Soil fertility is key when running any agricultural enterprise. Ensuring your soil can keep providing you with a solid return year after year requires investment of some kind.
On our little farm, we invest our time rather than capital. We do this by having our poultry raised on pasture; with fresh pasture daily being the key.
Using a chicken tractor has a multitude of merits;
– reduction in feed requirements of between 20-30%
– extra protein for the birds due to insect forage
– improved bird health
– clean eggs as the birds lay on fresh grass daily
– improved soil fertility
– less labour to spread manure (the chickens do it naturally
– excess seed from food trough grows into feed plants for next tractor run
It is incredible the difference to pasture a chicken tractor makes. Here is a small section where the birds were only 4 weeks ago.

And this is what the rear of the chicken tractors look like after they have been moved each day. You can see the successive patches of cleared pasture from the birds.

Gotta love chickens raised to express their natural chicken-ness!