Do you want to raise pastured poultry but only have a little bit of space? Here are your options.

What started out as a small flock of laying hens quickly turned into something much bigger. First came the incubator, and then our Rhode Island Red rooster and our Barred Rock hens began to produce the Red Rock cross that became our pastured poultry of choice. Our birds ranged over the pasture, following behind the sheep and the horses and growing quickly. After a messy day of processing at the end of the season, the birds were in the freezer and we were thrilled with our first pastured poultry experiment.

The joy was short lived. We relocated to a smaller property with less than an acre of land. The smaller lot posed several problems for our meat bird dreams, but we were determined to find a way to raise meat birds on pasture with limited space. Here is what we discovered.

You Can Raise Meat Birds on Pasture with Limited Space, but not all Birds

Not all meat birds are created equal. Turkeys were too big and produced too much waste for us to rotate efficiently, and they did not do well in the smaller enclosure we built for them. Our chickens did fine, and duck, quail, and other smaller poultry are all suitable choices for smaller spaces.

Finding the Ratio of Chickens to Pasture

The tricky part about raising poultry on limited pasture is figuring out the ratio of birds to pasture—specifically, your pasture. This is dependent on several variables, most importantly the quality of your forage. Grass alone is insufficient to support your birds' grazing needs, so if you plan to raise meat birds you will definitely want to plant a mix of grasses and legumes. Pastured poultry pioneer Joel Salatin recommends planting a mix of grasses and clovers, including native grasses, broadleaves, clovers, chicories, oats, and rye for optimal foraging.

The best way to determine the number of birds your pasture can support is to start out small. You can always add more birds next season, but subtracting prematurely is a waste of money and over stocking could damage your pasture. Many pastured poultry growers supplement their birds' grazing with grain. This helps satisfy their nutritional needs and increases the growth rate of the birds, and can be a good compromise for growers with limited pasture space.

Housing

There are two ways to raise pastured poultry: moveable coops or poultry netting. Both have advantages and disadvantages. Chicken coops, also called chicken tractors, are relatively inexpensive to build but need to be moved on a regular basis. Netting offers birds more ranging opportunities, but does not offer the same level of predator protection as an enclosed coop.

We decided to go with netting and a night time enclosure for our small operation. The enclosure was also big enough to serve as full-time housing, which proved useful during a particularly dry summer when our small pasture did not regenerate quickly enough to support our birds full-time.

A dual system like the one we used also allows you to restrict access to your pastures. Rather than having your birds on pasture all day, letting them out for half of the day or even just a few hours can still give you some of the benefits of pastured poultry even if you can’t support a full flock of ranging broilers.

Pasture Rotation

Small pastures pose another problem for growers: pests and diseases. Pasturing birds on the same pasture year after year creates a build-up of pests and diseases that is potentially damaging to your flock. Ideally, birds should be rotated off of a pasture at least every other year, if not every few years. This allows the parasites time to die off, but is not always possible for smaller scale operations.

If you can, divide your pasture into two lots and only rotate through one lot a year. The next year, switch to the other lot and let the first one recover, or try growing forage on your property and feeding it to your birds in a smaller, confined yard instead of letting them graze.

Supplemental Feed

According to the Rodale Institute, chickens cannot live on pasture alone. There are several routes you can take to supplementing your birds’ forage with feed, including working with a nutritionist, growing your own feed, or purchasing a pre-mixed feed from a local feed store.

If you opt to buy a pre-mixed feed like we did, either out of convenience, price, or personal preference, make sure you choose an appropriate feed for your birds. As chicks, they will need a chick starter feed, and then you will need a “finisher” feed. Layer feeds have different nutritional compositions and are therefore not appropriate for your broilers.

Raising meat birds on limited pasture is not only possible, it is a great way to introduce home grown meat into your family’s diet. Adapt conventional pastured poultry guidelines to your property and experiment with the set-up that works best for you and your birds and enjoy fresh, local chicken this summer.