Pastured Poultry Talk

When you put chickens or turkeys out on pasture, there are two fundamental questions you need to consider. Why pasture and how do you house the birds?

If you fully grasp the why of the pasture model, you won't take shortcuts in your housing and implementation. I'm primarily talking about the foundational principle of movement to fresh pasture approach that pastured poultry requires. If you choose to build a strong foundation on the principles of pastured poultry, then your system becomes healthier and more capable of surviving challenges.

There are a lot of companies that compromise the pastured poultry model today where fresh forage is replaced with access to more space. I spend a lot of time working through these issues in the podcast episode because it's important to start off with a clear vision, and that vision will inform your shelter approach.

Pasture Shelter Considerations

There are a near infinite number of designs and modifications you can make to a pastured poultry shelter. And if you go shopping for a shelter without having a purpose, you may get sidetracked easily. For example, when I built my first shelter, I just did it like Joel Salatin, but I didn't follow his instructions. That turned out to be a less than ideal shelter for our farm. After I got some experience, I realized I made a bad choice, and I chose something different, which was a smaller, lighter hoop house.

I expect you will go through multiple design iterations, but my goal in the episode to have you make a good choice, so your don't find yourself needing to radically change your approach after a single season.

Here are the pasture shelter and management practices I cover in the podcast episode.

• Provide species appropriate shelters
• Protect from weather (including shade) and predators
• Make flock movement to fresh rooted-in soil vegetation possible
• Avoid static runs and continuous grazing
• Ensure ventilation and protect from drafts
• Add roosts where appropriate
• Add nest boxes for layers

I spend a fair amount of time discussing stocking density guidelines and the nuances you may encounter there. The quick guideline for a daily moved shelter where the birds are confined to a floorless shelter are as follows:

• Broilers: 1.5 to 2 sq. ft. to 8 weeks; 3+ sq. ft. at 16 weeks
• Layers: 3-5 sq. ft.
• Turkeys: 5 to 7 sq. ft.

The reason you need to know stocking densities is so that you can size your shelter appropriately and build/buy the appropriate amount. When you move to a day range setup, the stocking density inside the house becomes different.

Using layers as an example day range scenario, your housing may provide one square foot of space plus your additional pasture space. I discuss the reason behind one square foot in more detail in the episode.

There's no magic formula for the paddock size. 108 square feet is a myth and a fake requirement; it's not synonymous to pasture raised. Just know that if you give your hens 20 square foot of space in the paddock, you will be able to move slightly less frequently than if you only give them 10 square feet of pasture space. The model is based on movement, not access. So, time the frequency of movement to the impact on the pasture. Dirt is not your goal.

Pasture Shelter Designs

I've spent time assembling resources, such as guides, how-tos, and links to pastured poultry coop designs over at American Pastured Poultry Producers Association. View pastured poultry shelter designs.

If you need step-by-step and cut-by-cut instructions, it's hard to beat John Suscovich's Stress Free Chicken Tractor booklet. You can purchase a copy directly from John. If you purchase any of his books or packets, I get a commission (you pay the same price).

Learn more about John's Stress Free Chicken Tractor Plans.

John also appeared on Pastured Poultry Talk to tell his story.

https://pasturedpoultrytalk.com/2015/11/21/ppt029-growing-into-a-farm-with-john-suscovich-2/

Relevant Episodes

https://pasturedpoultrytalk.com/2015/07/17/ppt012-whats-with-the-immaculate-chicken-houses-2/

https://pasturedpoultrytalk.com/2017/09/18/ppt056-designing-movable-shelters-for-pasture-raised-broilers-and-layers-with-pastured-life-farm/

https://pasturedpoultrytalk.com/2016/03/21/ppt037-pastured-poultry-is-more-than-dirt/

https://pasturedpoultrytalk.com/2015/08/28/ppt018-broiler-chicken-shelter-density-and-data-collection-2/

https://pasturedpoultrytalk.com/2019/04/04/latest-greenwashing-craze-pasturewashing-poultry-ppt083/

https://pasturedpoultrytalk.com/2017/12/29/does-the-failed-organic-livestock-and-poultry-practices-regulation-matter-to-pastured-poultry/

Sponsors

Did you know a commercial meat chicken or turkey may spend up to 40% of it's life inside a brooder? Layers, by comparison, spend approximately 5% of their first lay-cycle in the brooder.

