Yesterday was Moving Day for the Hens!
It was the first move of the season, after a long winter on sacrifice pasture.
We don't move our hens during the winter time because we don't have enough pasture for them to work through when the grass isn't growing.
We designate a "sacrifice" paddock and park the mobile coop there. By Springtime EVERYONE is ready to move them onto greener pastures!
left: sacrifice paddock after 5 months of use. right: sacrifice paddock after 6 weeks of use
We will give the surface of the worst sacrifice paddock a light till to break it up and put down some seed to speed up the recovery process for the pasture.
This was the first time that we had TWO coops to move! In February we built a new mobile coop and brought in 150 new laying hens to create a second flock.
Our intention is to move both coops on the same morning...but SOMEONE (we think it was the humans) forgot to change the timer on the automatic door of the QE2. When we arrived to move the hens they were already out on pasture! So, we moved the Queen Mary on Monday and the QE2 this morning.
Turns out that it was just as well because the Queen Mary's move was a bit hairy.
All that time in one place had created a lot of mud and it took a lot of time to get the jacks dug out, not to mention some adrenaline-inducing moments when we pulled it forward and it sunk on one side and tilted way too far for comfort. (no photos of that - just the memory seared into our panic-stricken hearts)
The Queen Mary sits on an old boat trailer which passed the end of its useful life a while back.
We have a plan to unbolt the coop from that trailer and transfer it to a new one, but somehow we keep using up all of the hours in each day.
The night before moving day we delay the time that the automatic door opens on each coop. The next morning we pull up all of the electric fence, hook the coop up to our truck and pull it to the next paddock.
Left: The Queen Mary on new pasture Right: The QE2 on new pasture
Then we put all of the fencing back up, move all of the feed and water troughs and open the door to let the girls out to graze fresh pasture.
It's always fun watching them wade through fresh green grass!
From now until the end of October we will move both coops weekly to keep the hens on quality pasture and allow the pasture the time it needs to grow back.
By rotationally grazing the pasture and then letting it grow back, we are building organic matter and storing carbon in the soil.
The birds are happier out scratching for bugs and eating the vegetation, their eggs are delicious and higher in nutrition, and the planet is healthier because of the carbon we are storing!
Everyone wins when you eat pasture-raised eggs!
Till next week...
Cheers,
Jennifer & Brian