Pastured Poultry Talk

In episode 87 of Pastured Poultry Talk, I talked with Erin Angulo about her Delaware chicken breeding success and the formation of a new association designed to help breeders learn. I'm taking this opportunity to follow up with my own thoughts on Erin's interview.

[caption id="attachment_1848" align="alignright" width="284"] SASSO Naked Neck meat birds growing on pasture at Badger's Millside Farm.[/caption]

Erin mentioned the need to evaluate your needs in terms of selecting the right bird for your circumstances, and that's a really basic need for pastured poultry producers of any type. The chicken you choose dictates what type of pastured poultry farm you will be. If your intent is to scale up and be a production farm focused on reaching the maximum number of people as possible, the Cornish Cross is your primary choice. That's just the way it is.

In episode 44 of The Fighting Farmer podcast, Spence talked about the choice between production capacity, market demand, and what that meant for heritage versus hybrid. He's all in on the Cornish cross, much like other scaled up, full-time pastured producers. However, that doesn't mean he hates standard breeds like the Delaware. Too often people go into heritage breeds without a full grasp on the reality of their situations.

If you go the heritage chicken route, you have a different market, different experience, and a much small smaller scale. As I share in this episode, I think heritage poultry fills a specific need inside the pastured poultry community, but we need breeders like Erin to make improvements that give growers an advantage.

That's why I wanted to showcase Erin's work. She's an example of a heritage meat chicken producer who is going in the right direction, and the question I always ask when I share her progress is, "are you willing to put forth that effort in your own breeding program?"

For my part in the breed selection, I've largely left the Cornish Cross behind. I'm not opposed to them. I think most of the problems growers face with the CX could be solved with a mirror. But I've crossed over to a slower growing hybrid. I'm sweet on the SASSO Naked Neck from So Big Farms. Though I'm not sure how long those birds will be around. John needs demand to keep his breeding program current. It's not easy importing breeding stock from France.

In episode 87, Erin touched on the fickle demand. On one hand we need heritage poultry breeders to be able to supply some scale to their growers; on the other, we need growers to demand reliable supply from the breeders. Erin told me off interview that she's charging $10 per chick. That's nearly 7x the price of a hybrid chick. Price in chickens is always affected by scale, and it's clear we don't have enough demand to bring the per chick price down. As a grower, I find that initial investment tough to be competitive if all I want to do is raise chickens for a consumer market.

That's where I think Heritage Poultry Breeders come in. This group is founded by people I personally trust, and I believe their commitment to help people become better breeders is an important step. By making breeding information more widely available, we can get more people improving their poultry lines in documented ways quicker. Even though this association is separate from SPN, I don't want to lose sight of Jim Adkin's work. Two of the earliest and popular episodes on this podcast feature Jim. He's clear in his enthusiasm for his work, and I personally think he disrupted the heritage poultry space enough to refocus the heritage poultry community.

I think HPB offers a great entry point for breeders in a way that other organizations don't. I'd like to see all these related associations ultimately unite their niches through friendly relationships and collaboration to create a broad and deep community to disrupt the current approach to chicken. There's room for hybrids, heritage, educators, advocates, mentors, missionaries, and pastured producers.

Resources from the Episode

• The Fighting Farmer Episode
• Heritage Poultry Breeders
• SPN
• So Big Farms in Van, TX

These Pastured Poultry Talk episodes were mentioned:

https://pasturedpoultrytalk.com/2019/07/04/breeding-delaware-chickens/

https://pasturedpoultrytalk.com/2015/07/24/ppt013-not-a-backyard-chicken-club-jim-adkins-interview-part-1-2/

https://pasturedpoultrytalk.com/2015/07/31/ppt0014-coaching-time-with-jim-adkins-2/

Heritage chickens have a stereotype of being slow to grow and low yield, making them a difficult choice for production-based pastured poultry farms. Ok, maybe the stereotype has strong roots in reality. That's why Erin Angulo (Dawnridge Farm) is on the podcast discussing the improvements she has made with her line of Delaware chickens in addition to her work with the Heritage Poultry Breeders Educational Foundation.

