I do plan on doing setups like that with some herbs and green leafy-type vegetables for them in the yard. I still want to do fodder for them as part of their diet, so I feel like the herbs would be a better choice to have in the "salad bar" as I saw someone call it!
That area won't be set up for probably a year or so. It's currently my mom's property, but we're trying to get permits and build a house out there. :) I'm just planning ahead!
I do want to get chickens for my current backyard, providing my landlord agrees, in the next couple months. That will...
I'm hoping at least some of them develop a taste for juniper berries and sage, haha. We do have a decent amount of lizards here, and there are a couple small natural rock piles in the area I want the chickens to be. I also plan on doing the deep litter method since it seems to have so many...
Playing devil's advocate a bit here.
What about if chickens have very large areas to roam, but the environment itself isn't exactly nutrition filled? Where I eventually want to have my chickens, it's all sagebrush and juniper trees. We live in a desert, so pasture isn't exactly common here...