The hardest part of raising a flock of chickens is finding a proper balance between the chickens’ indoor and outdoor activities. The chicken coop is an important fixture in your poultry farm, since this is where all of your little darlings lay their eggs, feed, sleep, and pretty much do everything it is that they do indoors. But while all this is well and good, you need to have a decent chicken range for your feathered pets where they could breathe and get plenty of sunlight.
This is where the hard part really starts. The size of your chicken range will depend on a lot of factors, some of which you have very little control over. First and foremost, how many chickens do you plan on having? Having a twenty-bird barn isn’t too much of a problem to handle, but once you hit the hundreds, you’ll need plenty of space for them to roam around. And chickens need a lot of ventilation. Keep them in stuffy conditions like battery coops, and you could very well be killing off your chickens.
If you have a decent mind for business and planning, though, there’s a good possibility that you have an idea of how many birds you’ll be housing. That’s good; it’s a start. Now you need to see what kind of chicken range you want to build for your animals.
There are several styles of chicken ranges that you can build, and each one has its own merits. The simplest is nothing more than a modification of the chicken coop, transforming it into an open-air coop. The benefits are obvious – the coop makes sure that the chickens aren’t holed up in a space that’s stuffy and damp, and it serves as an extension of the grazing area surrounding the coop.
The disadvantages are just as obvious, though. This coop leaves your chickens open to the forces of nature. While expert hatchers say that fresh-air chickens are happy even during winter, it isn’t advisable to test your animals against biting cold. Since you’re confining them to a small space, this method is probably best for chickens no more than twenty.
Another kind of chicken range involves a technique known as yarding. This is probably the most basic form of chicken grazing there is, as it basically involves a patch of land with a pasture and a fence. While yarding provides both sunlight and greenery to the chickens, it is an unsatisfactory method of chicken ranging.
Chicken feeds and waste will render the land barren and turn it into a breeding ground of parasites and bacteria harmful to your chickens. A movable form of yarding called management intensive rotational grazing shifts the grazing areas of your flock regularly, ensuring that you do not run out of viable pasture.
What is widely considered to be the best type of chicken range involves the free range methodology. This is suitable for large-scale chicken grazing since there is hardly any containment and the chickens are free to roam around a wide expanse of pasture as much as they please.
For commercial chicken farmers, this method yields a marginally more nutritious produce of eggs and better-tasting chicken meat. The downside with this method of poultry farming is the higher risk of infection. For example, eggs from free-range chickens are more likely to infect individuals with salmonella.
Whatever method of chicken ranging you plan to implement, it’s best to remember one thing: your goal is to make your chickens as comfortable as possible while working within your means So before you start buying chickens, draw up a plan and figure out how you plan on getting your birds to graze with your current resources.
