Flock density for a run that will not overload soil?

[calee]

patandchickens wrote:

where Very Good Things will happen

to give them Something To Think About

Quick off topic... I LOVE the emphasis points! Now all of your posts use the Winnie the Pooh narrator voice... with chicken clucks in the background.

patandchickens wrote:

You can chuck whatever you weed out of your garden in there

I am a REALLY lazy perfectionist. I like to plan ahead and look at things every which way I can before I jump in. I like things to look fairly neat & tidy and to be as self-maintaing as possible. What that means in terms of gardening is that we've been here two years and don't really have a garden going yet.

We started one end of the raised kitchen herb & veggie garden this Spring, and we're extending it now... one level block at a time.

patandchickens wrote:

Realize that even if you give chickens full access to your 50x150 yard, there WILL be bare spots (cratered bare spots in particular!) in their favorite spots.

RATS! I figured on little bare spots & trails in the grass, but I wasn't thinking selective lunar landscaping. It's hot enough here in the summer that they'll probably scratch up wallowing holes just like our lab. And those wallowing holes are a fair portion of the uneven ground in our back yard!

elderoo wrote:

I dont have to manage poo at all this way.

That is EXACTLY what I'm aiming for! elderoo, do you know how far apart from each other and a 6' enclosure those shelters would need to be?

 

[patandchickens]

Quote:
Of course I do!

...as you might guess from the fact that I have 2 hens in a (28+10)=38 sq ft tractor

They spent the winter in a 66 sq ft pen.

My current 19 chicks, which will be reduced to around a dozen when they are grown, are in a 120 sq ft pen which (when I finish) will have a ~200 sq ft run. And I am still not entirely happy with any of the arrangements above - I certainly would not put more birds in less space, myself, and as time goes by and money and materials and time become available I am sure I will expand things somewhat.

I tell you what, though, I do not think it is possible for me to free range them on this property without losing a bunch to predators. I do not have tree/shrub cover for them to get under, and anything I built in the way of brushpiles etc. would quickly blow away unless I put WAY more money and work into it than is going to happen given the number of other things that need to be done around here. Besides, my neighbor has lost a bunch of free-ranging chickens to hawks, and hers DO have lots of bushes and sheds to duck into.

We have so many raccoons here it's not even funny, and they sometimes hunt in daylight. Coyotes ditto. Reasonable number of foxes and wandering dogs. Also a good weasel population (which on the whole I am in favor of, since it keeps the mice and vole numbers down). There is no way I could have the time to *maintain* enough electric fencing to keep those things out of a sizeable area, that is to say bigger than any pen I could build. It just doesn't always work everywhere (not without serious losses -- and the aforementioned neighbor went from 12 hens to 2 in just five months last year, and that's with them being locked in at night).

Unfortunately some tradeoffs have to be made.

Pat

 

[Davaroo]

The old range shelters were made for about 50 birds. Remember these guys were in production. They normaly had 8-10 of these shelters per acre.

Your gonna have to make some adaptations for your place. In order to make it easy on you, I'd suggest something like pallets or other scrap wood/lumber - just bang something to gether. I;d recommend at least 6 feet off the fence, twice that if you can manage it.

My sister did it that way and it worked out well. She used pallets and piled brush on her chicken yard and added some shrubs. The idea is to make many small "islands" of protective cover.

Hope that helps and keep the fences strong

 

[calee]

Thank you, everybody! I made my husband read through this thread, too. So now we'll have to decide how many chickens & what kind of set up. And probably post a gazillion more questions as more ideas come up...