Robert Plamondon's Poultry Newsletter, August 4, 2006

Sorry about the long gap between newsletters. I was super-busy...

As always, if you're tired of this newsletter, please scroll down to the bottom of the message for easy instructions to make your subscription go away.

New Pastured Poultry Book!

I mentioned this last time, but it's worth saying again. The new book, Raising Poultry on Pasture by APPPA (the American Pastured Poultry Producers' Association), has got more information than you can shake a stick at. It has articles written by a large number of pastured poultry farmers, who have taken Joel Salatin's ideas and run with them.

The book has 246 pages of articles from APPPA Grit, the invaluable APPPA newsletter. APPPA Grit is written by and for small egg and poultry producers -- specifically, those raising pastured or free-range chickens.

We've been members of APPPA for years, and recommend that you not only buy the book, but join right now!

Contents Chapter 1 Overview of Pastured Poultry Chapter 2 Brooding Chapter 3 Pastured Poultry Genetics Chapter 4 Shelter Design Chapter 5 Day-Range Systems Chapter 6 Equipment Chapter 7 Eggs on Pasture Chapter 8 Turkeys, Ducks, and other Poultry Chapter 9 Poultry Nutrition and Health Chapter 10 Processing Chapter 11 Marketing Chapter 12 Record-Keeping and Insurance Chapter 13 The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Chapter 14 Resources Chapter 15 Index

This is not a book to be missed! Anyone who is interested in having a few chickens, or in farming, ought to read a copy.

Where to Buy Your Copy

News From the Farm

Predators Again

Predators have been giving us fits, but things seem to have calmed down enormously now. The main problem has been bobcats. I don't know what the deal is, but bobcats used to be elusive in our neighborhood, but this year I started seeing them in the daytime! They must be tremendously overpopulated if they're taking that kind of risk.

The Federal Trapper (who works under the USDA-Aphis Wildlife Services Program) came out and set some snares, and we started collecing chicken-eating predators. Mostly bobcats (five so far this year), but also a couple of coyotes and a raccoon or two.

All the snare are set right next to where the chickens are; we only want to catch the chicken-eating predators, not predators in general. When we first moved here, we didn't have a predator problem at all -- the predators were all too shy to prey on our chickens very much. But every time our city-dominated county governments ratchets down the funds for the Wildlife Services program, the predators get more numerous and aggressive. And it's not just livestock that get killed -- it's pets, too. We used to have half a dozen barn cats, and now we're down to one.

For a while we were catching something every day or two, but we haven't caught a thing in two weeks, and predation seems to have stopped as well. It seems to me that it's ecologically sound to keep enough pressure on predators that they stay in their ecological niche, and don't spill over into generalized pet-eating, trash-can-tipping, and so on.

During the period of high predation our hens' egg production dropped dramatically and the hens acted weird. Being chased and killed isn't just bad for the hens that get eaten, it's terribly stressful for the entire flock. As soon as the predation stopped, the hens returned to normal and the egg production soared.

We're learning from the trapper. If you do it right, you can be selective about what gets caught in your snares. A favorite technique is to place them in game trails that are basically tunnels in the brush that are too low to be used by deer and such.

There are a number of sites about trapping. Most of these sites also sell the equipment (snares, live traps, game calls, instructional videos, etc.)

We have used live traps with some success, but snares have worked better for us. Live traps are better in areas with lots of loose pets. I use a .410 shotgun to dispatch predators caught in a live trap. This relatively weak shot charge doesn't hurt the trap or present much of a richochet danger, but at short range it dispatches the predator immediately.

I don't particularly like trapping, but you need to take care of your flock or get out of the business.

Forage Plants for Hens

What kind of forage plants do hens like/

It turns out that they aren't picky at all. But when you give them pasture or other forage, keep the following rules in mind:

• Chickens don't like tall grass; shoving through tall grass takes work and it interferes with foraging. Chickens like grass to be less than six inches high.
• Chickens can digest bright green forage plants (clover, grasses, whatever), but once the color begins to fade, the plants are too woody to be digestible.
• Chickens love shade on sunny days. Old-time poultrymen planted rows of widely spaced sunflowers or corn to provide shade. This also provides protection from hawks. Don't put the plants close together, or the chickens will hide their eggs among the plants. The sunflower heads or ears of corn were fed to the chickens by knocking a few stalks over and letting the chickens do all the threshing.
• In parts of the country with summer rainfall, ladino clover was considered to be the best summer pasture for chickens if you're going to go to the trouble of plowing and planting. But there's a school of thought that says that permanent pasture is best (simply mow whatever's there, and never plow or seed). The chickens get more variety that way.
• In places with mild winters, oats were considered to be the best cool-season forage. Here in Western Oregon, cool-season grasses in general do great 9-10 months out of the year, but they're dead as a doornail during the summer.
• Another trick that used to be very popular was to grow thousand-headed kale or any of the other large varieties of kale. Feeding was often done by cutting a plant and hanging it from a string upside-down in the chicken house, just off the floor, and the chickens would eat the leaves. Kale grows all winter in the Pacific Northwest and provided off-season vitamins that old-time poultry rations lacked.
• Pasture improves the flavor, texture, and appearance of poultry and eggs, but it doesn't save you any money on the feed bills. People say it does, but it doesn't.

August To-Do List

Inspired by a similar list in Jull's Successful Poultry Management, McGraw-Hill, 1943.

• Seek better paying egg markets (egg prices rise at this time of year).
• House early pullets (move them into permanent quarters before they start layign).
• Replace litter.
• Cull molters.
• Isolate any sick chickens.
• Provide additional ventilation.
• Gather eggs more frequently in warm weather.
• Cull weak or unthrifty individuals.