This year, we’re going to experiment with
raising broilers on a forest
pasture. 
The method we’ve conceived is a lot like the way farmers used to raise
chickens around here, letting them have free run of the woods to
collect most of their food.  The traditional Appalachian farm
family probably kept few or no chickens alive over the winter when food
was scarce, but they also fed their chickens little or nothing during
the growing season when bugs and fruits were abundant.



I haven’t been able to
find much information about forest pastures for chickens, so we’re
making most of it up as we go along.  A google search to find the
carrying capacity of an acre churns up widely varying results, but
conventional wisdom seems to come down to this:

• Traditional “free range” farmers
  put about 80 to 100 chickens on an acre. 
  At this level, your pasture won’t be eaten down to bare earth, but your
  chickens won’t get much sustenance from the land either.  Various
  sources estimate that chickens on this type of pasture may get between
  5 and 20% of their food from the pasture.
• Less scientifically backed
  sources suggest that about 10 chickens can get all of their food from
  an acre of land. 
  This is more like what we’re considering, but I think the websites we
  found are far too vague to be counted on.  After all, winter is
  the down time — could ten chickens survive on an acre in the
  winter?  If so, could we raise three or four times that many on an
  acre in the summer, slaughtering most of them so that only a few
  breeding birds have to forage there during the cold weather?  Are
  there crops we can plant in parts of the pasture to give the chickens
  more nutrition?  Does that number consider rotating chickens
  through multiple paddocks to give the overgrazed regions time to
  recover?  Perhaps most importantly, how will we know if our
  chickens aren’t getting enough forage in a forest pasture and need some
  supplemental feeding?

We’re thrilled to be
trying to answer those questions this year.  Maybe by this time
next year, we will have licked the chicken pasture probem just like
Mark licked the dirty chicken water problem.

White
Cochins, Golden Comets, and Barred
Plymouth Rocks are
the only
varieties I’ve had sufficient experience with to really rate.  But
I’ve stumbled across some other chickens that deserve a mention,
especially in the broiler world.  The term “broiler” refers to any
chicken that is eaten at a relatively young age.  While you can
raise a dual purpose breed like the Barred Rock to the broiler stage,
most people who want to raise meat chickens go for a special variety,
the most common of which is the Cornish Cross.



The Cornish Cross is a
hybrid between a White Plymouth Rock and a Dark
Cornish.  Like Golden Comets, the resulting hybrid vigor is a bit
astounding.  While the parent breeds take 12 to 20 weeks to reach
slaughtering weight, Cornish Crosses may get there in as little as 8
weeks.  People also love the big breast on Cornish Crosses, very
different from the slenderer breasts on more traditional broiler breeds.



However, Cornish Crosses
have some major issues.  They grow so
fast that they often overload their hearts and legs and die before
getting old enough to slaughter.  If I thought our White Cochin
was a lazy hen, I’d be shocked by the lack of foraging ability among
Cornish Crosses — I’ve been to visit operations where the pastured
birds spend all day sitting in the shade, panting.  Connoisseurs
of chicken meat also note that Cornish Crosses lack the subtle flavor
of old-fashioned birds (although I’ve also heard pastured poultry
farmers who raise traditional breeds lament the way that their
customers turn up their noses at the more flavorful meat — it is
probably
an acquired taste.)



This year, we’re going
to be experimenting with one of the parents of
the Cornish Cross — the Dark
Cornish.  This
traditional broiler
breed is reputed to take up to twenty weeks to reach slaughter weight,
but they are excellent foragers and are nearly feral in their ability
to fend for themselves.  I’ll be sure to let you know whether the
Dark Cornish are worth the extra time.



While you’re waiting on
our results, check out our homemade chicken
waterer.  We
use them in our chicken
tractors and plan to
add them to our forest pasture as well.