Bosca and the hens
About the Author: Forrest Pritchard
Forrest Pritchard is a full-time sustainable farmer and New York Times bestselling author, holding a BA in English and a BS in Geology from William & Mary. Smith Meadows, his farm, was one of the first “grass finished” operations in the country, and has sold at leading farmers’ markets in the Washington DC area for two decades. Pritchard's books have received starred reviews from The Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, NPR, and more.
I have a GP dog that guards my goats. Do you have problems with hawks and owls with chicks out in the open this way? I assume the dog does fine with chickens as it will with anything it’s guarding.
Sharon, the trick with keeping the birds safe from airborne predators is to make the grazing alleys long and tight… so it looks like a ‘landing strip’ for the hawks and eagles. As for owls, we have the birds trained to go in the coop at night (we have many doors on our coop, to facilitate rotations). It will make a lot more sense when I put up the video in another week or two :^)