Courtney Brooke: Hey Andy!

Andy: Hey!

Courtney Brooke: What are you doing?

Andy: Well I’m moving the chickens to a fresh spot.

Courtney Brooke: Oh; good morning chickens! Well, that’s quite a lot of chickens. How many chickens is that?

Andy: Well, we started with a little over a hundred we’ve lost a handful of them so we’re probably around 96.

Courtney Brooke: Wow; fancy chicken house!

Design

Andy: Yeah, this came from a design from Rrobert Plummenden. He’s got a book on chicken shelters and raising pastured poultry.

I did some modifications to it, but the frame is a pretty basic wooden box. It’s a 8×8 wooden square with two cattle panels that you can get from tractor supply -or somewhere like that; bent over a hoop. This one’s maybe a little easier to see…bent over in a hoop and stapled to the side. Then we also took another cattle panel and cut it in half. So, three cattle panels makes this whole chicken shelter closable.

Then four or five 2 x4’s to make the frame. Next, you round the angle braces and all that. Then, the moving part of it, and this is a recent modification, we’ve got some wheels on the end of some metal pieces that then hook on. So it picks it up off the ground now. Leverages it so that then you’re able to lower it once you get it into place. The chickens, theoretically, can’t get out. This was in an uneven spot.

Moving the Coops

Courtney Brooke: So, then one person can move this ?

Andy: Yes, one person mostly can move it. If you have to go uphill (we usually like to start them like that)  get everybody on board to move them uphill. Then, pull them down. But mostly one person can do it.

Courtney Brooke: Wow…

Andy: First, we got to get the feeders and the water. It’s a little bit different than the Joel Salatin style pens. The main thing that I like better about it is that his pens are like ….they stop here.

Courtney Brooke: Right.

Andy: They’re low pens and this one I can get in and out, especially when the chickens get bigger. We actually won’t close it up at night once they get bigger. When they get bigger and we pen them in there before slaughter it’s it just feels better than having them all penned into a low shelter. They got more space in there.

Courtney Brooke: Good morning chickens

Andy: Slowly pull it because there’s always one or two that like to peck at the wheel and see what’s going on. Not quite yet with the program. I haven’t electrified the netting yet either so they’re all getting out.

Courtney Brooke:  So how often do you move it?

Andy: When they’re this small ideally we move it once a day. Once a day or else you get manure build up in one area. We’re trying to spread the manure across the entire field.

<Dog barking>

Courtney Brooke: That’s how you protect the chickens…with the dog.

Andy: All right so then we lower it and the wheels. Old lawn mower wheels really work the best and then you got to be a little crafty to figure out some piece of metal..something that’s laying around the farm. This one I call the ultra light… it’s not necessarily designed to keep them in. It’s more designed for shade and keeping feed dry. So that one is really easy to move.

Raising Broiler Chickens since 2006

Courtney Brooke:  How long have you been farming chickens?

Andy: I’ve been farming chickens…hmm…I actually did our first batch in this field in one of these shelters 15 years ag. I’ve been raising broiler chickens as few as 50 a year, as many as 150 a year, since 2006. I went to a workshop down the road on raising pastured poultry. I picked up this book that had a design in it. Then, I ran with it ….

Courtney Brooke:   All right, thanks for showing it to us!

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Transcription from the Chicken Wrangling

NikiAnne:

We’re out here at the horn of plenty field with nutter, the great pyrenees and a bunch of chicks.
Broiler chicks.
And some wranglers.
So that these chicks are protected from the hawks.
They obviously have a mind of their own and 
it’s a little chaotic.
But we’re getting…..

Jonathan:
Pretend like you’re a fence.
All right.
If all the kids kind of stand over here and like so they don’t go past this way.
Yeah and then andy’s creating a funnel.
So i’m just standing like a big line or actually all these people just stand in a big line so as the chickens come they’ll be scared to go in.

Okay  

NikiAnne:
Come on chicks. The point is to protect you.
There you go here you go here you go.
Well done team.

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Living in Hawk Holler neighborhood presents its own set of challenges. With only one house and two people living here so far, the main inhabitants are the four-legged, winged ones, and creepy crawly varieties. What to do when these creatures begin to multiply and take over the gardens, threaten the chickens and ducks, leaving little to eat from our hard work?

My answer was to call on the first domesticated animal for help. Yep. The dog. A dog owner for most of my life and experienced with several working breeds, I chose the English Shepherd, also known as the Farm Collie. This breed, familiar from the 1800’s to the 1940’s, began to disappear along with small farms during the industrial farming revolution. Still a rare breed, and one that fortunately is not AKC registered, it is being re-established by some extremely savvy small farmers.

Aggie the farm dog at Hawk Holler has in her heritage hundreds of years of service including hunting, vermin eradicating, herding, and guarding the flock. A few of her chores are: keeping the deer and others out of the garden, rounding up chickens and ducks when needed, and helping with vole, mouse and rat control. She keeps critters out of the chicken house, sniffs out hidden eggs and brings them to me (yes in her mouth, whole), and brings in firewood. And her favorite: watching over the baby chicks and ducklings. She’s one smart dog who took a few years of commitment to train, but is so worth the effort.

 Rae Jean has always lived on the edge one way or another. For the last seven years it has been at Earthaven. Along with raising heritage chickens, ducks, veggies and herbs she designs and creates knitting patterns.

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