Introducing poultry in orchards to restore ecological relationships in agricultural production systems

Summary

The main objective of this study was to identify the interrelationships between different aspects involved in a fundamentally new approach for rearing chickens. These aspects included integrating chickens in orchards, using mobile chicken coops, adjusting composition of diet, raising chicks by mother hens and using dual-purpose breeds. The most important finding of this study was that integrating poultry in orchards contributes to the re-establishment of natural living environments for chickens and enhances internal resource cycling within the farming system. Many of the potential benefits that result from introducing chickens orchards remain to be explored, but it can be concluded that this practice results in a lower input requirement for the farming system, while this increases diversity of outputs.