Much has been written about the virtues of adding pastured poultry to the market vegetable farm. Most of it has been focused on raising the poultry for meat, which can add an undesirable layer of government regulations to your work. For the small farm, the burdens that come with meat processing can easily outweigh any financial benefits gained. A small flock of laying hens, on the other hand, integrates easily into your existing vegetable business. Hens more than pay their way by improving the health of your soil, reducing weed and insect problems, and increasing the visibility of your farm. And that’s without even counting the income brought in from selling the eggs!

When my wife and I started our farm two years ago, we envisioned the diversified small family farms so common 100 years ago. These farms often sustained themselves, as outputs from one area of the farm became inputs for another. For most organic farmers the inputs, in the form of composted manure and other soil amendments, are purchased off-farm and come at considerable expense. We were going to grow organically, but even more important to us was the idea of sustainability. We wanted the farm to provide for itself over the long term, without degrading our soil in the process. Taking a cue from the farmers of old, we decided from the beginning that livestock needed to be part of the equation. Specifically, chickens looked like the place to start.

Here’s what we had when we started: a 13-acre parcel with about 1,000 feet of river frontage, a very deep and reliable well, and our home. The land was shaped like a piece of pie, with the river for the crust, and much of it was covered with fescue and brambles. The area near the river was very sandy and vulnerable to flooding, and a moderately steep slope led up to a relatively flat section at the “point” of the pie slice. This is where we decided to begin. There, we had almost exactly an acre, perfectly square with a thick covering of fescue. I quickly devised a garden plan that took into account seasonal planting, watering habits, crop rotation, and the chickens. I took the square and divided it into quadrants. Starting at the upper left and going clockwise, I assigned one to cool-weather plantings, one to summer plantings, one to a couple of milk goats we planned to get, and one to the chickens. Each year, the quadrants would rotate counter-clockwise. We still haven’t gotten the goats, but going into our third year the system has worked great.

There are many benefits to having the chickens directly in the garden. With my rotation plan, the hens have a quarter-acre the year before it is used for cool-weather plants. During that year, they dig up the entire parcel, eating all of the grass, weeds, seeds, bugs, and grubs they find. What might look like a hay field in spring turns into bare dirt by winter. The hens fertilize as they go, and at the end of the year there is a marked improvement in soil quality. The improvements are enough to grow quality vegetables in that space for the two years that follow without having to add further soil amendments. Finally, it’s just efficient to have the hens and the vegetables close together, so you can do your farm chores all in the same place.

I couldn’t find any rule of thumb for how many chickens you could pasture per quarter acre, but a hundred seemed like a good number, and that’s what we’ve stuck with. There is certainly room for more, but then they’d clean out the pasture well before the year was out. We needed a place for them to sleep and lay their eggs, so we designed and built a mini-barn and placed it right in the center of the acre. The barn is square, sixteen feet to a side. We put 4×4 beams on the ground (to act as skids should we decide to move it in the future), 2×4 floor joists across those, and plywood sheets for the floor. The outer wall framing is 2×4 boards and are four feet high, skinned with plywood sheets. Curved PVC pipe make up the “rafters”, with a center height of eight feet, and it is skinned with a PVC tarp for the roof. With a white tarp, the whole contraption looks like an over-sized covered wagon from the prairie days. There is about a one-foot strip above the plywood walls and below where the tarp is attached that acts as a window – it’s covered with chicken wire and provides excellent air flow. The tarp can be dropped in bad weather, to cover the windows and keep the inside warm and dry. The hens get half the space, one quarter is used for feed and tool storage, and the other quarter is reserved for the future goats (though we’ve used it as a chick brooder in the meantime). The hen’s half has nesting boxes along the outer walls (made from 1×12 boards) and a system of hanging 1 1/2 inch dowels for roosts. A double door leads out, and each of the other quarters has its own single door. We use pine shavings as bedding for the hens. When it’s time to clean, the roosts and nesting boxes come out, the used shavings get shoveled out into the yard (where the hens proceed to spread them out), and the interior can be hosed down. The whole contraption was more expensive than it strictly had to be, but we did build it ourselves and it will last a long time. The roof tarp needs to get replaced every so often, but as a whole it has worked well. The coop is far smaller than any book will say you need for 100 hens, but since they only use it for sleeping and laying, there is really plenty of room.

