Chickens: The Layout

The chickens will forage in a three paddock system, with chickens running in different paddocks thoughout the year. It will look like this.



If Pad 2 is the best place to grow a fast cash crop like lettuce I can serve in my future restaurant, it will be best to remove the chickens from Area 2 around December 1^st, after four months of them cleaning and fertilizing it. At that time, with the chickens now foraging in Pad 3, I plant Pad 2 with lettuce and other vegetables and harvest them starting January 1^st when the tourist season begins in earnest. Around May, when the rain comes and tourists die down. I can simply throw down a new chicken forage planting to be grown in for when the chickens return to Pad 2 the next year.

While paragraph form may work better for some, this may work better for others and myself who is actually figuring this out for the first time as we read:

• August 1^st, 2016 to November 30^th: Chickens run in Paddock 2
  
• December 1^st Install sprinkler or drip tube in Paddock 2. Chickens run in Paddock 3.
  
• December 2^nd: Plant lettuce and veg  to serve restaurant in Paddock 2.
  
• June 1^st: Plant Paddock 2 with future chicken forage giving it two months to grow hopefully with rain.
  
• August 1^st, 2017 to November 30^th: Chickens again run in Paddock 2.
  

In this way, we can set goals and a calendar to get the most out of each area with the chickens doing the fertilization. Each paddock will have its own calendar (which I need to work on more), Paddock 3 may remain as coffee and fruit, but can still be planted beneath with a quick crop specifically for the chickens to tear through, while the birds don't damage but only fertlize established coffee and fruit trees.

A chicken planting is kind of unlimited, but here will include things like:

• Sorghum
  
• Amaranth
  
• Grasses
  
• White Raddishes
  
• Alfafa
  
• Squash
  

Paddocks give time to grow those plants for your chickens to eat. Paddocks beat a simple coop and run because it spreads out the chicken poop much more, moving it away from the centralized location of the coop. We hope the birds get as much nutrient and calorie from their plant and critter forage, but it seems agreed upon by the experts that a purchased (or grown) grain feed is still required in majority. I've gotta go back and talk to Shad about the mix he has developed for his hens because yesterday I found out it was more complicated, and had more ingredients, than I thought. Through animal alchemy, the purchased chicken feed really replaces buying fertilizer for the coffee. Another trick people talk about is essentially breeding black soldier flies so at some stage of their development, the chickens get to eat them. Turning food scraps into protein, more alchemy. Something like: leave the food scraps under wet cardboard for the right amount of time then lift the cardboard in a grand unveiling and let the chickens attack.

Here is what it looks in cross section (from the side), showing the slope of the land:

The slanted open areas above the fence and above the roost will fill in eventually with plant matter, wood chips, and chicken poop to level out the terrace with a compost pile mostly made by the chickens.  It happens because the fance is planted on contour so the debris has no place to go except to stack itself up.  This mix of greens and browns breaking down attracts insects which brings in protein for the foraging birds.  That compost or partial compost could be harvested out to garden beds and coffee orchard and reworked by the chickens with more organic matter harvested from trees and elsewhere on the farm..  

Other simplified options, with roost access to all areas:

When the birds are ready to lay eggs, they do so in a nest box, and two nest boxes bedded with some wood chips is sufficient for my quantity of birds up upward. I know this has been happening for a long time and you may already know this, but this was still new to me yesterday. All eight (say) birds share the two nest boxes. I think they lay at any time of day or night. Most birds go, sit in the box, lay an egg, and leave it there. I don't know how long they stay. The next bird may come in, sit down on that first egg, and lay another egg. That keeps happening. If a hen doesn't leave and is testy about giving up her egg, that's called 'broody'. If there was a rooster and the eggs got fertilized, one broody hen may incubate any number of eggs from any number of her sister hens, and after the right amount of time, they hatch more or less in a group. These hens lay a brown egg, and hopefully lots of them.

Links:
Free E-book: The Working Chicken
Shad's article on deeply bedded runs for happy, healthy chickens in smaller spaces

Stay tuned for a future post where I publish a diagram with color.  Photos still to follow of these beautiful and amiable birds.