For all our poultry species, the time in the brooder is critical to the long term health and productivity of the flock with an emphasis placed on the first three days of life. These first few days, especially for meat birds, is an important time for the bird to establish healthy eating patterns and appetites.

Brooding, especially as you scale up, is typically the most obvious weak link in a pastured poultry production system, and that's really counter-intuitive. You may think that taking care of a chicken inside a building is easy because you alleviate the most weather and predator risks of pasture. Inside the brooder, your job is to raise a young chick or poult with an immature immune system, get it the proper nutrition, keep it comfortably warm, and maintain the brooder environment amid constantly changing weather. And you do it without environment controls inside the brooder.

In this brooder environment, there's a commingling of factors that makes the brooder time challenging. In the podcast episode, I discuss the relationship between heat, ventilation, stocking density, bedding, and more.

You mess up the time in the brooder at your own risk, which is to say, this is one of the most important phases of your production that you can master, and that's why I recorded this podcast episode.

In this episode...

• Time in the brooder by species
• Brooder heat
  • Have a backup heat
  • Ohio Brooder
  • Rules of thumb for adjusting heat
  • Poorly feathered birds
• Harden off the chicks before going to pasture
• Brooder space for chicks and turkey poults
  • 1/4 sq ft per chick per week
• Rounded corners
• Feed and water management in the brooder
• Bedding management and types
• Clean, dry, and warm is the key to brooder.
• Ventilation and drafts
• predators in the brooder
• A note about coccidiosis

Receiving Chicks into the Brooder

Our friends at Fertrell did a webinar training on Receiving Chicks that covers some of the same information as the podcast episode, but it also focuses heavily on those first three days of life in your care. You can't learn too much about your brooder.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvjrK8XZAKo Alyssa Walsh from Fertrell discusses receiving chicks

Feeding your pastured poultry is a huge topic, and it can quickly overwhelm you. As a beginner to pastured poultry, I provide nine tips for feeding your flock that can help you get off to the right start. I'll cover universal feeding advice as well as specific information for meat birds, layers, and turkeys. All this advice can summed up into a larger objective statement.

Buy the highest quality (not the cheapest) feed you can and make it a mission to understand the nutrition requirements of each type of poultry you raise based on it's age. The episode covers the beginner level approach to selecting feed and doesn't dive into the actual nutrient levels.

Request your Feed Guidelines Cheat Sheet at this link, and it will be emailed to you. The cheat sheet referenced in the podcast episode outlines how you can feed your flock. It primarily matches the feed type and protein level by the poultry species and age.

1. Don't buy cheap feed
2. Pasture's role in feeding your birds
3. Tips for Sourcing Feed
   • buy from local independent mill first
   • know feed types: organic, conventional, non-gmo
4. Feed chickens based on age and type
   • How to feed a broiler
   • How to feed a layer
   • Make a turkey starter ration from a broiler feed
   • hard boiled eggs for turkeys
5. Provide enough feeder space so that everybody eats
6. Water consumption drives for feed consumption
   • Will you drink your chickens' water?
7. Feed supplements - grit and oyster shell
8. What influence does feed have on production: lay rate and feed conversion?
9. Tips for feeding Cornish cross
10. Bonus Tip: Watch out for this sure fire sign of Mycotoxins

This episode of Pastured Poultry Talk sponsored by Windy Meadows Hatchery. Windy Meadows Hatchery supplies day old broiler chicks from their family run hatchery.