Fencing and feed
We needed some kind of fencing, both to keep the hens in and the predators out. Dogs will probably be your most dangerous predator, no matter where you live. In my area, people regularly leave their dogs free to roam the countryside, and when their instincts take over, a pack of neighborhood pets can deplete a flock in 15 minutes. In addition, given the rotation system, the fencing had to be portable. Andy Lee’s useful book “Day Range Poultry” recommended electrified poultry netting, and a fencing supply store near me was able to order two rolls at a price cheaper than the manufacturer quoted. The netting is four feet high with plastic vertical wires and horizontal wires with embedded metal strips. The holes are smaller near the bottom of the fence and increase as you move up. Every 12 feet or so, a post is woven right into the fence, and a pronged bottom makes it easy to push into the ground. It’s powered with a regular electric fence charger, either solar or plug-in. The two rolls, about 350 feet total, completely enclose the quarter acre, and I’ve moved it by myself from one area to another in less than an hour. Since the fence went up, the loss to dogs has dropped to zero.

Food and water are the other resources the hens will need. Even though they get much of their food from the pasture, we supplement with commercial feed and mixed grains. There are many feeds out there, but we went with a quality non-medicated plant-based feed from Purina and a mix of scratch grains from a relatively nearby mill. Each month, our 100 chickens consume 300 pounds of each, or 12 bags altogether. We mix them 1-1 in four metal trash cans we keep in one room of the coop and feed them two 3-gallon pails of food a day. The monthly feed bill runs about $100. We went through several watering systems before we found one that worked. First, we used five-gallon waterers from the feed store, but they were a huge pain to fill, and they needed to be filled every day. We then tried a low-pressure watering system that had five plastic founts, but being exposed to the elements, they didn’t last long. Finally, I made my own using parts from the hardware store for about $25. I got a 50-gallon food-grade plastic drum from a fellow down the road, a water spigot that screwed right into a threaded hole in the drum, a “float valve” for a horse trough that I clamped onto the side of a small rubber feed pan (about 14″ across and 4″ high), and a small length of hose to connect them. I set the drum sideways on a wooden spool (free for the taking at the local electric co-op) and the rubber pan on the ground. Now, watering the flock is an every-other-week event, easily accomplished by filling the drum with the garden hose.

Now that all the resources are in place, it’s time for the chickens. There are nearly as many breeds as there are tomato varieties. We grow heirloom vegetables, and it seemed only natural that we should raise heritage breeds of hens. Our farm is in the number one chicken-growing county in the number one chicken-growing state, so modern high-producing white birds (with breed names like AR-542) are cheap and plentiful, but we got our old-time varieties mailed to us from the Murray McMurray hatchery in Iowa, which specializes in heritage breeds of poultry. The baby chicks get mailed the day they are hatched and arrive a day or two later, usually none the worse for wear. To give our eggs as much variety as possible, we ordered variety “grab-bags” with a heavy leaning toward the Americauna breed, which lays eggs with pastel green and blue tints. The mix of breeds also gave us a wide variety of chicken personalities and appearances, which certainly keeps the enterprise from getting dull.

Buying chicks
The baby chicks need special care. There are many resources available on brooding chicks, so I won’t get into it here. Expensive equipment is not required; all that’s needed is a red heat bulb, quart-sized chick waterers, a food dish, and some space. We’ve used a child’s wading pool, our spare bathtub, and now a room in the coop for the task. Six months will go by before the first egg, and it might be up to ten before they are all laying. In the meantime, they’ll be helping you improve your soil.

