Great thread! I immediately knew rotating paddocks is what I wanted to try to do with the space I have. Ironically we live on 65 acres, but it is not ours, and we are situated as such that we have quite limited space we can use to raise a flock as most of the area around our home has to have complete access for the owner to tend fences/etc. We are not home much during the day, and have a high predator presence of hawks/coyotes/bobcats/raccoons, so any kind of temporary fencing or free ranging is not really an option.
What we do have: An odd shaped area we have fenced in using free lumber and wire (with wire roof due to the plentiful hawks as well as raccoons) is roughly 550sqft. We "inherited" a 8'x4' raised coop from a neighbor we will be using that will be inside this fenced area. My thoughts is to create a roof over an area roughly 8x12 feet (odd shape, so not sure exactly) that would include the coop, feeders, water, & dust bath as a central area they always have access to. Leaving about 450sqft give or take to divide into paddocks (I plan to use some sort of plastic mesh poultry/deer fencing to accomplish this). First off - how many chickens do you think this would decently support given the right care and cultivation, and how much do you think I should divide it up? It would be easier with the shape to divide it into 3, but I know at least 4 separate paddocks is recommended, which would make 4 areas of about 100sqft each. Currently the entire fenced area is surrounded by primarily oak trees, scotch broom, and a couple not very thriving blackberry bushes. Inside the fence is a lot of leaves, which I will plan to rake back occassionally into nice leaf piles to hopefully attract plenty of bugs, and thick/wild ground cover, mostly grasses (though right now due to the drought here in California, and it not having been given attention until now, this is primarily still brown/dead, and just started the first signs of greening for the winter, but of course we plan on starting to water this area, and hopefully we get some rain!). Things I already have on hand and plan to add into the cultivation are squashes and kale, and would like to get some oats or some sort of wheat going, kamut?. Among what I hope to plant come spring that I already have on hand are ground cherries, peas, continue with kale, celeriac, clover, to start with.
Our ideal plan we would like to work up to would be to host about 10 layers of a dual purpose breed (likely mostly orpingtons for their broodiness since our off grid power wont allow for incubators and brooders), a roo, and then grow out crops of whatever chicks we can get to fill out/replace our layer flock, as well as for any supplemental meat that comes along with that.
Is this at all realistic?
Appreciate any good input or advice.
~Megan
