I love chickens in general, and our hens in particular. They’re beautiful, zany, intelligent birds. (Although they can be daft at times.) Unlike many ne’er-do-well members of our own species, laying hens actually work for a living. So there's that too.
But sometimes, folks who write about the joys of chicken keeping view the world through glasses that are a bit too rose-colored.
Take a recent article I read about chicken tractors. These are pens or coops that often are equipped with wheels and can be easily relocated, so chickens can move around without free ranging. In addition to our stationary coop and pen, we have a collapsible pen that we use as a chicken tractor when we want to give “the girls” a change of scenery, or because we need to access their regular digs for cleanups and repairs.
“The chickens get exercise, lots of fresh air and fresh food, as well as protection from predators, sun and bad weather,” the article explained. “It’s a nice, mostly stress-free existence” and the chickens provide “a ready-made fertilizer for backyards or gardens. As the chicken tractor is rotated from spot to spot, the birds’ manure enriches the soil, and as their claws scratch for bugs, they till the soil.”
Sounds idyllic, n’est-çe pas?
Well, yes and no.
The article’s claims are true, as far as they go. But the story failed to provide what the late Paul Harvey famously described as “the rest of the story.”
To say that chickens love to scratch and peck is an understatement. They are positively obsessive about clawing at whatever is under foot, and incredibly efficient at doing so. With its dinosaur-like feet and zealous fixation, a chicken may well be the ultimate tilling machine, at least in the low horsepower division.
The upshot is that if you place a chicken tractor on a patch of lawn, the occupants will decimate it in no time flat as they search for worms and bugs. And when I say no time, I mean just that.
Instantly.
So while it’s true that using a chicken tractor will put your hens to work fertilizing and tilling a fallow garden patch, the end result won’t be pretty if the newbie chicken owner moves a tractor to a well-manicured backyard that sports grass or other lush greenery.
His chickens will be positively jubilant. He, on the other hand, may coin a few new expletives.
Instantly.
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