Spacing for Chicken Paddocks

Hello!

I have been reading lots about chicken paddock systems. Started down the rabbit hole with this fantastic article posted by a permie member: https://richsoil.com/raising-chickens.jsp

Does anyone have any estimates on how many square feet per chicken per day for a paddock system? Obviously we don't want to destroy the grass. I'd prefer a longer timeframe in each paddock--2-4 weeks over 1 week, but that depends on the size of the paddock and vegetation. But it would be really helpful to have an estimate to begin with.

Thanks!

Hi Becky,
As you mention, the quality of the land, the vegetation growing on it, the amount of commercial feed fed, and even the variety of chickens can affect things alot.

I had 30 black australorps in a 600sqft area that I would generally move every day, but could leave it for 2 days in the spring and late summer when the grasses were growing crazy fast. I'm not sure you can call that size a paddock though. I believe Paul is talking about much larger areas when he speaks of the paddock shift.

Joel Salatin suggests if you are going to do intensive growing you can do about 500 birds per acre... but I do not know the amount of time they are left on that area.

James Dryden suggests a mere 50 chickens per acre... but again, I have no knowledge of how long a period he is talking about.

I hope this will give you some ideas to start with.

Thanks for sharing that article and the idea behind chicken paddocks.  That is not something I had thought about.

ideally have about 8-10 square feet per chicken of outdoor space to forage and roam freely.

Joel Salatin, author of Pastured Poultry Profits, moves birds in a mobile bottomless coop, called a chicken tractor, several times per day or week. Salatin recommends one acre per 500 birds per this method to be sustainable and profitable.

This rotational grazing allows chickens to forage the ground naturally while gaining access to fresh grass. It reduces the amount of feed required by 30% and naturally fertilizes the grass.

https://www.freedomrangerhatchery.com/blog/square-feet-per-chicken/

Becky Isbell wrote:Hello!

I have been reading lots about chicken paddock systems. Started down the rabbit hole with this fantastic article posted by a permie member: https://richsoil.com/raising-chickens.jsp
Does anyone have any estimates on how many square feet per chicken per day for a paddock system? Obviously we don't want to destroy the grass. I'd prefer a longer timeframe in each paddock--2-4 weeks over 1 week, but that depends on the size of the paddock and vegetation. But it would be really helpful to have an estimate to begin with.
Thanks!

On the "we don't want to destroy the grass": Destroying the grass is what they do since they scratch and scratch and scratch all day. I think of them as "my little Attilas", and I use them to keep the orchard floor relatively clean of bugs. While I do want them to have rich, green and abundant grass, they *also* need and want "dust baths". Lots and lots of dust baths! At rest [meaning when they are not eating and scratching/foraging], I find them either inside and perched or outside lounging in dirt.
I've had 2 paddocks for my girls, with fruit trees above, and flowers [they won't touch any Liatris or Agastache Foeniculum or catnip, which is fine since I have other uses for these.]
One is totally bare of undergrowth and the other one has tall tufts of grass [not sure what kind, but the chickens can walk between these taller tufts of grass].
I tried to get them interested in the grassy area by also tossing leftovers there, but after eating their fill, they return to the bare moonscape when both areas are available. I concluded that whereas we feel that abundant grass is more sanitary certainly than bare dirt, and they don't dirty the coop or the eggs when their feet are cleaner, and every poop is very visible in bare dirt, my chickens have a different opinion and love to roll themselves in bare dirt. [They do not roll in their poop: they first scratch all around until they reach cleaner, sandier soil and then they roll around in dirt.]
Yeah, it makes me cringe too to see them walk in the 'bare moonscape' or drink the overflow of their clean water rather than the clean water in their waterers, I figured I have 2 options: 1/Fight them over my preferences, or 2/just keep the options open and let them be.
I picked option 2.
If I had enough money and wide enough doors between paddocks, I'd love to keep them in a coop on wheels with wire underneath so that I would not have to clean their coop. Also, I have not solved the problem of keeping their water from freezing in Central Wisconsin in a coop on wheels, presumably far from electricity with a foot of snow. Their coop in insulated but with ventilation, with a winter run/ hoop house attached to the coop.

The chicken tractor thing never made sense to me, as it seems a contraption heavy enough to deter predators and include nest would be awfully heavy to move so often--and the chickens can't get away from each other, they're so crowded; someone I know who used ones had trouble with chickens pecking each other till they bled, which is caused by crowding; I've never had that in at least 30 years of chicken keeping. My chickens were free range all that time until two years ago, when the predators got so bad we gave up and fenced in an area including the coop. We lost a couple since, but only a couple, over two years. I think that problem was foxes, as well as hawks. The four foot fence (and the dogs) keeps the foxes out, and much of the run is my orchard, which doesn't have many big open spaces where hawks could come in. Actually most of it is far from grass, it's weeds as much as five feet tall--which protects the chickens and supports useful insects. The run might be 100 feet square or so, and we usually have a dozen chickens, give or take half a dozen.

From my experience:
1. Chickens don't like eating poopy grass.
2. Chickens spend more time "near" their coop than far away.
3. Yes, as Mary says - if a chicken tractor is too heavy, it generally gets moved rarely or never.

