Chickens in the system

What a hen brings to a design

A hen in a cage gives eggs and asks for feed. The same hen in a garden does a dozen other things, whether the gardener plans for them or not. She scratches the surface of the ground, pulls out seedlings and roots, eats insects, larvae, snails, seeds and kitchen scraps, and drops manure wherever she goes. Each of these behaviours can be a help or a nuisance. Which one it becomes depends on where she is, for how long, and what grows there.

This is why the chicken has become the standard example of permaculture thinking. Bill Mollison used it in 1983 to show that an element is defined by its needs, its outputs and its nature, and that design lies in the connections between elements; the page on element analysis explains the method, and produce no waste tells his story. This page asks the practical question: where do hens fit, and how does one begin?

How hens work in the system

Scratching. Hens rake the surface of the soil with their feet, looking for food. On a bed after harvest, a short stay clears weeds, eats exposed larvae and works old mulch into the surface. Left too long in one place, the same scratching strips the ground bare and compacts it.

Pest control and clean-up. Under fruit trees, hens eat fallen fruit and the larvae that leave it to pupate in the soil. In a food forest they patrol the floor between the shrubs. After the harvest is the best moment to let them into an orchard, when fallen fruit is plentiful and there is nothing left to peck at on low branches.

Manure. Chicken manure is rich in nitrogen. Spread lightly by the birds themselves under trees, it feeds the soil. Collected from the house with straw or leaves, it is a strong starter for compost. Hens also turn a heap gladly, and the warmth and insects in it are food for them.

Eggs, meat and more. Eggs are the obvious yield. In his parable Mollison also counted feathers and manure, and he argued that a well placed chicken can raise the yield of a glasshouse and save work in it.

How to begin

1. Start small. A few hens are enough to learn what they do to a particular piece of ground. Ask the local veterinary or agricultural office what applies to keeping poultry where you live.
2. Place the house in zone 2. Hens need daily care: water, feed, eggs, closing the door at dusk. In the zone plan they belong close enough to be visited every day, ideally between the kitchen and the orchard, so scraps go one way and manure the other.
3. Plan the ground in parts. Divide the outdoor area into several runs, or use a movable pen, the chicken tractor popularised by Andy Lee in 1994. Hens stay on one part while the others rest and regrow.
4. Protect what is young. Seedlings, freshly mulched beds and the root zone of newly planted trees need a fence or a ring of wire until they are established.
5. Build for the night. A secure house with perches, nest boxes and a dry floor, closed every evening, is the single most important protection against predators.

Welfare is part of the design

The European Food Safety Authority lists the inability to forage, explore and perform comfort behaviour among the most relevant welfare problems of laying hens, and recommends enough space for birds to behave normally, elevated places to rest and covered outdoor areas. A permaculture design can meet these needs almost by default: loose ground to scratch, a dry corner of fine soil or ash for dust bathing, shade under shrubs, shelter from rain and wind, and perches at night. A hen that can behave like a hen is also the one that does the work the design asks of her. Predators remain a real loss: in the Oregon study below, more than a third of the laying hens were taken during one winter despite electric netting.

An example from the world

Oregon State University Extension tested movable flocks in an organic apple orchard. Young meat chickens in light, bottomless pens, moved every two to three days, ate nearly all codling moth and apple maggot larvae and pupae offered to them and reduced grass in the rows for a time. Laying hens ate about 90 percent of the insects offered in November but less than 40 percent later in winter, when they were less active. The authors judged the chickens useful against pests and weeds, though not cheap enough to rely on alone.

At Polyface Farm in Virginia, Joel Salatin moves a mobile henhouse onto the pasture about three days after the cattle have left it. According to the Sustainable Food Trust, the hens scratch the cattle's dung into the ground and eat the insects and parasites that have hatched in it. According to the same source, the whole system follows the movement of wild herds such as bison.

Common mistakes

• Too many hens, too long, in one place. The ground turns to bare, compacted earth overloaded with nitrogen. Rotate, or keep fewer birds.
• Fresh manure on vegetables. Compost it first; a hot heap reaches about 60 to 70 degrees Celsius and kills most pathogens. Apply composted manure at least 90 days before harvesting crops that do not touch the soil and 120 days before those that do.
• Hens in the vegetable bed at the wrong time. They are excellent before planting and after harvest, and destructive in between.
• Poisonous prunings in the run. The leaves and bark of the avocado contain persin, to which birds are particularly sensitive.
• Forgetting the night. An open door at dusk is enough for a fox.

Further in the TerraWiki

• Element analysis and produce no waste: the thinking behind the chicken as an example.
• Integrate rather than segregate and obtain a yield: why hens under fruit trees give more than hens in a separate yard.
• Compost and the nutrient cycle: where the manure goes.
• Food forest and silvopasture: trees and animals on the same ground.
• Managed grazing: the same idea of moving animals and resting the land, with larger animals.
• Bees and pollinators: the other small animals of zone 2.