I've just read everything I could find on
chicken paddock rotation, and my head is spinning!
I have a coop on an old trailer bed that is sized for up to a dozen
chickens. I have 2 acres of field that has been planted in garlic, which is currently completely covered in crab grass and assorted weeds. My thinking is to plant an acre at a time in fall garlic, and to let the
chickens do the grunt work of getting that grass out of there. Rotation would look like: Chooks graze 1/4 acre at a time of grass and weeks, then that gets planted with forage crop/ green manure while they move onto the next 1/4 acre. Once they've pecked their way through the grass and weeds, they would start in on the forage (rinse and repeat). I would ideally like to
fence off some of the forage crop for in the winter, when they will be in a deep bedding/ composting set up in an enclosed run. For summer, their protection would be electric
fence and an overhead wire grid (we have lots of hawks). Since garlic overwinters, there
should be adequate time between chicken manure and human food crop, and the chickens do the tilling/ weeding work. The following year the first acre is cover cropped after I pull the garlic, and the chickens are rotating through the second acre.
I'm currently trying to sort out flock size, forage seed amounts, timing...
My specific questions:
-How fast will a single chicken go through a 1/4 acre of grass & weeds? a forage crop?
-I've read lots about chicken's destroying the paddock area, much of which seems to focus on them taking it down to bare earth. Tilled earth is what I'm looking for here... but is there something else I need to do to
boost soil nutrition for my garlic (beyond the cover crop)?
-For folks who grow
feed for your chooks, how much do you plant per chicken? Any favourite crops among your flock?
Thanks for any and all feedback!
