Thank you Arina, for the iinformation.
I have seen such systems where the chickens have plenty of habitats because of the agroforest situation, and where there is an abundance of earthworms ( which is the main motive here, to eliminate the cost of purchased feed, growing corn locally) in a rotational system. What I am trying to do now is increase the scale of such successful small-scale systems , to make them commercial instead of the horrors of commercial egg systems we see today. Even the commercial "organic" systems only offer bits of grass to them here- we are proposing to create systems rich enough in variety that the chicken can fulfill most of its needs, with the exception of some grain...
If you read my post a bit more carefully, what I am proposing is a total area of 17 ( 8 pens of 2 meters, and one central pen of 1 meter) square meters per head, which I consider to be quite generous.
We have to be practical with what these systems cost, as I am proposing this to farmers who today have poorly-managed freerange flocks who lay eggs God knows where, dry up the land by excessive scratching, and are very subject to predators due to lack of protection, which would be provided by the fencing, in the case of the main predator here...
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