This spring, the grass in our chicken pastures was growing faster than the flock could eat it.  As a result, I left the chickens in each paddock a long time to eat all that lush greenery, and by the time the girls got done with all three paddocks, the earliest grazed paddock had gone to seed.  That depressed our summer growth extraordinarily, resulting in over-grazed pastures all through the summer and fall, despite the fact that (on paper) our pasture sizes seemed more than adequate to handle the chickens living there.

This problem is very common in improperly managed, rotational grazing settings.  Bill Murphy suggests three ways to deal with lush spring grazing:

Assuming we get the spring overflow figured out, what do we do about the summer and fall slowdown?  The solution is to have more paddocks.  With our recovery period estimated to be 44 days in October and the maximum occupation period being 6 days, we'd need 9 paddocks to keep from grazing each area too soon.  Although that sounds tricky, I suspect that we could subdivide our existing pastures into much smaller sections using temporary fencing, perhaps using pathways created by a hoop of remesh to lead the chickens to each area at the proper time.

Of course winter is another matter entirely.  Bill Murphy recommends stockpiling summer growth to feed your livestock in winter, but non-ruminants won't get much out of dried grass.  We'll continue to experiment with annual grains, and will have to get creative if the pastures look bare in midwinter.