Becoming more independent of purchased inputs is always a work in progress. Simply to make a start with a home flock is to decrease our dependence on purchased eggs and poultry, even if we are buying all our feed for the flock. Practicing more natural husbandry will likely eliminate purchased medications entirely. However, most of us, especially at the beginning, will be heavily dependent on resources brought in from outside. Honest recognition of the nature and extent of our dependencies, rather than an illusion of independence, is more likely to provide the incentive to climb the necessary learning curves toward closing the circle on the homestead or farm, while we have the chance.
I am keenly aware of my dependence on purchased resources in three areas, and constantly try to answer the question of how my husbandry would have to change in the event of an economic calamity, personal or systemic, that prevented bringing in resources from outside.

Purchased stock: Every year I buy in several batches of hatchlings—chicks, ducklings, goslings—and occasionally adult birds, such as guineas. This is the dependency that concerns me the least, since use of natural mothers to produce new stock, discussed in detail in chapter 27, is a constant and fundamental part of my husbandry. With every species I raise, I hatch out at least some of my new stock using broody females who retain the instinct to incubate and to nurture young— I am thoroughly seasoned in the rhythms and requirements involved. Being able to buy stock from elsewhere is convenient, to be sure. However, if necessary, from one season to the next I could be totally independent of purchased hatchlings, using the services of proven broody hens (and ducks and geese).

Of course, in such an eventuality I would have to be concerned about maintaining productive capacity and genetic diversity in my birds. That is why the principles of conservation and improvement breeding (discussed in chapter 25) are so important.

Purchased feeds: Even though I make my own feeds, I am heavily dependent on the purchased primary ingredients—small grains, corn, peas, a few supplements—to feed my flock. It is my keen awareness of this dependency, as much as a concern about feed quality, that underlies my compulsion to increase the portion of my birds’ diets supplied by home resources, and even to cultivate “recomposer” species to help feed the flock using conversion of organic “wastes.” Indeed, you could say that almost every strategy in this book is about finding ways to minimize purchased feeds. Whatever crisis emerges to limit the ease of bringing in feeds from outside, dealing with it would simply be an extension of what I’m already doing to feed my flock on my own.

Electric net fencing: I rely heavily on electric net fencing and energizers, high-tech inputs I cannot duplicate on my own. This is the area in which I am most uncertain what management changes would be required should our agricultural supply system ever falter. I certainly do not envision closely confining my flock in any circumstances, but can imagine in a post-electronet situation making more use of “day ranging” and “compost runs.” The big challenge would be protection from predators. Ranging strategies would key on the fact that most wild predators are nocturnal. A major exception is dogs, whose diurnal predatory tendencies are another matter entirely.

Excerpted with permission from The Small-Scale Poultry Flock by Harvey Ussery.