If you're looking for a supplier for your chicks, talk to the people who are directly responsible for hatching and shipping your birds. Tell them you heard about them from Pastured Poultry Talk. Contact Windy Meadows Hatchery.

If you're looking for fences that work from the people who use them everyday, contact Premier at 800-282-6631 or visit their website to request an informational catalog.

Badger's Millside Farm is a distributor of Ready-to-Lay Pullets. Ask about full beak, non-gmo, certified organic, soy free, and more. Learn more.

This episode has a downloadable worksheet to help you apply the concepts discussed in the podcast episode to your situation. Get it by email here.

I assume that when it comes to choosing a breed of chicken for your pastured poultry flock, you will have a favorite breed. As you research birds, you'll make a list of potential options that would appear to be great birds. Finding information about chickens on the internet is easy; however, my goal is to give you a way to judge the economic impact on your pastured poultry business, not as a way to recommend one choice over another, but as way to set expectations and and calibrate your choice of chicken to your actual goals.

Evaluating the Genetic Potential of Breeds

Every single meat bird or laying hen you raise has a potential. As a manager, you either bring out that potential or you suppress it. We'll talk about how you can bring out the genetic potential of your flock in the following episodes. For now, know what the genetic potential of your chicken choices are. Every breeder has this information for meat birds and for layers, and if you're buying heritage breeds from someone, think twice about buying chickens from a breeder who cannot articulate important concepts such as feed conversion, carcass size, growout time, and lay rate.

But don't rely on the book knowledge. At some point you need to do the work. You need to measure your actual results, compare it against the potential, and then use that information to make decisions about management, pricing, markets, etc.

Choosing a Meat Bird for Your Pastured Poultry Flock

Nobody can tell you what the perfect meat bird is for your flock. Instead you're going to need to research a breed, match up the breed to your business goals, raise the birds, and then evaluate your results.

In the podcast episode, we dig deep into the genetic potential of several popular meat birds and extrapolate that information to get a price per pound for labor and feed.

• How much more does it cost you in feed to raise a Freedom Ranger compared to a Cornish Cross?
• How about the Robust White?
• How does the feed and labor of the Freedom Ranger compare the labor of the Delaware?

I cover all those questions and more in the episode, and in the accompanying worksheet. The worksheet provides a reference for all the values and explains the calculations.

Things to know when choosing and evaluating meat chickens.

• Expected growout time
• Expected carcass weight
• Feed Conversion Ratio

Choosing a Layer Breed for Your Pastured Poultry Flock

The layer specific analysis picks up at 42 minute.

On the podcast episode, I run through similar comparisons as the meat bird and try to really hone in on the labor and feed cost of a dozen eggs. For layers, the golden metric is lay rate, which is a calculation of how many eggs a hen lays over a period of time. For example, ten hens with an 80% lay rate will produce eight eggs per day.

Things to know when evaluating layers:

• Expected age of lay
• Expected lay rate
• The amount of feed to make one dozen eggs
• The plan for dealing with the boys

In this episode:

• All breeds have genetic potential
• I'm not a cornish cross fan boy, but if you mame your birds you're at fault
• It's hard to change the birds. It's much easier to change how you manage them
• Compare production data for Cornish Cross, Freedom Ranger, SASSO, Robust White, and Delaware
• Evaluate cost per pound in terms of feed and labor
• Things to know when buying meat birds
• Compare production data for Layers (red sexlinks and heritage) (timestamp 42:02)
• The male problem
• How lay rate affects margin
• The "economy of scale" of chickens
• Listener question about managing a hybrid from two heritage birds

I created an editable PDF worksheet to help you work through the concepts in this episode. Get it by email.

This episode of Pastured Poultry Talk sponsored by Windy Meadows Hatchery. Windy Meadows Hatchery supplies day old broiler chicks from their family run hatchery.

If you're looking for a supplier for your chicks, talk to the people who are directly responsible for hatching and shipping your birds. Tell them you heard about them from Pastured Poultry Talk. Contact Windy Meadows Hatchery.