Breeding Delaware Chickens for Weight Gain

As we discuss in the podcast episode, the Delaware has strong roots as an American chicken prior to the development of the faster growing Cornish Cross. The Cornish Cross dislodged the Delaware's popularity. Ultimately that development of the faster chicken growth turned chicken into a common food and sent heritage breeds, such as the Delaware, on a fast track to neglect.

Seventy years removed from the Delaware chicken's popularity, breeders like Erin are trying to restore their potential.

Just how far has she come? Her first batch of chickens yielded a 3.5 lb carcass in 16 weeks. That's very common of heritage chickens, and probably above average for most people who try the heritage chickens today. Five years later, Erin has selected her cockerels to achieve a 3.5 lb. to 4.5 lb. carcass in 12 to 13 weeks. The variance in slaughter time is due to processing availability.

That improvement is not going to put the Delaware back into mainstream production, but it's true to historical breed standards, and it's the kind of improvement that would make Delaware meat chickens a potential option for more farms. As a comparison, many of the slow growing hybrids are bred for 12 week grow outs with average yields a couple pounds heavier.

Heritage Chicken Breeding Strategies

In the episode, Erin shares her basic approach to breeding Delawares, and it's not complicated. She doesn't use any specially formulated feed. Instead, she weighs birds twice a month to track the weight gain of each developing bird. When she makes final selections in September, she has already handled each bird for eight months and is knowledgeable about what she's looking for and familiar with the birds. Her success is hands on.

When selecting breeders, Erin only selects the birds that are as good or better than the father. In a recent season, that meant she kept 3 cockerels out of 75.

Heritage Poultry Breeders Educational Foundation

Erin discovered heritage chickens through Sustainable Poultry Network (SPN) and was an active member of that association. As SPN restructured and different community needs arose, she was a founding member of the Heritage Poultry Breeders Educational Foundation (HPB). HPB became a separate organization with it's own mission to create a community of poultry breeders and enable sharing, educating and developing a knowledge base needed to improve and restore standard breeds to their original purpose.

HPB's niche is declared in the name of the organization, and it aims to make deep breeding knowledge accessible to a wider audience. As a startup organization, there is untapped potential waiting for new breeders to jump in and engage the community. Check them out - I'm a member.

Contact for Erin and Heritage Poultry Breeders

Heritage Poultry Breeders Educational Foundation: website | Facebook | Instagram

Dawnridge Farm: Facebook | [email protected]

Resources from the Episode

• The Fighting Farmer Episode 44
• American Pastured Poultry Producers Association
• Livestock Conservancy
• Smokey Buttes Ranch
• Peak Poultry
• The Fertrell Company
• Sustainable Poultry Network

Topic Timestamps [mm:ss]

• 01:02 Introduction to heritage birds through SPN
• 05:12 Delaware breeding improvements
• 06:30 Feeding and and selection process
• 10:12 Egg laying capabilities of Erin's Delaware chickens
• 11:39 Biggest problems: predators and color pattern on males
• 13:21 Advice to new heritage poultry breeders: choose correctly
• 18:33 Introduction to Heritage Poultry Breeders Educational Foundation
• 19:00 Goal of Heritage Poultry Breeders is to reach anyone raising heritage poultry

https://pasturedpoultrytalk.com/2015/07/24/ppt013-not-a-backyard-chicken-club-jim-adkins-interview-part-1-2/

Email marketing for small farms is one of those things that people have strong opinions about. Either you recognize the value, or you have limiting belief about why you shouldn't send email. In this episode, I take the stance that email is the second half of a technically sound marketing process, and I'll share some basic ways you can use email to your advantage.

In episode 85, I talked about 10 tips to improve your farm website SEO, and the number one item was to incorporate an email marketing capture into the design of the website. Which email marketing platform you use is irrelevant to the conversation. Email is a tool. You pick tools based on how well it meets your need. If you're just starting out, your primary criteria will likely be price, which will put you in the free version of Mailchimp, but Aweber and Constant Contact will work too.

Is email marketing dead?

The correct answer to "Is email marketing dead for your farm?" is that you spend too much time on Instagram and Facebook. Email is still the number one way for you to reach leads and talk to your customers.

