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Using bugs to save money on your chicken feed is a great holistic principle--here we are again with another management issue. Managing chickens so they harvest the pests, bugs, or insects around your homestead for you serves multiple purposes:
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Instead of bugs being a problem on your homestead, now you can see them as an asset--chicken food. This is a great permaculture or holistic technique. Problems often can be turned into solutions, you just need to know how.
You have two options here, free range them, or rotate your chickens where you want fewer bugs.
Free-Ranging Chicken Bug-Control:
This is great and easy to do. All you have to do is provide a coop for them to sleep in at night, open the door during the day and they’ll roam all around your homestead.
Rotational Chicken Bug-Control:
This takes a bit more work, but it is a suitable option for some people. You can have a movable coop were the chickens sleep at night and then have a movable fence (electric fence is popular these days). You can set them all up where you have bug problems, and then move them when you need their bug control somewhere else.
Free-Ranging Pros
Free-Ranging Cons
Rotational Pros
Rotational Cons
By using the resources you have and using them well (AKA bugs for your chickens’ food) you’re providing them with another food source. Is this going to mean you can cut your feed bill altogether? Most likely not, but it will get you closer to your end goal of spending less on their commercial feed bill. When you see bugs on your homestead, think of them as a part of your chicken feeding program.
If you want to break away from commercial feed entirely, check out this blog post…
10 ways to save money on your chicken feed bill to learn more.
Soli Deo Gloria! (Glory Be to God Alone!) ~ Julia
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