08/09/2026
The grass tells the story. 🌱🐔
These photos are from a section of pasture where one of our chicken caravans was previously sitting.
The caravan has been out of here for a couple of weeks now, and since moving the girls on we’ve completely locked this section up, no chickens, no cattle, no sheep and, as much as we can manage it, no pesky roos helping themselves either. 😂🦘
And just look at the regrowth.
You can quite literally see exactly where the chickens have been by following those deep, lush green patches through the paddock. 💚
This is one of the parts of pasture-raised farming that we absolutely LOVE watching happen.
While the chickens are in an area, they’re doing far more than simply eating grass. They’re scratching through the surface, eating insects and plant material, disturbing old pasture and depositing manure as they move around the caravan.
Chicken manure is naturally rich in nutrients including nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium; all important nutrients for plant growth. Their scratching also helps break up and redistribute manure and organic material across the soil surface.
But there’s a really important second half to the system:
REST.
If animals continually have access to the same pasture, they can keep coming back to those fresh new shoots the moment they appear. The plant never gets the opportunity to properly rebuild itself.
Instead, once our chickens move forward, we can shut that section away and leave it alone.
No grazing.
No nibbling off the new growth.
Just sunlight, soil, nutrients, moisture and TIME. 🌱
The rain we’ve had over the last week has certainly helped kick things along too and the response has been incredible.
This is why we’re so excited about where we’re heading with our planned cell grazing system.
Breaking the farm into smaller controlled grazing areas will allow us to become much more deliberate about where animals graze, how long they stay and just as importantly how long that pasture rests afterwards.
Rather than animals continually picking their favourite areas, we’ll be able to graze a section, move them forward and then properly lock that pasture away for recovery.
And once our farm-wide water infrastructure is completed, we’ll have another tool in the toolbox: irrigation. 💧🌱
That will give us far greater control over pasture recovery when rainfall doesn’t arrive exactly when we need it.
The goal isn’t simply to have animals living on grass.
It’s to build a system where the animals actually help us grow better grass.
Graze ➡️ fertilise ➡️ move ➡️ rest ➡️ water when needed ➡️ REGROW. 🌱
And eventually, with cattle, sheep and chickens moving through our planned rotation, each species will play its own part in that cycle.
We’re only at the beginning of putting the full system together, but little results like this are pretty exciting to see.
The pasture is already showing us what’s possible. 💚
Watch this space… there is a LOT more to come. 👀🌱🐔🐄🐑