Every marketer knows (or they should know), that Facebook doesn't show your posts to everybody who is following your page. That's not the case with email. When you send an email to your list, Mailchimp (as an example) will send the email to everyone on your list. Your email marketing platform doesn't have an arbitrary algorithm that selects 5% or 10% of your list to get the message.

Whether or not people read your message is the real challenge. We'll talk about copywriting in a different episode, but for now, know that people's reading habits are just as diverse as yours. It's unreasonable to expect that the people on your email list will read every email you send.

Email marketing is different than social media marketing

Email differs from social media in a critical way. Social media is a diversion (aka a time waster) for most people. Exceptions apply, of course. When your customers read email, they are in the mindset to get stuff done. They're not looking to have their time wasted.

When you send an email ask yourself, "what do I want this email to accomplish?" Create the email to accomplish that goal. That means you might ask people buy and then provide the link to buy.

While the fluffy bunny pictures are great in the social feed, it's not good email content, unless you're explicitly asking people to buy a fluffy bunny.

If you write informational or entertaining emails, how does that tie back to the products you sell? Make it relevant and make sure the people reading know that you have a "solution" to their "problem" (e.g., a nutrition egg for people worried about their health).

Email marketing can be ineffective, but that's a function of how you implement it. There's a strong parallel to raising chickens. If you're chickens don't perform or die prematurely, it's not the chickens fault. Email that doesn't work is not the email's fault.

Tips for email marketing your farm products

1. Set aside time to deliberately market and write emails on a weekly or daily basis.
2. An imperfect email that you send will have better results than imperfect email you don't send.
3. Your list is more responsive when you talk to them on a regular basis.
4. Send emails that are relevant to the people on the list and follow the one topic per email guideline.
5. Set up automatic welcome emails and onboarding series to automatically email new email list subscribers.
6. Use a call to action in every email.

Email open rates are crap

Focusing on open rates is just as crazy as focusing on the number of likes. Neither an email open or a social media "like" means anything. It's the lowest measure of engagement there is, and for email, there are technical reasons why an open may be misrepresented.

Focus on the metrics that matter. If your email is marketing your products, then make sure people know how to buy your products. Provide the link in email (or ask for a direct reply). This can be a hard sell (buy before it's gone, gone, gone) or a subtler sell (linking the word chicken in your recipe to your order page).

Have that call to action in each email; otherwise, why are you sending the email?

The best metric to measure your farm's email marketing is sales. Did that email generate sales or questions about sales?

Topics by timestamp

[01:34] Email as a marketing foundation

[05:17] Email addresses are assets

[07:59] I don't have time to market

[10:40] One topic per email

[11:18] Ask for the sale

[12:35] Use email to solve problems, entertain, and inform

[19:48] Examples of automated email welcoming series

[22:59] Email open rates are crap

[29:22] Evaluating two marketing emails with different open rates

Resources

• Aweber
• Mailchimp
• Constant Contact
• 10 Tips to Improve your farm website

Do you need a helpful guide to coach you through the implementation of these strategies on your website in the context of your farm business? Hire Mike for a one hour coaching call ($50) and get on the right track.

In this episode I discuss the foundation principles required to improve farm website SEO (search engine optimization). Farm website SEO helps you be found by people who are looking for the products and services you sell; that's why it's a critically important foundation for your entire marketing program. The only thing worse than not having a website in 2019 is having a website that doesn't work for your business.

Over the last year, there have been an increasing number of instances that have made me want to pull my hair out when I heard the "advice" some people give in terms of websites and their role in marketing. I also see a lot of questions popping up about websites in the Pastured Poultry Talk Facebook group and other places.

I realized that I can contribute to the conversation even though I'm not known as an SEO consultant to small farms, I've been implementing SEO for over a decade, and half of that time was coaching small businesses through the creation and implementation of their own marketing strategies using website SEO as the starting point. I worked as an Account Manager for one of Pennsylvania's premiere marketing agencies, MoJo Active. Even though I left MoJo Active, I never stopped optimizing and managing websites.

Not everyone will like the advice I lay out in this episode. There's no magic formula for farm website SEO. I'll give you 10 key ways to optimize your site, but you have to put the ideas into practice. This is where many people falter.

