Moving Animals onto Pasture

We are busy moving all the livestock away from the barn and out onto pasture. The idea is to let the animals feed on the grass, fertilize the fields and allow the barn yard to rest. The mobile chicken coop was a large part of this but we also moved Mia, our tamworth gilt and our water fowl out this weekend.

I made Mia a simple A-frame structure on skids, siding it with some vinyl siding that was up in our hay loft when we bought the place. We hoped to use just a couple strands of electric tape, but Mia is too much of a "people pig" and would charge through to get back to her people. For now we added a second perimeter of electric netting to keep her in. Hopefully, once she gets used to her new setup, and she gets some company, we have two male weanlings coming in the next week, we will be able to go back to the tape. We have her setup in a small area in hopes that she will root up all the grass. Then we will move her to a new area and repeat.

The ducks and geese are sharing a run. I made them a "tractor" from an old moving crate, chicken wire and an old tarp. Unfortunately they had no desire to go into it at night. They just grouped up and went to sleep out in the grass. I checked on them this morning before going to work and they were happily eating and going about their business. We will use the tractor for the broilers and pullets once they are ready to be put out on pasture, hopefully sometime this week. We also took the cap off my truck and put it out as a run in shelter so the birds can get out of the sun when needed.

So now all we need to do is get the goats, turkey poults, broilers and pullets out on pasture and I will be able to reseed the barn yard.