In my last post, I took
you on a tour
of the three pastures we use for
our broilers, so I
thought I’d round it off with a look at the pastures our layers live in
during the warm season.  Our layer flock currently consists of
five hens and a rooster, but we sometimes have upwards of ten birds in
there, and the current layout just barely handles that many chickens.

Pasture 3 (1,170 square
feet) is in an area that was reclaimed from the woods a couple of years
before it turned into pasture.  So, unlike all of the pastures I
wrote about previously, this one was already lawnlike and has
maintained its grassy character (except for a path we use twice daily
to walk to the coop).  Although I can leave our layers in here for
a week with no problems, they do run out of the tastiest morsels and
start lazing about most of the time within a couple of days.  I’ll
be slowly adding
complexity to the pasture to give our flock more
homegrown food and more fun.

Pasture 4 (aka “the bee
pasture,” 1,040 square feet) is pretty much identical to pasture 3,
except it’s a bit shadier, contains a young Asian persimmon and our bee
hive, and is L-shaped.  The chickens enjoy
the safety of the hedge-like fences (covered in Japanese honeysuckle),
although I don’t like the invasive plant and know it’s going to pull my
fences down before long.

Pasture 5 (aka “the
mulberry pasture,” 1,040 square feet) was problematic until this
year.  When I first turned chickens into this area, I didn’t
realize that tall weeds and bushes would shade out the tender undergrowth,
so I lost most of the existing plants.  And I didn’t realize that
if I seeded grasses and clovers, then let the chickens into the area
the next spring, they’d nibble the seedlings until they were nearly
gone.  The pasture does seem to be slowly turning into a solid sod
this year, although quite a bit of chickweed turned up there over the
winter (meaning there was lots of bare ground last fall).  I
suspect the plants in pasture 5 will let me down this summer, but
hopefully by next year, the sward will be firm enough to withstand
chicken feet all through the growing season.

Pasture 6 (2,080 square feet)
is on sabbatical this summer for the same reason pasture 4 is currently
problematic.  Hopefully letting the pasture have a few extra
months off will give the newly seeded bluegrass and white clover time
to grow, and will make this a premium grazing spot next year.



Like our broiler pasture
situation, our layer pastures are just barely sufficient during most
seasons, but let us down during the height of the summer.  (During
the winter, I turn the chickens into the woods so they don’t ruin my
pastures.)  My primary goals for improving these pastures include:

• Adding fruiting trees (Asian persimmons and mulberries)
• Planting comfrey along the fencelines to keep other weeds down
• Getting a solid sward going in pastures 5 and 6 so there’s no
  more bare ground

I hope this two-post
tour of our pasture situation has been edifying, not boring!  Feel
free to leave questions in the comments if you’re still confused about
anything.

“When you are talking about
pasture rotation, how many chickens are involved and what size are the
pastures?“

When I started reading
about pasture
rotation, those were
some of my first questions too, but I soon learned the answers aren’t
really numerical.  For example, I could tell you that the pasture
in question (#7 on the map) is about a twentieth of an acre and fed 17
chickens for two weeks.  But you couldn’t take that data and
assume that a pasture half that size would feed 17 chickens for one
week, even if you matched up the ages and breeds of the birds. 
(These guys are two months old and thus are about half an adult chicken
in terms of appetite.)  The trouble with such simple math is that
every pasture has a different array of plants in it, and seasons also
drastically change the amount of food available from that
pasture.  Still, I thought it might be fun to take you on a tour
of our pastures, starting with the three pastures our broilers enjoy.



Pasture 1 is about 490 square
feet and was
fenced in spring 2010. 
It has suffered from lots of experiments since it was our first
pasture, initiated before I understood anything about rotation or what
chickens will and won’t eat.  Pasture 1’s biggest problem, though,
is that it’s way too small for a full flock of broilers, so I usually add
temporary fences to
turn this area into a thoroughfare through which our flock accesses
grassy parts of the yard.

Pasture 2 is about 1,080
square feet and was fenced in spring 2010.  It’s a bit better off
than Pasture 1 because I’d learned a few things in the intervening
months, and because the pasture is big enough to handle 15 to 20
broilers of just about any age for a week without being scratched
bare.  There’s still no real permanent sward on it, though, so the
ground is dominated by chickweed this spring, just like
pasture 5, with
patches of other perennials poking through.  The key to managing
this pasture so it can serve us all summer is to be sure to mow it
after moving the flock out so the taller perennials don’t turn woody
and shade out the more tasty, small plants that chickens enjoy.

Pasture 7 is about 2,100
square feet and is brand new, having come into production only last
year.  This is
the pasture I’ve been playing around with all winter, adding terraces
and planting comfrey and trees into.  If anything, I’d say pasture
7 is a bit too big for the broilers to utilize fully in a week,
although they eat through it faster than you might think since the
grazing quality is still very poor.  The area was a mess of brush
until we cleared out the small trees last June, so the tender plants
the chickens enjoy didn’t have the sun to grow until recently. 
The smaller photo above shows what the pasture looks like after the
chickens moved out and Mark ran through with a weed eater to whack back
the tall weeds.

Our broilers tend to do
pretty well in this three-pasture rotation, but it’s really a
four-pasture rotation because I let the flock walk through pasture 1
into two different areas on different weeks.  (One of these
spillover areas is shown in the photo above.)  Once I get all of
the unwanted woody plants out and the wanted perennials in (including a
permanent sward), this area should be sufficient for up to 20 broilers,
although I’d like to eventually add another pasture between pastures 2
and 7 to give everything a bit of breathing room in the summer. 
And I really need a second set of pastures just like this for the
broilers shown above, who are a month old and nearly ready to leave the
brooder.



I’ll give you a tour of
our more grassed pastures (used by our layers) in another post, so stay
tuned!