Here's what I know. Your return will be proportionate to the effort you put into your farm website SEO. That means you need to do it, learn about, hire somebody, or simply make an investment in your farm website. The work you do with SEO today will pay dividends for months and years to come through discovery in the search engines.

The challenge you'll have is that the payback on your investment will not be immediate; there's a time delay. This is the trap SEO sets for you in your business. Farm website SEO is a good off-season project and should be incorporated into your regular marketing time.

When you counter the long-tail advantage of search traffic with the instant gratification of Facebook ads or sponsored posts, and you have a good combination approach to marketing; however, with social media, your posts are relevant now and not findable tomorrow, and that's one reason you always invest in your website.

Do you need a helpful guide to coach you through the implementation of these strategies on your website in the context of your farm business? Hire Mike for a one hour coaching call ($50) and get on the right track.

Your Farm Website SEO Does These 4 Jobs

When I think about your website's role in your business, I typically talk in these four broad areas:

1. Support/information
2. Marketing and sales
3. Customer discovery
4. Lead generation

As you build a website to support your farm business and then market those products, the website will attract people who didn't know about you. This is the secret to farm website SEO. It's the key to being found on the web.When people who didn't know about you land on your website, they may purchase a product or sign up for your email notifications.

When talking about the lead generating power of a website, I think it's important to consider people's habits and purpose for using various mediums. Facebook is a casual environment for people to be idle and engage in chatter. When people have problems to solve, they may ask their friends on Facebook for advice, but most likely, they search Google. Even friends on Facebook will often respond with a website link.

#1 Install Email Capture

Even if you have no intention of using email marketing. Set it up and do it first. That's how important it is. When you finally get ready to believe that email is important, you'll be thankful you were collecting emails from the beginning.

We'll dig into email marketing in episode 86 of Pastured Poultry Talk.

#2 Install Google Analytics

Like email, Google Analytics is not about actual website content optimization, but it is a necessary tool and a prerequisite to managing your site. Analytics shows you visitor and usage data as it relates to your farm website pages. Install the search console and dive into a keyword rich understanding.

Even if the thought of looking at a report seems intimidating, install Google Analytics from day 1. When you're ready to interpret the data, you'll be thankful. Or better yet, when you work with someone like me and they ask for the Google Analytics reports to help you measure your farm website's performance, they'll be thankful.

#3 Create a Site (Content) Map to Optimize Website Farm SEO

The site content map will help you think through the navigation of your website and document what pages you to need to create. It will also help you visualize your customer's path through the website. Ask yourself, if a visitor comes to the home page, where should that person click next? And if the person comes in through a backdoor (like a blog post), is the path through the website clear? Is the next click evident?

I go so far as to sketch out how I want my pages and posts to look by visualizing image placement (align right or left or full width hero image).

When you write individual pages, you just follow your format and create images that fit your intended format, so you don't have to put a lot of thinking into it. Also, when you're writing individual pages, use headings and bullets to create a scannable page with a clear progression.

Look at the page you're reading. It has many headings. I'm telling you (and Google) what's important by emphasizing the context of the of the page. As a result, I'm improving SEO by creating useful content that is relevant to my visitors.

Creating the content map is about establishing a structured website in terms of navigation, hierarchy, and page content. Think about a book. A book has a TOC (your website menu). It has chapter headings to group closely related content. Depending on the type of book, each chapter may have sub headings, lists, images, charts, quotes, or dialogue that gives you a clear understanding of the content and provides an easy way to consume the content.

If you put time into creating a structured website with a deliberate organization throughout and you write content that addresses your customers, needs, wants, fears, desires, and hopes in language they can relate to, you've just taken a big bite of SEO for your farm website.

#4 Identify Call to Actions

A call to action on your website guides a visitor to the next click. It lets them know the expected action. As yourself this. "Why would I spend so much effort on website SEO and not lead visitors through my desired outcomes?"

Example call- to-actions might be call now, sign up for email, buy now, and so on.

Every page on the website needs a call to action. And one of the best pieces of selling advice I ever received was to "ask for the sale, every time." Don't assume the other person knows what you want. The other person may say no, or they may leave your website. That's ok. But they might buy because you asked and that's great.

