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The Modern HomesteadThe Modern Homestead
  • Home
  • Overview
    • The Integrated Homestead
    • Life on the Homestead
  • Grow It!
    • Soil Care
    • Composting
    • The Homestead Garden – And More
    • Fungi
    • Greenhouse
    • Homestead Tools
  • Poultry
    • Poultry Overview
    • Feeding The Flock
    • Housing the Flock
    • Ranging the Flock
    • Breeding the Flock
    • Dealing With Predators
    • Butchering Poultry
    • Producing for Small Markets
    • Poultry Miscellaneous
    • Livestock
  • Resources
    • Downloads
    • Harvey’s Book
    • Harvey’s Presentations
    • The Homesteader’s Resources
    • In the Kitchen
  • Back Porch
  • Contact Us

Ranging the Flock

Home » Poultry » Ranging the Flock

Ranging the Flock

The best thing we can do for our poulry flocks is: Put them on pasture! Wild relatives of our domesticated fowl roam freely in the outdoors, enjoying freedom of movement, sunshine, and opportunity to forage natural foods. They are not tightly confined to a crowded, artificial environment, dependent exclusively on artificial foods from our hands.

Even if you don’t have pasture to offer your birds, you may well be able to rotate them over your lawns. They will be grateful, and will do much better than if confined to a static, denuded chicken run accumulating an ever-greater load of poultry droppings.

Not everyone who pastures his birds uses electric net fencing, but for me, it is an essential management tool. If you do pasture your birds in electronetted pasture areas, you will need pasture shelters. There is lots of information on both subjects in this section.

Please note: In the past, I called this topic “Pasturing the Flock.” But it is more accurate to talk of “ranging the flock,” since it may be possible in your situation to range your birds in brushy or wooded areas. If you are using electric net fencing, you will find it more difficult to set up the fence in such environments. Be assured it can be done: For years, I periodically netted about a third acre in my bit of woodlot, which my birds explored and foraged in happily. Of course, a mobile shelter is likely to be practical only on a pasture (or lawn).

Table of Contents for Ranging the Flock Section

  • Managing Poultry on Pasture with Electronet
  • Designing a Pasture Shelter
  • Building a Pasture Shelter
  • Going Mobile at the Small End of the Scale
  • Mobile Shelter: The Classic Polyface Model
  • Chicken Tractor: A Tribute to Andy Lee
  • Pasture Shelters for Market Layer Flocks
  • A Drown-Proof Waterer

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