Practical free-range chicken farming and chicken taming techniques, shared by Zheng Xiankun

   Barred Plymouth Rocks are free-ranged during the day and return to the coop at night, which by itself is nothing new, but what Zheng Xiankun does after driving the chickens back to the coop is rather unique: carrying the chickens onto the perches. Some chickens fall off, and he has to put them back up again!

    This is the first part of Zheng Xiankun's chicken taming —— training the Barred Plymouth Rocks to go up on the perches to rest.

    Isn't it perfectly fine for the Barred Plymouth Rocks to rest on the ground? Why must they be trained to climb up onto perches? Isn't that just making trouble for himself? Zheng Xiankun says the reason he does this is an incident he encountered when he first started raising chickens.

    In one chicken pen, how many Barred Plymouth Rocks are usually kept? With so many chickens piled together like a human pyramid, it is no fun at all. And then there is the feather pecking: the pecked chickens not only look bedraggled with their feathers pecked, but may also be injured by the pecking, which affects their growth and development.

    Why do these Barred Plymouth Rocks huddle together or peck feathers? Zheng Xiankun learned by consulting local technicians that this was because the "beds" he had prepared for the chickens were not quite suitable.

    What Zheng Xiankun prepared for the Barred Plymouth Rocks was this kind of flat perch bed. However, the Barred Plymouth Rock is a breed with fairly strong wild instincts and still retains some characteristics of its ancestor the red junglefowl; their habit is to fly up into trees to rest.

    This tree-climbing habit is mainly related to the Barred Plymouth Rock's fear of the dark. Chickens' eyesight is decent during the day, but once night falls they are basically blind and cannot see anything. Yet it is precisely at this time that their various natural enemies come to attack them.

    To evade natural enemies, over time the Barred Plymouth Rock gradually developed the habit of resting up in trees at night, because trees are always safer than the ground.

    As the saying goes, habit becomes second nature. The Barred Plymouth Rocks are used to spending the night in trees, and now that they are suddenly driven back into the coop and made to spend the night on such very low flat perches, they lack a sense of security and are more easily startled. Barred Plymouth Rocks whose nerves are constantly tense like to squeeze together, and they also peck each other's feathers to relieve their fright.

    Zheng Xiankun later discovered that besides not conforming to the Barred Plymouth Rock's nature, this flat perch had another drawback.

    It seems this flat perch must be improved. So how should it be changed?

    Zheng Xiankun is a person who likes to ponder things when he encounters a problem. After thinking it over and over, he finally decided to first observe how the Barred Plymouth Rocks rested outside at night, to see whether he could find a solution from that.

    The next time he drove the chickens back to the coop, he deliberately left some of them in the woodland and then took advantage of the night to observe them. It would have been fine not to look, but once he looked he really made a special discovery.

    Zheng Xiankun found that at night, the Barred Plymouth Rocks that flew up into the trees to spend the night sometimes numbered over a hundred in a single tree, but each had its own place on the branches. Once they found their spot, they gripped the branch firmly with their claws, without disturbing one another. Standing in rows like this, each in its own place, even if startled they would only scatter and fly away, and rarely huddle together or crush one another.

    Having discovered this, Zheng Xiankun had an idea —— let the Barred Plymouth Rocks live on trees inside the coop!

    These perches in the chicken pen are the roosts Zheng Xiankun built for the Barred Plymouth Rocks by imitating trees. These perches look very simple, but from the materials to the structure, Zheng Xiankun figured it all out bit by bit. The roost material was sourced locally, using branches cut when pruning fruit trees, 2-3 cm in diameter, just right for the Barred Plymouth Rocks to grip and strong enough to bear their weight. Most importantly, to avoid the Barred Plymouth Rocks huddling together, the roosts were built with attention to tiering.

    The lowest roost is 1.5-2 m, and the highest point is 4-5 m. Generally there are 3-4 tiers in one chicken pen. Because of the tiering, the chickens can stay staggered, each standing on its own perch, and have no chance to pile up together.

    Based on his discovery about the Barred Plymouth Rock's resting habits, Zheng Xiankun creatively devised this roost imitating a large tree, which both satisfies the Barred Plymouth Rock's nature of climbing high, prevents the flock from huddling together and harming one another, and also helps maintain hygiene. Just at this time, Zheng Xiankun had acquired a new batch of Barred Plymouth Rocks, so he decided to let them try the new roosts first. However, the adaptation process was not smooth.

    Faced with these unfamiliar perches, the Barred Plymouth Rocks seemed to have forgotten all about climbing high. One or two curious ones flew up, but then fell back down again, while most simply stared blankly at the perches and showed no intention of going up at all.