#5 Tell the visitor how to buy

You probably have several sales channels that you use to sell products. One of the challenges consumers have with buying local food is the barrier to buying the good food you produce because every farm is different. State how to buy clearly and list all your markets, restaurants, locations, store hours, and procedures.

If you build a page that has a list of all the ways you can buy, that will serve as a landing page that will guide people to a page for each way to buy. See #6 for information about local SEO and #7 for landing pages.

#6 Build local SEO into your farm website

As a local farm, you're trying to attract customers near you. Local farm website SEO can be a complicated thing to wrestle, and often will extend beyond your website. However, your website must serve as the authoritative base.

The examples I use in the podcast include creating one page for each of your delivery drop-off locations. The other example is to list all the restaurants (with their locations) and possibly create a page for each restaurant that showcases the food and chef at that location.

The only way Google or any search engine knows that you sell food in your community is by you providing that context on your website through real words and content.

#7 Create landing pages to enhance website SEO

Landing pages group multiple pages of similar content together. They are like funnels in that a person views the landing page, reads some information, and then selects a specific page to visit. The flow of information is broad to specific.

In the podcast, I gave two example uses for landing pages to optimize your farm website SEO. In the first example, you might create a category page in your store for pastured poultry that tells your story and then links to the product pages for your chicken sausage, wings, whole birds, etc.

In the other example, I created a landing page for the delivery service your farm might run. You'd include information about the service itself, maybe with links to the products you sell (or their categories) and then link to the page for each delivery location that I described in number six of the SEO updates for farm websites.

#8 Create a separate page for each product

Each product needs its own page on your website, preferably with a relevant image. You can have landing pages that guide visitors to those products, but ultimately, you want content pages that are singularly focused on a topic whether you're talking about your drop-off locations or your chicken products.

The farm website SEO benefit is that people who are looking to buy chicken sausage can land on a page and know that you have their answer.

#9 Make your contact visible

I recommend you put your phone number in the header and your address in the footer. That way every page has the necessary information to contact you. When you view your website on mobile, the phone number will be at the top of the page, and often becomes clickable, making it easy for the person to reach out.

#10 Write Meaningful Content to enhance your SEO

You need to consider two qualities when evaluating meaningful content. The first is quantity and the second is content that solves the visitor's need. Creating a structured website with clear calls-to-action helps the visitors find answers, and many of the items I present are about creating meaningful content. That lets us to address the quantity.

Regular product pages or blog posts should be at least 300 words. Landing pages and other cornerstone content pages should be closer to 800 or 900 words minimum. Don't forget to write in a structured way, and use headings, bullets, and images. Throw in the occasional bold or italic for emphasis.

Resources

• Google Analytics
• Google Search Console
• WordPress
• Woocommerce
• Yoast
• Squarespace
• Wix
• Millsidefarm

Topics by Timestamp

[09:39] Four jobs of your website

[14:13] Add email signup

[15:08] Add Google Analytics

[17:57] Create a content map

[27:34] Identify call-to-actions

[33:02] Tell me how to buy

[33:41] Build Local SEO farm pages

[38:16] Make contact visible

[42:11] Create one page for each farm product

[46:13] Create landing pages

[53:07] Write meaningful content

Hire Mike Badger as your farm website SEO coach for a one hour coaching session. Bring your questions, frustrations, and confusion, and let's get you on the right path.

Click the Schedule Call button to book your one hour coaching call ($50).

After listening to the episode on learning the art of scalding, listener Chad asked if I could explain how to pick a chicken plucker. I happy to help.

Quick disclaimer: While the advice in the episode is general purpose, the examples use the Poultry Man line of pluckers to illustrate the points because that's what I know the best.

The first question I'd ask is, "Do you need a plucker?"

This is a personal decision, but the question is for those homesteader and family flocks who may be doing 20 or 30 chickens at a time a few times a year. I'm a strong believer that your first purchase needs to be a scalder. You buy the plucker second because the quality and ease of the pluck is controlled by the scald.

I talk about scalding chickens in Pastured Poultry Talk episode 67.

The primary decisions points about selecting an appropriately sized chicken plucker comes down to the following:

• Match the scalder/plucker capacity.
• Purchase a scalder based on processing day volume.
• Know your power requirements.
• Evaluate the design.
• Factor in your budget.

