Shiying of Brilliant Meadows wanted to understand the contribution of integrating pastured meat chickens into her garden area that was seeded with cover crop and how this would effect the fertility requirements of future vegetable production. As the chickens grazed across lanes over their grow-out period, she sampled cover crop biomass and took soil nitrate samples before and after grazing to better understand their impacts on nitrogen cycling over time.

• Grazing chickens roughly doubled soil nitrate levels compared to no-chicken control lanes.
• Soil nitrate levels rose again weeks after the chickens were in the space, emphasizing the priority to reseed a cover crop in the fall to capture the nitrogen from the chickens and keep it cycling in her garden.