we were reared in those foul (sorry!) conditions!  I have 
raised hundreds of broilers over the years and they thrive and grow well on 
good organic food, with clean houses to sleep in and plenty of fresh air and 
excercise outdoors. When they get to 10-12lbs they do get a little bit 
tougher on all that excercise though!  A flock of those running towards you, 
when they think you're bringing a few tasty treats, is some sight to behold I 
can tell you!

That's all for now. Next month I'll talk about ducks and in February I'll 
talk about raising your own chicks from day-olds in March, which is when I 
normally do it, so that they then come into lay around the first week in 
August and will go on laying all through the winter.