Making a purchase like this is often follows a familiar pattern. You identify all the "requirements" and then you see if your budget supports your choice. If the budget and your requirements don't align, you make compromises.

Match plucker size to scalder size

For completeness, you should also match the kill cone size to the size of your equipment as well, but let's stay focused on the plucker and scalder. Here are the chicken plucker and scalder combos that you should select based on the processing-day capacity. If you're considering other brands, do the same evaluation.

• 2 to 4 chickens: 23" plucker and manual scalder
• 4 to 6 chickens (1 or 2 turkeys): 27" plucker and 30" rotary scalder
• 10+ chickens ( 4 to 6 turkey): 35" Turkey plucker and 41" rotary scalder

You want to avoid using a scalder with a capacity of four chickens with a plucker that is capable of 16 chickens. That won't produce a good pluck.

I recommend that if you do mismatch your equipment size, you choose a scalder that's bigger than your plucker. Then kill to the capacity of the plucker.

In the episode, I list the capacity of the 35" chicken plucker with a conservative estimate. Remember that the size of the chickens will determine the number of birds you can put through at one time. Depending on the size of the bird, the Poultry Man 35" plucker may be able to handle up to 16 birds.

Purchase a chicken plucker based on quantity

For this evaluation, I'm going to focus on the number of birds in a processing day. These number guidelines are just guideposts to help you make good selections. If you're doing 50 birds a day, 6 times a year, and you think you need a 30" rotary scalder and 27" plucker, don't let me stop you.

If you process:

• 50 birds at a time, select a 23" chicken plucker
• less than 200 chickens at a time, select the 27" plucker
• 75 to 100 turkeys a year, select the 27" plucker
• more than 200 chickens at a time, select the 35" plucker
• More than a 100 turkeys, select a 35" plucker

The 27" plucker from Poultry Man is an all-around, versatile plucker. It will handle a lot of chickens with a few turkeys and defeather the ducks and geese, too. If you're plucking any turkeys at all, the 27" would be your starting size. The 23" and smaller sizes of other brands are not suitable for turkeys.

The outlier in the plucker discussion is quail. If you process quail, you need a plucker that is designed for them; usually, this means there are more fingers spaced closer together so that the quail do not fall through the plucker.

Power requirements

Make sure you know the power requirements of the plucker before you purchase. The Poultry Man, for example, is 110v by default across the whole product line. It can be converted to 220v. Other manufacturers have a mix of power.

Evaluating chicken plucker construction

I'm a fan of stainless steel, but not that flimsy stainless you can see through. Poultry Man is a heavy gauge stainless steel. I swear, you could roll it off a truck and keep right on pluckin'.

The Featherman plucker, which is the other small-scale plucker for serious processors, is manufactured from food grade plastic. It's heavy plastic, but still much lighter than the Poultry Man.

Then there are all the imports that are stainless steel in design, but I'd bet that the Featherman plastic tubs are more durable; that's how thin the metal is.

Let's talk budget

There is no way around the discussion. If you are an on-farm processors or small plant operator, purchasing a chicken plucker is part of a capital investment that is designed to make you money. You shop on price at your own risk.

In the episode, I compare the cost of at Poultry Man 23" plucker and a Featherman Pro plucker, which are the entry points for affordable pluckers for small scale processors. The Poultry Man is roughly $300 more, which you know if you've done any price shopping. A big difference in price is the material.

There's a whole market segment I dub the "Wal-Mart of chicken pluckers" out there who basically import parts in bulk from overseas using cheaper components and materials.

These Wal-Mart-like retailers assemble the pluckers in the U.S. while not talking about the fact they are imported and flood the market. If you're doing a few birds a year, then buy cheap from China; you'll probably never notice (aside from the broken wings). If you want a plucker that lasts a life time, but on something other than price.

Here's the question I'll leave you to ponder till a future episode of the podcast. If you're a local producer of pastured poultry, and you expect to earn a premium price on your craft product, how do you back that up when you shop for supplies for your business?

Do you try to get the cheapest possible input from the other side of the world to market your premium product? I think many cash-strapped farmer/processors shop exactly this way, and it's a mismatch in ethos.