If you're looking for fences that work from the people who use them everyday, contact Premier at 800-282-6631 or visit their website to request an informational catalog.

Badger's Millside Farm is a distributor of Ready-to-Lay Pullets. Ask about full beak, non-gmo, certified organic, soy free, and more. Learn more.

Download the worksheet for this episode to help you apply the concepts discussed in the podcast episode. Get it by email here.

One of the biggest mistakes pastured poultry growers make is that they make impulsive decisions, which often go like this. I think I'll raise some chickens, so I go to the nearest chick days and find some birds based on what the store employees tell me. Next thing I know, I'm trying to sell them, but I'm just throwing darts at all my questions and hoping it comes out ok.

Obviously, I'm being a bit dramatic, but the pattern is clear enough to be cliché over my decade of time in the pastured poultry community.

If you're just starting out with chick, I want you to be successful.

If you've raised poultry in the past, but you're struggling with something along they way, I want you to be successful.

This is part 1 of a multi-part introduction to pastured poultry raising. I'll focus on the fundamentals of breed, feed, brooder, pasture, processing, and planning. I've an awesome amount of marketing content already recorded and published. I'll post a link to those episodes below.

Pastured Poultry Planning & Discovery

Even if you already have your flock started, listen to this episode because it's never too late to discover insights.

The episodes in this series will focus on the production practices that yield you a cost effective, healthy, delicious, and nutritious product. That is the foundation for a profitable flock; however, this series will be applicable to growers regardless of your market ambitions.

In this episode:

• Why do you want to raise pastured poultry?
• What do you want to achieve?
• Review of Gross Profit Margin
• What breed do you want to raise?
• What feed requirements do you have?
• An introductory discussion on predators.

Marketing Episodes from Pastured Poultry Talk:

I've published many marketing focused episodes and lots of episodes that contain great nuggets of marketing wisdom. To click through the previous pastured poultry marketing shows, start here:

https://pasturedpoultrytalk.com/tag/marketing/

I created an editable PDF worksheet to help you work through the concepts in this episode. Get it by email.

This episode of Pastured Poultry Talk sponsored by Windy Meadows Hatchery. Windy Meadows Hatchery supplies day old broiler chicks from their family run hatchery.

If you're looking for a supplier for your chicks, talk to the people who are directly responsible for hatching and shipping your birds. Tell them you heard about them from Pastured Poultry Talk. Contact Windy Meadows Hatchery.

If you're looking for fences that work from the people who use them everyday, contact Premier at 800-282-6631 or visit their website to request an informational catalog.

I've shared some Covid 19 corona virus updates via the APPPA channels in recent weeks, so I thought it was time to circle back to the podcast with an update. I cover a lot of ground, including how the Badger family is affected, how the pastured community is responding, supply concerns, and a few featured news items.

In the face of any trial, crisis, and disruption to the norm, the defining moments for each of us come based on how we recover and how act during the crisis. Many leaders, such as Greg Gunthorp, think we have an opportunity to shape the future based on a resilient local food production model. I agree, and that's where we should be placing an increasing amount of energy.

Topics in this episode

• Badger Family Update
• Ready-to-Lay Pullet Demand Explodes
• Broiler demand is high
• Don't panic buy feed (or TP)
• Holding prices steady despite overwhelming demand
• Egg prices up nationwide
• Joel Salatin wants corona virus
• How you communicate on your platform matters
• How we respond is our defining moments
• We have a chance to shape the future

Resources

Source of day-old broiler chicks - Windy Meadows Hatchery

Pastured Poultry Response to Covid 19

GUIDANCE ON THE ESSENTIAL CRITICAL WORKFORCE and PERSPECTIVE ON SUPPLY AND DEMAND

Egg prices are skyrocketing because of corona virus panic

USDA Report: March 27, 2020 Egg Market Update

This episode of Pastured Poultry Talk sponsored by Windy Meadows Hatchery. Windy Meadows Hatchery supplies day old broiler chicks from their family run hatchery.

