posted 13 years ago
Hi permies
I'm trying to raise chickens (never done it before) in an orchard. It's an old plum orchard with 2 mulberries and a huge pear tree on 345 square meters (3713 sq ft). There's grasses and weeds growing allover the trees, it's quite hard to get in now. I'm in a temperate climate (Romania), so we have grass from early march to Nov-Dec
The main point for me is to do the least work possible so i can get decent eggs and meat.
Now the question is, when you have a paddock shift system with mostly grass, how many paddocks do you have, and how often a year do chicks visit it, so as not to feed them at all? I know Mollison said 18 in a video, but that was for cows. (I'm not talking about the number of chicks, since 5 of them need 10 times less space than 50). I'll get as many or as few chicks as I can, so I don't need to feed them from March-Nov.
