From the Pastures

“You need to teach that bird to be a chicken” those were the words of a poultry mentor when we were having a problem with a bantam. At the time I thought he was a little crazy, and that chickens were a little weird. However, he was right, similar to raising children you are in charge of the environment and need to encourage a healthy lifestyle. That is our motto when it comes to raising birds on pasture, create an environment where our birds behave like chickens living their best farm life.

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 There are so many opinions, organizations, authors, and presenters that have developed “the perfect plan” to pasture raise birds. Some of them are quite die hard in their theories and make a lot of money telling farmers what to do, very similar to some parenting books I have read in the past, you receive praise if you do it our way or scolded if you adjust to fit your needs. Around here, we focus on what we know from experience, both ours and an amazing group of poultry folks that help without their hand out.

So here is our operation, our birds are welcomed into the brooder barn for a few weeks, no cookie cutter time to get them out because the weather plays a part and we have to adjust to ensure the bird is safe and healthy. Then they sleep in a “hoop house”, you have heard the saying when the hens come home to roost, yep, they have a home. They have a traditional pasture to roam, this is where we work our magic! It is believed by several organizations that meat birds get to lazy to roam pastures, well they do if you don’t encourage exercise, kind of like that teenager holding down your couch. Adjustments are made to feeding routines, pasture locations (July/Aug we aim to be under the trees) and more to ensure that the pastures are explored and our chickens exercise daily.

Raising them this way is not always smooth sailing! Sometimes, they don’t want to go home to roost and it takes a team to put them to bed. Predators are always an issue and our dogs have to rise to the occasion and once a temporary fence came down and 150 birds come to find Gary in the garage! There are easier ways but watching them enjoy the pastures, running after a bug or excited to hear the 4Wheeler coming (meals on wheels) is worth some hiccups along the way.

I often tell customers that we raise our birds the way they did when our turn of the century farm was established, on green grass and under blue skies. They are pasture raised with traditional values, they are the number one priority of our operation and we take pride in our experience, knowledge and pasture raised birds.