If you're looking for a supplier for your chicks, talk to the people who are directly responsible for hatching and shipping your birds. Tell them you heard about them from Pastured Poultry Talk. Contact Windy Meadows Hatchery.

In episode 101 of Pastured Poultry Talk, Randy Kleinman mentioned Luke Groce and cited a very popular video that featured his range model. A lot has happened since that video was filmed on Luke's farm. I give Luke an opportunity to update us on his range model for raising pastured poultry because he's clearly thought about it deeply and is committed to a process that works for him.

Resources:

• Pasture Raised Podcast
• Video: The Best pastured poultry system out there (this is the video quoted in the episode)

There is no secret that pasture-raised chicken meat is more nutrient dense than non-pasture-raised chicken. More and more farmers are testing their products and posting the results for their customers and the world to see. Randy Kleinman, who farms with his family on Seelye Brook Farms in Anoka County Minnesota ran a two year study that compared a daily move chicken tractor to a day range chicken tractor. Over the course of the trial, he recorded key production numbers, including feed conversion, labor, and nutrition.

The study was funded by a 2019 Minnesota Department of Agriculture AGRI Sustainable Agriculture Demonstration Grant award. The first year of the trial compared a spring and fall batch of Cornish cross and the second year compared a spring and fall batch of Freedom Rangers. Each season collected data relevant to the production method. Randy designed the trial so that each production method would forage on the same amount of pasture over the course of the batch.

The results

Key takeaways from trial:

• Day range systems require more labor.
• Chicken tractor birds had less fat than day range birds.
• Cornish cross had less fat than the Freedom Rangers.
• The pastured birds are a source of Vitamin E whereas the non pastured birds are not.
• Cholesterol in each the pasture-raised birds was higher than the USDA index.
• Pasture-raised chicken meat is not a source of Vitamin A.
• The pastured meat birds had significantly lower Omega 6:3 rations than USDA standard nutritional index. Samples included the thigh and breast.

Randy discusses the trial, setup, and results in more depth in the podcast episode. His findings track very closely with the American Pastured Poultry Producers Association nutrition study.

Resources

Research Report: Comparison of Mobile Confinement and Day Range Production Systems for Pasture Raised Chickens

Contact Randy Kleinman

Website | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

My journey to 100 episodes of Pastured Poultry Talk started long, long ago. Celebrate the podcast milestone with me, as I recount the significant events in my life that led me to pastured poultry and and back to faith.

I tried very hard to make decisions that would have denied me entry into pastured poultry. I've accumulated seemingly random skills and relationships that all come to bear witness to a destiny that was not of my own choosing. As you listen to this episode, I challenge you to reflect back on your last 10, 15, 20, or more years and record your story through the seemingly random relationships and events you've encountered.

I find hope in my past, present, and future life through Psalm 16:11: "You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore."

The Pastured Poultry Talk podcast is back in 2020 with an episode about label deceit, also known as greenwashing. I tie the USDA's updated label guidelines, the APPPA conference, and some recent greenwashing misidentifications from the pastured poultry community in the same discussion. It's increasingly clear (and not all that surprising) that not everyone has the same understanding about what pastured poultry is and why it's important.

Marketing against misleading labeling claims requires clarity. In this episode, I attempt to provide some clarity so we can move forward in unison.

USDA's Free Range is Synonymous with Pasture Raised Claim

The Synonymous Claim: The following FSIS opinion is noted in the Federal Register announcing the updated label claim guidelines. Added information on the use of ''Free Range'' and synonymous claims (''Free roaming,'' ''Pasture Fed,'' ''Pasture Grown,'' ''Pasture Raised,'' and ''Meadow Raised'') on labels of poultry products and the documentation needed to substantiate these claims.

Looking to Comment on USDA's December 2019 label guidelines for animal raising claims? Here are the links you need. Deadline is February 25, 2020.

• Updated guidance
• Announcement and explanation
• Page for comments