Meat chicken tractor turf removal

Give me extra eyes or experience here, I’m a newb with a scheme 😂 we are wanting to raise about 30-40 meat chickens later this summer (likely rangers). I also have a roughly 6,000 square foot lawn of aggressive grass that I’d like to clear and plant cover crop in as a precursor to slowly converting to food forest. I’m picturing a chicken tractor that I move infrequently enough that the chickens kill the lawn, then I move them to the next spot and fill in the cleared spot with thick thick mulching and enough compost on top to plant a cover crop in. Then as I slowly have resources to plant trees and bushes I can plant amidst the cover crop without having to pre-clear grass every time. Thoughts? Anyone do anything like this?

welcome newb with a scheme (the best kind!!)!
You may enjoy looking at Justin Rhodes' youtube channel, where he does a lot with chickens in tractors following his pastured animals to eat bugs and build soil, but he also has a few "static" chicken runs that I could see being similar to what you're thinking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGwAn3wIBFE
and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICu2bRepiL8 come to mind.

Am I correct in thinking that your goal is to convert your lawn into something more productive and helpful than grass?

I tried to clear a spot for my garden one year with chickens and it worked... but not as well as I would like. I ended up with a spot devoid of any grass or weeds which is what I wanted, but it took longer than I thought and ended with a hardpan dirt (and probably less healthy conditions for the chickens than I wanted).

My suggestion might be to plan out where I wanted the trees and bushes to go, and then spot mulch, rather than do the entire area. In each spot (or each strip maybe) that you want to put a tree or bush, I would scalp the lawn, lay down cardboard and then cover in woodchips (or some variation). This will help create some good soil to grow in and help keep the weeds/grass down in the area until you can plant what you want.

Meat chickens produce much more poop than layers do and we have had them "burn" sections of soil in areas they slept when they weren't moved daily. The problem will be how to get that effect with even coverage.

I would also want to have a high carbon source handy to cover the areas when they move on.

I don't think meat chicks are as useful as adult layer chickens at actually digging. Most meat birds are just babies - most are harvested by 8 weeks of age.

suggest you probably don't want to "graze" to hard.  The soil will likely end up compacted bordering on concrete.  If you use the chicken as a mower instead and then water well and do some form of lasagna mulch will likely give you better soil for the next year compared to having the chicken graze
it back to bare dirt.

The comment about meat chickens not being ideal for weed removal I will second.  If you are doing true meat birds it will likely be cornish x birds and they very poor grazers.  And younger multipurpose birds while better are still not as good as adults.

Rent a sheep or goat to follow after the chickens.

Hi all thanks for the input! Sorry for the late response I’m occasionally tech illiterate and can’t figure out how to respond lol

Tereza, thanks for sharing! I will definitely check these out (and maybe more too, I haven’t seen his channel before)

Matt, sorry to hear it didn’t work well for you, sounds like the hard pan is consensus. I’d thought of just doing spots but tend to suffer from chronic “wanting to do everything at once” lol. If I were to do this, how to calculate how large a spot to prep for a tree?

Jay and C- for some reason it literally completely hadn’t occurred to me they’d be babies for most of it. Thanks for that haha as I said newb. I’m planning to do ranger breed for better foraging skills, and they harvest closer to the 12 week range but still

em write wrote:... I’d thought of just doing spots but tend to suffer from chronic “wanting to do everything at once” lol. If I were to do this, how to calculate how large a spot to prep for a tree?

Been there done that :) I expanded my garden too much one year and ended up only planting about 50% because I was doing too much other stuff, haha.

The classic answer is "it depends". Some bushes and trees need more pampering to be productive and could benefit from a wide mulch area and less competition. Also, once the tree gets big enough, it can shade out some stuff underneath. Some people want the mulch for the looks too. I am not an expert, but I think a 4ft circle or square is probably a good starting point. That is the size I use for my trees. For raspberry or blackberry plants I use about a 30" wide strip. If it was me, I would start with a 4ft area to let the plant get settled and get a good start. Maybe check out some fruit tree guilds if you are planning fruit trees. Then you have some fast growing shade trees could probably out compete the grass just fine without needing mulch at all. Some smaller berry bushes or canes would probably benefit from keeping mulched their entire lives. Some you could mulch to get started and then let it fill in once the plant is established.

One thing that I believe is best for trees and bushes long term is to NOT add fertilizer or compost directly to the hole. I believe this makes the plant lazy since it's doesn't have to stretch out its roots to get stuff. I would dig the hole and put it in the dirt it is going to grow in and then mulch around it on top. Let those roots spread out and work a little bit... it will be a stronger plant for it.

Matt McSpadden wrote: One thing that I believe is best for trees and bushes long term is to NOT add fertilizer or compost directly to the hole. I believe this makes the plant lazy since it's doesn't have to stretch out its roots to get stuff. I would dig the hole and put it in the dirt it is going to grow in and then mulch around it on top. Let those roots spread out and work a little bit... it will be a stronger plant for it.

Yes! However, as a slight twist, I have dug 3-4 small compost holes about 5 ft or so from the tree trunk. I add wet compost to them through our summer drought and I've read that this will give those roots something to aim for!

That said, I'm generally planting in Glacier compressed "dirt" (it hardly qualifies as soil in many places), so my tree roots may really struggle to get through it. I don't like to stake my trees if I can avoid it, because they also need to learn to support themselves during our winter winds, but if I give the roots a yummy target in multiple directions, I'm hoping they will form a wide base of support sooner rather than too late.