Buying heritage breeds gave us a very valuable bonus: intelligence. There are many “stupid chicken” jokes, and they’re all true if you talk of modern commercial breeds. The old breeds haven’t had their instincts bred out of them, and that’s helped considerably. The hens are alert and active, have a social life, and are fully aware of their surroundings. The few roosters we have (even if you order all hens, you’ll get about five roosters per hundred chicks – sexing hatchlings is very hard!) get along well together and cooperate in keeping the flock out of harm. Hawks are our most troublesome predator remaining, but at the first sight of a hawk the roosters raise the alarm and actively herd the hens into the safety of the henhouse. This was at first instinctual, but the roosters learned quickly exactly what to watch for and how to work together to get the hens to shelter. The first winter we lost a dozen birds to hawks, but this past winter we only lost two, despite near daily hawk assaults.

During that first winter, we also added four young guinea fowl to the flock. We got them at a local auction for next to nothing and immediately put them in with the chickens. Doing so seemed to calm them down, as they are not near as loud and screechy as guineas are supposed to be. They sleep with the chickens and forage with the chickens. They have no trouble flying over the fence, but they prefer to be with the other birds. The advantage has been their vigilance. They spot hawks well before the roosters and raise the alarm that much sooner. They stand their ground, too, and try to scare the hawks away. It usually works, but we did lose one guinea last spring who fought to defend the rest of the flock. (The guineas deserve one digression. As I mentioned, they have no trouble flying over the fence when they have a mind to, and sometimes they like to explore the grounds. They’ve learned which door we use to go in and out of our house, for example. On those rare days where we get to sleep in a little, if they get tired of waiting for us to fill the feeders, they come up to the front door and knock with their beaks until we answer it!)

Egg laws vary by state, so check with your ag department before selling eggs, even directly off the farm. I had to take an egg handling course and pass a test before I was licensed to sell eggs, and the labels have to meet strict rules. It was an easy process (the inspector even came to my day job to give me the class, and there was no charge), but had I not followed it, the fines would have been large. In addition to labeling, we have to wash and pack the eggs just so. We bought a small egg washer that holds about a hundred eggs and hooks up to a small air compressor. Our egg cartons come from (where else?) eggcartons.com and are reusable and quite distinctive (the dozen cartons are arranged 3×4, the half-dozen cartons are round, and both are clear durable plastic), and we print our labels from the home computer. When they are all laying, 100 hens will produce about five dozen eggs a day. We sell all of our eggs through a local natural foods coop, to an amazing demand. There are several other brands of eggs at the coop, but ours are the ones people prefer. In fact, a few weeks ago when the hens were going through their annual molt and egg production was low, coop customers actually bribed the staff to call them when I made my delivery. Many customers who didn’t know about our vegetables have since become farm regulars, so just having the eggs on the shelf has increased our local exposure.

The benefits are many, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the downsides to raising laying hens. They add year-round day-in day-out responsibilities that vegetables do not. It’s OK to leave your greens to get away for a couple days, but animals require daily care. Their environment must be cleaned every so often to remain sanitary, and it’s easy to let that job slide longer that it really should. Chickens are not naturally nice birds; they are carnivores, and cannibals at that. Even in the most comfortable stress-free conditions, their behavior may once in a while turn your stomach. Finally, they do have to be kept separate from your growing vegetables, as their digging and feeding will damage your plants and their manure can contaminate your produce.

Despite those downsides, integrating the flock of laying hens into our operation has been extremely rewarding. The income the eggs provide is enough to cover the feed, packaging, and other incidental expenses, but the real value is in their improvements to the soil and the intangible benefits: having company as we work in the garden and knowing that we’re that much closer to our goal of a truly sustainable small family farm.

Eric Wagoner is the owner of Boann’s Banks Farm in Athens, Georgia. He has created a special page of photos of his laying hens on his web site:http://www.boannsbanks.com/gfm/pasturedhens/