Chicken farming and meat quality

[Pan]

I've been around chickens when they go "broody" and they do seem to like close quarters and quiet dark.[...]

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Yes, after laying eggs, the hens sit on them until they hatch. That was the one time when hens would stay in the coop during the day, in my experience, though they were happy to lay the eggs in tall grass, too (whereupon we would take the eggs and hen to the coop, because some of the eggs were always taken and eaten and others were usually sold).

[DerekW]

The mobile pen seems to answer most of the garden destruction concerns, at least for home-scale 'production'. We picked up the ChickenTractor book and might try the method this year. Tractor as in 'dragged' not as in 'you need a tractor'. Most of the pen designs I've seen are moved by person power - think large wheelbarrow. Moving the pen from spot to spot on a regular basis is supposed to both till the soil and deposit a moderate quantity of fertiliser.