Chicken Roundup

Today Lisa and I had a chicken roundup. We've been working the layers in amongst the fig trees. We're working up the fertility. Or you would say the chickens are working up the fertility. This is how Lisa took pretty much a waste land with very low fertility and turned it into productive irrigated pasture. Here's her technique. Let the chickens do the work. She keeps the chickens in an area until they've scratched it bare, and the chicken ship has been washed out over the whole space. This takes land that has very low fertility, raises the fertility, and eliminates many weed seeds. Then you broadcast your pasture seed, add water and voila!! You have pasture. I had know idea that it would work so well but it does. So now we're working the chickens in our fig orchard. They were is there this summer and the trees that they were around are way bigger than any of the others.
So where does the roundup come in. Well when you decide on the spur of the moment to move the electric-net you haven't shut the chickens in the ship for the night so you move the net, the chickens roam free and when it's set back up you roundup the chickens. It's really fun and quite an art. Gentle pressure from two people and they eventually go thru the gate.