Maximizing 3 acres

[Redbirdfarms]

Hey guys 1st time raising chickens.. doing cornish cross on pasture in a chicken tractor doing daily moves and I've been trying to do the math on how many birds I can do a year on 3 acres but I cant for the life of me find the answer to how long after my chickens run over one area can I use that area again while keeping the pasture healthy? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Ozarkoak]

A whole lot if you are going to devote the 3 acres to nothing but meat birds. I mean a grip of chickens. https://www.plamondon.com/wp/how-many-chickens-per-acre/ he says 500 per acre

 

[Percheron chick]

Lots of variables.
Climate, rainfall, grasses, soil, management, stocking rate...
With horses the general rule is 30 days. But conditions must be close to ideal with plenty of water. Dryland like I have now is a year.

 

[saysfaa]

There are too many variables to give a useful answer. Starting with your climate, season, and weather.

Also starting with whether you want the chickens to get much food from the pasture vs expecting them to get fresh air, sunshine, exercise, dirt to scratch in, and so on but not expecting them to eat much less feed than they would if they were not on pasture.

And whether you can flex with the weather - intensive rotational grazing is the term to use in searches. Most info will be on cattle, some on sheep, goats, pigs, and poultry. The principals are the same though. You move the grazing animals more often during the spring flush than during the dry high summer. Or make the paddocks smaller. Or put more animals in each paddock.

A whole lot if you are going to devote the 3 acres to nothing but meat birds. I mean a grip of chickens. https://www.plamondon.com/wp/how-many-chickens-per-acre/ he says 500 per acre ...

That website is helpful. Thank you.

It says 50 hens per acre produce about the most manure in a year that the land can absorb in per year without a lot of input from people. It would absorb more if you compost it. Or even if you just work it under with a --- plow ?? (why would he plow it rather than disk it?)... meaties take 6 to 8 weeks, so if your season is 8 months long - that is about 500 meaties per acre per year.

I wonder if the 50 hens per acre is limited to that climate with its 8 month growing season. I doubt much manure is absorbed by frozen ground. Maybe it is offset by longer days during the growing season we do have? I don't know.

 

[samanthaoverton]

I have my turkeys in a mobile. I move them every other day. I have a lone rooster in a wire enclose and try to move him everyday or every other day at the most. So they don't rip up the grass much. I plan to reseed after I mow. That way I can rotate seed a little and rotate. Turkeys are sweet but there poo is worse then chickens so I'm glad I have those guys in a mobile. I will never have a dinner so sweet as those turkeys are . They really are darlings. But alas dressing and cranberry sauce call my name and I simply must put one of them on the side..

 

[NatJ]

I cant for the life of me find the answer to how long after my chickens run over one area can I use that area again while keeping the pasture healthy?

I suggest you start with a small number of meat birds (1 to 3 moveable pens) the first year, and watch how your own pastures perform. You can use that to work out how much to expand in future years. You can almost certainly go over each area at least once a year, given that you are calling it "pasture" instead of "desert." You can probably do it more often than that.

When you try it, you might find something like one of these possibilities:
You might move each patch of meat birds onto a fresh spot every day for their whole life, then be able to start the same pattern again with the next batch. Or you might be able to run the first batch back over some of the same areas they already used. Or you might need to move the second batch over fresh ground, because the first ground isn't yet ready again.

In general, chickens eat grass, scratch, and poop. Too much of that kills the grass. The right amount makes the grass grow faster. Grass also grows faster at the right temperature, with the right amount of rain. So you can probably re-use the same area sooner at some times of the year, and wait longer at other times of the year.

You probably don't want to raise meat chickens in the middle of winter, and maybe not in the middle of a hot summer (depending on climate.) So the whole pasture would get a rest at that time, but the grass won't be growing well anyway when the temperature is too cold or too hot.

 

[Battlepants]

TBH, I would probably not start with "What can I do?" but rather "What do I need?" This being said, if you were to max out your 3 acres with 150 Cornish X AND have brooding going on while growing (starting more chickens when your existing batch is about 5 weeks so you have new birds to immediately replace your harvest), this would effectively be 150 birds harvested every 5 weeks. Sounds like the average dressed out weight is about 6 pounds. SO, with those numbers, that rolls out to be 900 pounds of meat per 5 weeks or 25 pounds of meat per day.

I don't know much about your family size, but I highly doubt you will be able to come anywhere close to consuming all this meat.

What I would probably do in your situation is diversify - raise batches of ~30 Cornish X (180 pounds in 8 weeks from arrival to harvest) and also plant fruit trees, vegetable/herb gardens. In addition to your vegis, you could also look into growing things that will offset your feed costs. Cornish X eat a LOT of food and growing some sunflowers might help you save a few bucks with their growing process.

 

[Ozarkoak]

From what I heave read from him plowing, disking, poop boards are all a setup for failure. You can only turn so much poop into the soil before you are just turning poop into poop. Before long your land is inhospitable for plant growth. He said it will look great for a season or two then its starts falling flat. He is pretty set on 50 hens per acre. This is how we set up our system. https://www.plamondon.com/sare.pdf. Works really good we use range feeders that we built moveable fences around to keep the sheep out. Our roosting house is small and only 4 feet tall. We are 100% at the mercy of our birds though. We have to get up and let them out at 5:30 every morning and lock them up at 9pm. Our meat birds we run in a 10x10 tractor moving daily it will fit 40 or so birds with no problems and you could probably add more. We normally run the birds in spring but we have run them in the fall too. This year we got the birds in end of February and finished them the very end of April.

 

[Battlepants]

Something else that might be worth considering is your neighbors. I know you said that you have 3 acres, but I assume that this butts up to other 3 acre lots that have other people living in them. If you are were max out your production here, the production of waste will absolutely be offensive to the neighbors. Nobody wants to live next to an industrial animal farm with waste and smell spilling over onto their property. Please keep this in mind with your planning.

 

[NatJ]

You can only turn so much poop into the soil before you are just turning poop into poop. Before long your land is inhospitable for plant growth.

I agree.

That is a good reason to move them across pasture, and not plow it up-- grass that is already growing can use the nutrients better than bare soil or tiny seedlings can. And looking at how fast the grass grew back, and how healthy it looks, can be a gauge for how soon the chickens can come back to that area.

Of course, how many birds per acre is still a good question, and I think it is also affected by how long they are there.
50 hens all year long might produce the same amount of manure as 200 meat birds for 1/4 year. Although I'm not sure how Cornish Cross manure production actually compares to layers-- probably less per day in the first weeks when the meaties are babies, but maybe more per day at the end when they are so big and growing so fast. It may even out, or it might still be less or more than having a laying hen for the same 8 weeks.