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Long-term irrational land uses have fatigued the fragile grasslands globally, causing severe environmental problems and socio-economic losses. This paper addresses the feasibility of a new land use of chicken farming (CF) from natural, economic and social perspectives for devising sustainable development in a semi-arid grassland in northern China. The results of a 4-year controlled field experiment showed that CF could amend the infertile soils through feces inputs as indicated by the improvements in soil properties. Although there were some damage to grass growth in the first year of the experiment, vegetation coverage and aboveground biomass increased greatly in the following years, particularly in the third and fourth years. A quarter of feedstuff could be saved by chickens farmed in grassland compared with cage-raised chickens, accompanied by biological control of pest outbreaks. The 4-year practice at large scales by local household suggested that CF could be a more profitable enterprise compared to the conventional land use of ruminate grazing. Besides, CF could diversify livelihoods, which will lighten the reliance on traditional livestock grazing and thus help improve local social-ecological development. It was concluded that CF could be an integrative ecosystem management to rehabilitate the degraded grassland ecosystems toward a sustainable way. Finally, we highlighted an essential integration of bottom-up mechanism among local households with top-down incentives created by governments for sustainable development of chicken farming in the degraded grassland regions. (c) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.