Thanks for all that great information. All this planning is getting me really excited to start expanding my flock
I'd advise to go slow and low on stocking rates. Start small and see how they affect the terrain for a year, then add cautiously. The biggest problem for people keeping chickens nowadays is the resulting poor health of the flock due to over stocked soils, creating an unhealthy load of parasites and pathogens on the land that the birds cannot escape.
I've kept a flock of 30 on an acre of really good grass and orchard before but I would not have added more than that number if I had wanted the soils to remain healthy, the grass to remain lush and the bugs to not become too depleted.
On my current place I've got 20 acres, but only 3 acres of meadow...but the grass and soils are not as high quality as the one acre I was using previously, though it has a wider diversity of forage due to the woods ringing the meadow. Even with that, I'd not run more than 50 here on a regular basis....usually I'll stock around 15 in the winter but those numbers climb to the 40s after spring hatching and continue that high until fall butchering time. Any higher than those numbers on a permanent basis would seriously stress the land here and it's harder to come back from that than it is to get there.
Healthy soils yield healthy flocks....if you over stock your land, the health of the flock starts to suffer. Word to the wise.
