Why Pastured Poultry Makes a Good First Enterprise for Small Farms
Every new regenerative farm runs into the same problem. The things that make a farm resilient, like healthy soil, trees and a grazing herd, take years to build. But the bills don't wait.
That's why so many small farms start with poultry. Richard Perkins of Ridgedale Farm in Sweden calls pastured broilers "one of the most flexible and profitable ways to start in farming." It's a strong claim, so we checked it against what other farmers and researchers report. Our conclusion: poultry is a very good first enterprise, as long as a few conditions are in place.
Why do so many regenerative farms start with poultry?
It's cheap to start compared with the alternatives. A dairy, a sheep flock or an orchard needs a large investment and years before it pays. Poultry doesn't. Pens, a brooder, netting and water lines are modest investments, and most of them move with you. Processing is often the biggest cost, and how much it takes depends on your local options.
You get feedback fast. A broiler batch takes only weeks. Within one season you know your costs, your losses and whether customers come back.
It fits land you don't own. Mobile coops, netting and water lines move with you. You can run poultry on rented land, or behind someone else's cattle. That's how Perkins originally planned to start farming near Stockholm, when he couldn't afford land.
People already eat chicken and eggs. Perkins would rather raise geese, which suit his pastures, but there was no market for them. So he started with familiar products and built a customer base first. His advice is simple: produce what people eat.
Broilers or layers: which should come first?
"Poultry" covers two quite different enterprises. Both work as a first step, but they work very differently.
| Broilers (meat) | Layers (eggs) | |
|---|---|---|
| Time to first income | Weeks | Months (sooner with point-of-lay pullets) |
| Season | Often summer only | Year-round |
| Income pattern | In batches | Weekly |
| Hardest part | Slaughter and processing | Daily collection, cleaning and overwintering |
| Labour | Peaks on slaughter days | Steady, every day |
Many farms end up running both. On some farms, eggs are the way into people's homes: customers come every week for eggs, and then order broilers too. On others, eggs are the main business. Either way, egg margins are thin unless you price and run them well.
What do the birds do for the land?
Moved every day, poultry spread manure evenly, scratch open the surface and eat insects and greens. Behind cattle, they break up dung pats and eat the fly larvae in them.
Farmers who run these systems report clear improvements:
- Perkins credits his laying hens as "primarily responsible" for the rapid improvement of what were the worst pastures in his village. His hens follow the cows a few days behind, when fly larvae in the dung peak.
- Joel Salatin's Polyface farm runs its Eggmobile a few days behind the cattle to keep flies down and keep the pasture "more sanitized."
These are farmers' observations. Research on soil effects is still catching up, so judge it on your own land: take photos and soil tests before you start.
Can pastured poultry pay, and how do you sell it?
Yes, but mainly if you sell direct.
A 2026 study in Poultry Science modelled a small pasture broiler farm. Sold at supermarket commodity prices, it lost money. The same farm, with the same birds and the same work, made a solid profit selling direct at pasture-raised prices. The study also found labour was the biggest factor in profit.
That matches what farmers say. Pasture helps, but the birds still need bought-in feed, and they cost more to raise than barn birds, so you can't compete on price. You compete on quality, freshness and trust, and that only pays when you sell straight to the people who eat it.
Perkins puts it bluntly: selling is half the work. Today, selling direct is much easier than it used to be.
- A simple webshop with pre-orders. Customers order and pay before the batch, then choose a collection day or delivery slot. You know your demand before you buy chicks.
- Instagram and Facebook as your shop window. Show the daily moves, the birds on fresh grass, the coop following the cattle. Many farmers find that once customers see the egg mobile and taste the eggs, they subscribe. Joel Salatin's marketing advice boils down to one line: "All you need is for people to eat the chicken one time."
- Eggs as a subscription, broilers as batches. A weekly egg box keeps customers coming back. Broilers sell well as pre-ordered batches, priced per bird, fresh or frozen.
What makes it hard?
Slaughter and processing. For broilers, this is often the bottleneck. Slaughter and packing can take a big share of all the work in a broiler enterprise. How hard it is depends heavily on where you farm. Some EU countries allow small-scale on-farm slaughter for direct sale; others require an approved facility, as Perkins needed in Sweden. Find out your options before you order a single chick.
Predators, weather and bird flu. Foxes, martens and birds of prey all want your flock. Heat waves and storms need watching. In the EU, bird flu housing orders can force birds indoors for weeks, so your setup needs a plan for that.
Time and experience. Birds need moving, feeding and checking every day, and weekends away need cover. Beginners also lose far more birds in early batches than experienced growers do. Count on the first year being mostly a learning year.
Where does good equipment pay for itself?
If labour is the biggest factor in profit, then any chore you repeat every day for months matters more than most one-off costs. That's where good equipment saves the most time.
On a layer farm, collecting and cleaning eggs is the chore that never stops. Olof at Varva runs three flocks of 500 hens, in egg mobiles on pasture in summer and fixed housing in winter. He uses our Rollaway Nest Box System, fitted with optional actuators that automate the nest floors. Without that, he says, "the eggs quickly become dirty." With it, the eggs come out clean, and by Varva's own estimate that saves about an hour a day per flock of 500 hens.
We built the Rollaway Nest Box System for this. It's modular, so you add segments to match your flock, and it works in mobile coops and fixed houses alike, so the same system follows your hens from summer pasture to winter housing. It's semi-automated: sloped floors roll each egg out of the hens' reach onto a belt that you turn with a hand crank to bring the eggs to one collection point. You collect clean eggs instead of washing dirty ones, and you can add actuators later if you want the nests to close automatically at night. It was developed and refined together with working pasture egg farms like Varva. For the details, see Rollaway Nest Box System for Eggmobiles Explained.
The other chore that never stops is the daily move. Our Hoop Coop keeps it simple: it's low cost, low tech and does its job. Compared with typical mobile coops on wheels, there are no axles, automation or electronics to buy, break or repair. It's a robust metal frame on skids that takes minutes to move with a tractor or other vehicle, and needs little or no wood, so there's little to maintain. Roll-up sides let you control ventilation, and a wide walk-in door means you can carry feed or egg crates in with both hands full. It works for layers and broilers, and the Rollaway Nest Box System hangs from its ceiling, so the two work as one system.
A simple rule: find the chore that eats the most hours on your farm and fix that first. But no equipment replaces a sales channel or a place to slaughter.
How should you start?
- Sell before you buy. Open pre-orders and size your first season to what's already sold.
- Settle slaughter and local rules first. For broilers, know exactly where and how your birds will be processed. For eggs, know the registration and labelling rules.
- Invest where the work repeats. Moving, watering, feeding and egg collection happen every day. That's where better equipment pays back fastest.
FAQ
How much land do I need?
Less than you might think. Because the birds move to fresh ground every day, a modest area of pasture can carry a commercial flock. How much depends on flock size, pasture growth and how often you return to the same ground.
How long until it's profitable?
Broilers can pay back quickly if you sell direct. Most farmers say it takes a few years to get losses down and the system running smoothly.
Sources
- Richard Perkins, Regenerative Agriculture: A Practical Whole Systems Guide to Making Small Farms Work (2019), chapters on pastured broilers and egg mobiles
- Joel Salatin, Pastured Poultry Profits (1993), chapter on marketing
- Alves et al. 2026, Poultry Science: pasture-based vs conventional broiler budgets
- SARE: Profitable Poultry, Potential for Profit
- Mother Earth News: the Polyface Eggmobile