Hens running with cows

[Fen Farm Dexters]

Is it safe from a disease point of view to range cows and hens together?
The cows will soon be calving, and I'd like to move them into a field of fresh grass where we run 100 hens.

[Duncan MacIntyre]

As long as the numbers of both are reasonable I don't see any problem - 100 hens is not a big number if the field is big. Most diseases are reasonably restricted to one type of livestock.

I moved some cows this weekend and had to go through a yard with hens, ducks, geese and a peacock. One of the heifers took severe exception to the peacock and tried to sort him out, he exited over the gate.

Remember the fences and houses for hens will not necessarily withstand investigation and rubbing by cattle.

Duncan

[wagra dexters]

There is a great little book called The Farming Ladder has been in my library for 50 years, still some copies advertised for reasonable prices I see, with several chapters on running Jerseys & Light Sussex in UK.
Margaret

[Fen Farm Dexters]

Thank you Duncan and Margaret forthe help.
So there shouldn't be anything transferred to eggs from hens scratching in cow pats?
Also, is it OK for them to share the same water troughs - we use the little galvanised double troughs with mains feed and ball cock for hens and cows in their separate fields at present.
Roger

[wagra dexters]

Hygiene can be an issue. Pooey feet tromping cow manure into the nesting boxes. Not sure, I don't think some of the tummy bugs are particularly fussy who they get. Not sure how my kids survived their grotty mud-pie child-hood though, hundreds of chooks, ducks & geese living with horses & house cows. Common sense should prevail, unless you are selling produce off farm, then you probably need to follow procedure.

Embarrassing to admit that I lost several chickens to drowning, in troughs not shallow enough for them to stand on the bottom if they fell in off the edge. I don't know the troughs you mention but I fixed my problem by laying chicken wire just below the top of the water and up over the edges of the troughs. That worked.
Margaret

[Broomcroft]

In the book Salad Bar Beef, the author uses mobile chicken houses and moves them around after the cattle to clean up the fields. They scratch around, eat up worms and bugs. He sells the eggs.

I'm not sure I would personally want any pecking bird around a new born calf though! No doubt it'd be OK and I've never heard anything bad, but still not for me. Chickens are meat-eaters after all, and they may peck at a sluggish calf and accidentally take or damage an eye, or the umbilical.

It depends on the chickens. Our last lot kept themselves to themselves but the fox killed the lot one night. Our new ones, which we bought from an intensive poultry farm, have no fear and they get everywhere and go right up to the cattle.