Abstract

Current land management techniques practiced in conventional agriculture such as crop-livestock specialization, excessive tillage, and excess synthetic fertilizer application have degraded soil health and inhibited ecosystem services. Many sustainable agriculture management techniques offer potential to restore degraded soil and improve ecosystem services - one being silvopasture. Silvopasture, the incorporation of trees and livestock animals for land management, is a non-conventional agriculture technique intended to improve soil health and fertility by promoting a closed - loop nutrient cycle that maintains essential ecosystem services. To determine the potential improvement in soil health from poultry rotation, a treatment - control block study was conducted in a no - till silvopasture farm system in Western North Carolina. The silvopasture consists of broiler (meat) chickens rotated daily through fruit and hazelnut tree lanes during the spring, summer, and fall seasons. The purpose of rotation is for the poultry to have access to new bedding and grazing areas while fertilizing the field with their nutrient-rich waste, stimulating plant growth and improving soil nutrient content. Soil health parameters of bulk density, organic carbon content, and nitrogen and phosphorus concentrations were assessed monthly from May to August 2025. The treatment fields in the silvopasture poultry system exhibited decreased bulk density and increased soil carbon content relative to the non-poultry control fields. This indicated that the broiler silvopasture system did improve the soil fertility, particularly in the shallow surface soil. Longer term studies are recommended to determine if improvements in soil fertility last beyond a single agricultural season and to measure the rate of deeper subsoil carbon sequestration as a result of multiple years of this silvopasture system. However, evidence of short-term soil carbon increase combined with the potential for long-term carbon sequestration provide quantifiable insight into the efficacy of this sustainable agriculture practice in improving ecosystem services and soil health.

Keywords

Soil, Silvopasture, pastured poultry, Bulk Density, Soil Fertility, Poultry

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