This morning, I had to run out and pick up chicken feed for the chickens we have. There are roughly 38 chickens running around our still mostly snow-covered yard. It is just not possible to let chickens here live solely off of natural forage.
The snowy and freezing cold New England winters ensure that there are between four and six months in which chickens would be unable to find any food, much less enough nutrition to keep them healthy. Furthermore, with 38 chickens and three turkeys, at present, we don't have enough land to provide them with adequate forage.
We keep them in three small coops, locked up at night for protection against the plentiful predators that hunt the forests around our house. The coops are fenced in, but the chickens consider the five foot high fence to be more of a suggestion than an actual rule. They fly over it at will and can be found throghout the cleared area of our property at any given time during the day. They avoid the forested part for the most part, except for the small portion of the penned-in area which is forested.
keeping 38 chickens full time is too many for our needs and our space. We'd like to keep about a dozen adults or so for the most part, but I didn't butcher enough of them before winter set in and had no appetite to pluck and clean chickens in temperatures so cold that you can barely feel your fingers.
Now, I've got to go repair the hinges on the door of one of the coops before it gets warm enough for predators to start hunting in earnest again. last year, the coop that needs repairing survived several attempts by a black bear to rip it apart and get the chickens from inside during the night. With the shape the hinges are in now, however, I don't think it would keep the bear out. So, it's off to fix them.