Episode Timestamps

[mm:ss]

[00:54] Do you need to buy a chicken plucker?

[03:51] Summary of decision points

[04:58] Match the size of the plucker to the size of the scalder

[06:24] Avoid these two scenarios in the plucker - too many birds and too few

[07:56] Select based on volume

[11:26] Summary of size recommendations

[13:19] Consider power requirements

[14:05] Evaluate the plucker design

[15:39] Budget discussion and comparison

Pasturewashing is the latest marketing craze where traditional poultry integrators want to capitalize on the success of pasture-raised chicken and eggs without following the principles of production. It's a form of greenwashing. Greenwashing describes a marketing tactic that positions an ordinary product as green or environmentally friendly in order to appeal to a buyer's emotion in exchange for a price premium or cost savings; think spin.

For more than 30 years, farmers have been perfecting the pasture raised poultry model since Joel Salatin started sharing his ideas with the world (around 1990).

Creating a pasture-raised divide where none existed

Only recently have companies started to actively redefine what pasture-raised chicken and pasture-raised eggs mean. The divide is being perpetrated through third-party certifications, such as certified organic, GAP, certified humane, and so on. And here-in lies the pasturewashing problem. The certifications and companies who want to cash in with a pasture-raised chicken/egg claim are doing so by removing two of the most important elements: outdoor production and regular flock movement.

The vertically integrated poultry companies want to benefit from economies of scale so that they produce a cheaper chicken or egg. But they want to make a label claim, and making a pasture-raised claim is a hot market.

In practice, this looks like a stationary barn with a few doors that open to an outside paddock. It may be true that the birds "have year around access," but the reality is much different. The stationary barn is the first clue. When you actually see pictures of the pasture, you'll notice tremendous pasture impact in the immediate area of the barn - it will be dirt and the pasture will be over-grazed. And dirt-lot poultry is not pasture-raised.

What you'll often see in the marketing photos is a couple dozen chickens in the pasture and all the grass will be an even height. This is your signal that the chickens do not go outside because there's no grazing impact.

With pasturewashed chicken and eggs, what you see is either pasture degradation (i.e., dirt) from over grazing or uniform growth with no impact from lack of pasture utilization. There is no in between.

The truth about poultry movement

As a consumer or a farmer, you must realize the movement in the pasture is the reason for the flavor, the bird health, the environmental health, animal welfare, and nutrient density. When you remove movement, you often limit the outdoor exposure of the flock. Removing deliberate flock movement through the pasture will compromise the final product in some way.

This video from American Pastured Poultry Producers Association provides a look at what makes pastured poultry different.

Greenwashing Poultry

When consumers shop for pasture-raised chicken and eggs, they are looking for something different. Are consumers really looking for a company to control the entire supply chain using contract growers with a weekly processing capacity of 700,000 birds, as a recent company suggests. That sounds like a small version of the larger poultry industry that consumers are opting-out of.

While the pastured poultry community is filled with farms who are vertically integrating parts of their operation and using a variety of chicken types, it's a much more local or regional presence. Scale in pastured poultry may be a 1,000 birds or it may be a couple hundred thousand in a year. The diversity in approach creates a healthy, local economy that features direct-to-consumer relationships. These are relationships you don't get at hundreds of thousands of chickens a week in a integrator-grower relationship, and that's a missed opportunity for companies who are pasturewashing the market.

I'd love to hear what you think on this issue. Discuss on Facebook or leave a voicemail. If you have an opposing view of what pasture-raised chicken or eggs mean, then I invite you to come on the podcast to discuss the issue. I'll give you the courtesy of providing your view point in exchange for a debate.

Resources

The following resources were mentioned in the episode:

• Fighting Farmer Podcast Episode 40: poultry gotta move
• Better Way Forward Video
• Access to pasture is not enough to make pasture-raised chicken

American Pastured Poultry Producers Association is producing a four-video series to brand and market pasture-raised poultry. They are asking pastured poultry producers to buy into the cooperative marketing program to fund the production. Help Share the Pastured Poultry Message - APPPA's Video project.

In this episode, catch up with Mike as he sets the 2019 pastured poultry production goals at Badgers' Millside Farm, talks about pasture-raised greenwashing, and sets a vision for the show.

