Cows and crops are easy. My Forever and I have been around them our whole lives. Chickens, not so much. After we decided that we wanted to start sharing our beef at the farmers market directly to consumers, we decided we might as well have eggs as well. We found a converted stock trailer that was made into a chicken coop, complete with 35 chickens that hadn’t started laying yet, but almost. My Forever went and got it one night while I was at a meeting and we were in the chicken business!
Our chickens are free-range or pasture raised, whatever you want to call it. Their home has a photosynthetic eye on it that opens the chicken door automatically at dawn and closes at dusk. During that time, they go anywhere they want, eat anything they want and do what they want. It’s amazing the instinct they have to go roam and explore, but they come back to their home in plenty of time to not get locked out. Chickens are huge prey animals. They aren’t very big so are easy for just about anything to have for lunch or dinner.
Because we want our chickens to have the freedom to go anywhere and eat anything and do all things chickens should be able to do, we lose a lot more than those that are confined, of course. However, we take steps to protect them as much as we can. We give them multiple places they can take shelter quickly. We give them multiple spots to access water. We put up tin pans that bang in the wind and reflect the sun, hoping to keep away hawks and other flying predators.
Our latest attempt to keep them as safe as possible is to get a LGD, large guard dog. Poncho is a 4 year old mix of Great Pyrenees, Anatolian and Akbash. These breeds are all designed to keep animals safe. It is in his instincts to protect and guard. We haven’t had him very long (May 2018). Since we didn’t have him as a puppy, we didn’t get to train him. Some things we love, some things we wish he was more aggressive about. For instance, he appears to be much more active at night, and sleeps a lot during the day when the chickens are out, when the hawks seem to take them. The bottom of our deck isn’t covered so we used to have a lot of possums and other creatures that would live under there. Matt would never be home to take care of them so they would continue eating my chickens. Since Poncho has arrived on the scene, I haven’t seen any possums, raccoons, rabbits, etc. We think he does an excellent job of keeping the land animals away from the chickens, but we think there is still a hawk of some sort that snatches a few chicks here and there.
I come home before My Forever, on occasion. I don’t like coming home to a dark house by myself. We live in the country so would be a long time for help to get here if needed. With Poncho here I’m confident that he will protect me. Even with the limited amount of time that we’ve had him, we’ve had multiple people tell us they stopped by and he barked, growled and guarded the house! So excited to hear that! I feel so much safer being here by myself now!
Back to the chickens. We have gotten used to having fresh eggs available to us. Having eggs from chickens that get to act the way chickens should act, is SO amazing and I love it. So even though we are new to the chicken business, we are loving it and I foresee us having chickens for a very long time to come!
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