General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Do People Hate Vegans? [View all]KurtNYC
(14,549 posts)but those green panels on the chicken tractor slide up and we have two very large quanset tunnels and a heated workshop right next to them. The farm is on a plane about one mile from the Hudson River. It gets cold and once you get away from the trees it can be very windy so we will likely be using the tunnel with some bales and a heat source.
Predator wise we have some hawks that sit right up in trees around the chickens but we haven't lost any to hawks. I think they are eating field mice. There are 3 roosters in the flock and they crank it up at any sign of trouble (including me). No snakes thankfully. There was a study of chicken vocalizations that found that they have different calls for a ground predator versus aerial ones. I tell farm visitors that chickens are the closing living relative of the T-Rex dinosaur and I don't think they believe me -- there is one noise they make which academics call the "raptor noise."
Some people have clicker trained chickens and I saw a class offered for dog trainers to practice with chickens because chickens are harder, you have to click right on the behavior or it doesn't work but I have seen videos of chickens trained to do so fairly complicated tasks. Chickens are a more intelligent and sentient creature than CW gives them credit for.
Farming has made a huge improvement in my life, my diet and my health and I would encourage anyone to give it a try. Even with a garden plot or containers. Peace.