Pasturing chicks

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Pasturing chicks

The sooner your chicks get out on pasture, the healthier they'll be...as long as they don't die of exposure or get eaten by something. Most large-scale pastured poultry producers don't have the time to baby chicks on pasture, so they keep their flocks inside for their first one or even two months of life (up to two thirds of the entire life span of a Cornish cross broiler!) But I figure if the weather's warm and dry and I place the flock right outside our back door, we can get away with pasturing chicks as early as one or two weeks old.

Chick in grass This spring, we made little enclosures to keep the flock within bounds, but with this last batch we opted to let the youngsters entirely free range from their first day outside. We've located the outdoor brooder in a shady spot between a peach tree and a row of raspberries, and the chicks naturally gravitate to these sheltered zones for their first week or two in the great outdoors.

They travel as a flock, all fly-running after the leader when he or she decides to move to a new patch of earth, or to scurry back inside. Watching the chicks' antics as we eat dinner feels like we've turned on cartoons.

Each evening, I go out and shut the chicks in just to be on the safe side. They make quite a mess even with their automatic feeder, so I don't want to attract rats (who might stay to dine on my baby birds). And for the first couple of days I do have to spend a few minutes helping chicks find the brooder door when they get lost five feet away --- the alarm peeps are easy to hear from inside.

The only other thing I do regularly is to keep an eye on the weather forecast and make a judgement call about whether the day is fine enough for chicks to spend outdoors. It's easy for a chick in the fluffball stage to get wet and chilled, so if it's going to be extremely stormy, I just leave them shut up for the day. That said, by the time they're even two weeks old, our chicks are bright enough to stay inside during downpours since we've selected for good foraging breeds.

You may have other problems to contend with if your pets aren't as well-trained as ours, if you don't have a sheltered area to protect the flock during their youth, or if you're raising a dumber breed. But I highly recommend figuring out how to get your flock out on pasture early regardless --- they'll be healthier, and so will you when you eat the higher quality meat and eggs.