Also, what layers need vs meat birds is very different. The meat bird breed we could get easily was only raised for 8 weeks and the first 2-3 weeks were in the brooder, so even though their portable shelter and run had to move daily, it was a short term commitment. These meat chickens are *not* permaculture by any stretch, but the field did respond to their heavy fertilizer application and it has helped us to build soil in an area that had been abused by former owners.

For a portable layer shelter that's genuinely light enough to move every day or 2 (and I'm a wimp), my goal is 8 square feet per bird. Left in one spot for a week, they would kill everything possibly including each other.

Areas where I've considered trying to set up paddocks, I would absolutely try for more paddocks rather than less to avoid problems 1 and 2 above.  How long to leave them before shifting is partly a factor of how fast they eat down the available food. In the case of bugs, this could be an hour!

At least one of Joel Salatin's chicken flocks was in a big shelter that had to be moved with a tractor. He'd add it to a field that had just been vacated by cows. The cow pats both attracted bugs and benefited from being broken up and "spread". Chickens were happy to oblige. Permaculture is awesome - most people are trying to get rid of bugs, some of use have figured out that bugs are great!

(Off topic sort of: My friend who's recently gone big into veggie gardening was asking if egg shells deterred slugs. We're having a bad slug fall. I said crushed egg shell is great for the soil, but you needed a lot to slow down the slugs and some people claim it doesn't work at all. I suggested she gets some thin 5" wide boards about a foot long and put them flat in the garden. The slugs will hide under them. Pick up the board, scrape the slugs into a container with some greens, and drop them off at my combined chicken/duck shelter. The ducks have taught the chickens how to eat slugs and now the poor ducks aren't getting any because the chickens are more aggressive.   But did you catch that? I'm offering to *import* slugs! I'd offer to loan them a mini-shelter with a few ducks, but they'd have to clear it with the neighbors as I know the chicken rules are ridiculous in that city, so even having "visiting ducks" could be an issue.)

I have been reading lots about chicken paddock systems. Started down the rabbit hole with this fantastic article posted by a permie member: https://richsoil.com/raising-chickens.jsp

I've been deep diving in the same hole in the last days too I have wondered what small and large paddock may refer to "Using electric fence on large portable paddocks works really well. You should never use electric fence for a small paddock. It's too stressful for the animals inside the paddock.", I think it's very subjective what small and large are to people. So I'm looking on some advice: we have been offered 7 "old" (they're 3 years old) chickens and I want to do them good. Would a 164 feet (50 meter) electrical fence be adequate for the number of chickens?

Answering your question, Becky Isabell:

Does anyone have any estimates on how many square feet per chicken per day for a paddock system?  

I cite what Patrick Whitefield writes on page 247 of The Earth Care Manual writing specifically on chickens in an established orchard: "120-180 chickens per hectare [107639.1 square feet] is the recommended density [...] though smaller numbers will still have beneficial effect. More can lead to excess nitrogen in soil. [...] Keeping them in the orchard year-around is probably not a good idea"

I'd love to see a picture of you paddocks, if you have any, Cécile Steizer Johnson:

I've had 2 paddocks for my girls, with fruit trees above, and flowers

Marta Cundari Valsania wrote:Would a 164 feet (50 meter) electrical fence be adequate for the number of chickens?

Hi Marta,
This will depend on how long you leave them there. There is a measurement some people use for cows. Something like 80 cow days per acre. What this means is that the acre can handle 80 cows for 1 day, or 1 cow for 80 days. More animals means less time and fewer animals means more time.

I kept 32 chickens in an area surrounded by 100ft fence. But I moved it almost every day. Sometimes it would be 2 days. That is way too many chickens in too small of an area long term... but is fine for short term.

The two issues you need to watch out for are... boredom and manure overload. Boredom comes from too little to do or from too little to see... which leads to fighting amongst the chickens. Boredom can be helped by adding things to do or by moving them to a new spot which gives them new things to look at and check out. Manure overload is when you get more manure than that area can handle which causes smells and unhealthy chickens. This can be mitigated by shoveling it out, or adding lots of carbon, or by moving them to a new spot.

Some people say 10sqft per bird. I was giving them over 18sqft per bird... but I still didn't want to leave them in one spot more than a couple days. That fence with only 7 chickens would provide almost 10 times the space mine had. You could leave them in one spot for much longer before you would need to clean it, add carbon, or move it.

How can I post pics in permies? I can email pictures, and that's as far as I can go.
Marta, I'd love to show you my orchard/chicken paddock but I'm all thumbs about technology.
We've had our first killing frost 2 days ago and the last of my older layers are going under the knife today.

Jay Angler wrote:

Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote:How can I post pics in permies? I can email pictures, and that's as far as I can go.

https://permies.com/wiki/61133/Post-Image-Permies

I have to download a picture from my phone to my computer to make this work. If you're using a phone without computer back-up, try going through the whole list here: https://permies.com/w/how-permies-works  for info about using permies dot com with just a mobile.

Thanks, Jay. I'll be trying this in the next few days.