Balfour method of keeping chickens

[bivol]

hi!

red this method of keeping chickens in john seymour’s book The complete guide to self-sufficiency.

this method is devised as opposed to the traditional method of backyard chicken keeping, where the birds run in the back yard until they eat every insect and plant, and live on barren land.

so, you have a chicken coop with a yard. you fence off the yard into three to four parts. in the first, let’s call it area A, is the coop and some straw,with dust bath, and in the rest two (B and C) to three parts is the grass growing. you let the chickens part B until they eat down the grass, and when they do, you shut B, and let them graze C until B recovers.

chickens love to scratch, and they use the straw in part A, so they don’t damage the grass.

chickens need protein, so my suggestion would be: why not, besides the straw, put also a pile of manure, best cow manure, and keep it moist, so it attracts flies? they are eaten by the chickens, and their larvae are, too. the chickens have some fun, get the protein, and and for free, too.

[cousin jack]

I usually throw in a shovel or two of fresh horse droppings to my chickens every day, they really come running for it, I also kill two birds with one stone as it were, because when I worm the horse it worms the chickens as well. Also in the summer, or should it be called the rainy season, I hang a rabbit carcase or sheeps head on the fence, the resulting maggots fall to the floor and are usually snapped up pretty soon. My wife sells the eggs at the school gate, all the mothers tell her our eggs are wonderful, the best they’ve ever had, she knows not to tell them about what I feed them, otherwise I think oue sales would drop big time.

[bivol]

these care good ideas!

maybe put a manure dump besides the chicken house, and have an option to fence it and let the chickens dig on it.

[Author]

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