Pastured Poultry Speaker

Traveling, planning, attending, and presenting at a conference is emotionally challenging, but it is worth the energy. In the winter of 2019, here's where I've been:

• Professional Pastured Poultry Conference in Texas. I helped plan this event and presented a talk about how to plan a pastured poultry business.
• NOFA-NJ in New Jersey. I presented two talks about cost accounting, budgets, and cost of production.
• PASA in Pennsylvania. I facilitated a 3-hour Q&A forum with Jeff Mattocks and Craig Haney. Craig taught me about how to effectively use the Pearson Square to balance rations. You'll see more on this more this later.
• OEFFA in Ohio. This gave me a break from chickens and let me talk about podcasting as an education and marketing tool.
• Stone Barns in New York. Stone Barns invited me to deliver a 1-day intensive training on pasture-raised poultry.

Pasture-Raised Poultry Greenwashing

Pasture-raised is growing, but there's a lot of pasture-raised greenwashing happening in the market. Consumers and farmers need to be on the alert for this. With each day, we're bombarded with greenwashed messages from companies who assert their pasture-raised label but who fail the fundamental principles of movement.

Going forward, Pastured Poultry Talk will play an educational role in combating the greenwashing.

Defining My Ideal Customer

"if you're a hipster internet marketer, you'll say who's your customer avatar. If you're a normal dude, you're going to say, who's my target customer."—Mike Badger

Regardless of how you think about it, this notion of who am I selling to and what do I want to achieve through pastured poultry, influences my choices in flock sizes, flock demographics, and timing.

Though we've done significant market-based pastured poultry and on-farm processing in the past, our current on-farm production is more along a homestead volume.

So what does the Badger's mix of pastured poultry look like going into 2019.

• Slower growing hybrids to customers who buy bulk one or two times a year. Customers who value the model and the eating experience.
• Thanksgiving turkeys and started poults for growers.
• Speckled Sussex breeding program. Never buy eggs from eBay. That's the takeaway here because you never know what you're getting. I bought small eggs and now I have small hens that lay medium eggs.
• Ready-to-Lay Pullets. I will continue my ready-to lay pullet dealership for pullets with untrimmed beaks.

Opening a Farm Store

I need a showcase area to display scalders, pluckers, grills, feeders, kill cones, wooden crates and other stuff. We'll also stock a freezer of chicken, some eggs, some flowers and whatever else we're selling.

"You raise 'em, you kill'em and you eat 'em. Have you noticed a trend yet? It's about getting them ready to eat and then eating and how do you cook them." – Mike Badger

Podcast Updates

The podcast needs to be more than just a teaching platform where we hash out the details of "how to produce." I still enjoy that and will never give that up, but Pastured Poultry can't be all about the how to.

As the podcast evolves: expect to see:

• Concise technical tips.
• More talk around technical marketing and breaking down those barriers to understanding
• Poultry politics
• Profiles of farmers who are innovating and doing interesting things

Resources

• Buying Ready to Lay Pullets and Understanding the Competitive Advantages and Opportunities for Pastured Egg Flocks
• PPT052: Pastured Poultry Set Me Free
• PPT075: Bringing Ready-to-Lay Pullets onto Your Farm
• The Fighting Farmer Podcast
• Badger's Millside Farm for Ready-to-Lay Pullets, Processing Equipment, Chicken Grills and More

Chick farmer Lauryn Salatin joins the podcast to discuss her backyard chicken business. She buys chicks from Murray McMurray, raises them until they're ready to lay, and then sells them. She finds her chickens enjoyable to be around and happy.

This episode was recorded live at the Fertrell open house.

Resources:

Polyface Farm

Murray McMurray

In this Kids in Commerce episode, Travis Salatin of Polyface discusses his Khaki Campbell duck business. Travis' advice to other kids who are starting a business: "start slow."

Resources:

Polyface Yum

Premiere 1 Supplies

In this Kids in Commerce episode, Andrew Salatin joins the podcast to talk about his goals with raising sheep and what the enterprise has taught him. This episode was recorded live at the Fertrell open house.

You can contact Andrew about lambs through Polyface.