Feeding Acorns & Other Free Nuts to Chickens
I just bought land in TN that we're moving to in a couple years. At this point I'll finally have enough land to do more homesteading type stuff. I will have enough for a massive garden, and I will have enough for chickens (and maybe goats or sheep or something too, but one step at a time). And I know you don't need much land for chickens, but my little yard is really cramped already, I'd have to encroach on the kids play area to do anything else with it.
So, anyways, my land is awesome, the top of a mountain, but not too sloped, absolutely covered with old oak and hickory trees, but curiously no squirrels or other rodents. I don't know why. I'm told they're a declining population, I'm told maybe it is predators. Where I live in town we have squirrels and other rodents all over the place. But I grew up in the woods, a place where the deer would come by every night, but we had very few squirrels. I always attributed it to the prevalence of oak and other street trees planted here in the city where I live, whereas we didn't have any nut/hardwoods in our forest where I grew up. But maybe I'm wrong, and it could be a true forest has more predators.
I also kinda think maybe, considering my TN land is a mountain top, and its limestone, that maybe there is just no water supply for mammals. There is no place for rain water to collect, there is supposedly a spring on the property but it doesn't seem very strong. Just a thought.
But anyways... so not very many critters eating the acorns and hickory nuts and they just litter the forest floor up there, you can't walk without stepping on one.
I know the economics of egg production often depend on feed costs, and I think to myself, look at all that free food. Sure, I might not eat all those acorns, but chickens might.
Anyone ever done that?
