Pastured Poultry Talk

John Coulimore, a long time pastured poultry producer from Washington, joined the podcast for a quick chat. Jonathan is another community member who has taken up the dual role of growing pasture-raised broilers and eggs while fullfilling an important part of the supply chain for other farmers as a Fertrell dealer. This interview was recorded live at the Fertrell open house in October 2018.

For more information:

Beerite Sales (Jonathan Coulimore).

Scratch and Peck Feeds

Todd Morrison of Dawson Gap Farms joins the podcast to discuss how the farm approaches pastured poultry for consumers and other farmers. They operate a farm supply business in addition to direct-to-consumer products. This interview was recorded live at the Fertrell open house in October 2018.

Learn more about Dawson Gap at their website.

Following Daniel Salatin's talk at the Fertrell open house, I caught up with him to ask what he means when he says, "We're better together." The subject of this talk was acknowledging the reality that the pastured poultry community is interconnected and has matured to the point where there is a deep support staff. You don't have to be an expert in everything.

Topics by Timestamp

• [03:58] What is better together?
• [05:19] Pastured poultry is counter cultural.
• [06:23] Bring experts onto your team.
• [07:50] One connection leads to the next connection.
• [9:10] Biggest change in pastured poultry.
• [10:45] Is pastured poultry growing?
• [11:41] It's easy to brand people as compromising.

Resources

• Polyface: web page | Facebook
• APPPA Conference
• The Fertrell Company

Ready-to-Lay pullets, also called started pullets, are an economical way for pastured poultry producers and family egg flocks replace their laying hen flock. By buying started pullets, you typically pay less for each bird than it would cost you to produce it, and you eliminate up to 17 weeks of risk from disease, depredations, and management.

When I hold pullet days through Badger's Millside Farm, I find myself answering many questions about bringing pullets into lay and acclimating them to the farm. This episode was inspired by my last ready-to-lay pullet day.

Here's what I cover in the episode with timestamps [mm:ss]:

• [01:59] How to transport ready-to-lay pullets.
• [05:22] The Fighting Farmer podcast talks about crating and transporting broilers.
• [05:41] Mixing ready-to-lay pullets with older hens.
• [06:15] Practice all-in all-on flock rotations with new started pullets.
• [11:11] Each type of bird has a management guide available from breeder.
• [12:34] Should you provide supplemental light and if so, how?
• [14:44] Don't stimulate your pullet with light if she doesn't weigh enough.
• [15:31] Supplemental light schedule for pullets.
• [16:51] how to acclimate the flock too food and water.
• [22:26] How much should started pullets weigh?
• [24:45] Phased feeding overview for layer rations.
• [26:10] What lay rate should I expect?
• [28:28] Molting hens into a second lay cycle.
• [30:32] An overview of the ready-to lay-pullet on-boarding plan.

Recommended listen

http://pasturedpoultrytalk.com/2018/04/26/buying-ready-to-lay-pullets-and-understanding-the-competitive-advantages-and-opportunities-for-pastured-egg-flocks/

Michael Marchand joins the show from the coastal plain of southeast Texas to talk about preparing your pastured poultry farm for the wind, water, and disruption of a hurricane. As we record, Hurricane Florence is days away from landfall in the Carolinas, and the projections are for a lot of water and wind. Mike has seen significant flooding events on his farm over the last three years, including Hurricane Harvey. Mike says that two days is a lot of time to focus and prepare as best you can. Here are some of his recommendations:

• Move animals to higher ground
• Utilize poultry netting for last minute paddocks
• Move small flocks to barn or enclosed shelter
• Bed broilers and layers with hay to keep birds dry
• Protect chickens from wind
• Assume the hurricane will hit and disrupt your farm for days

Find Mike Marchand at Whitehurst Heritage Farms online.

Many farmers listen to podcasts as they do chores, make hay, deliver product, or pick up supplies. Direct-to-consumer farmers have a lot of windshield time, and it makes sense that podcasts continue to fill more of that time as a way to be entertained and informed. But why aren't more farmers podcasting for their customers? That's the question this episode explores in the context of a trip I made to Podcast Movement, an annual meeting of podcasters from all over the world. We'll use some teachings from Cliff Ravenscraft to help along. Listen to Cliff's 11 Step formula for building a profitable business. Poultry Headlines From the Episode: A Poultry World article summarizes a research review that shows "eggs confirmed as crucial tool for infant development." Key takeaway is " the research finds that "eggs support child development despite having few calories." An Ecuadoran study, for example, found that if infants added one egg per day to the diet they were less likely to be stunted (47%) and less likely to be underweight (74%). Read article. The article "Vaccines are pushing pathogens to evolve" published in Quanta Magazine explores the idea that vaccines may actually incite disease to become vaccine resistant. The article includes research done with Mareks Disease and broilers, which suggested "that the Marek's vaccine encourages more dangerous viruses to proliferate." Read article. A listener submitted a question about egg yolk color after being called out by a customer following a change in layer diet. We've known how to manipulate egg yolk color for a very long time and U.S. Customers favor yellow and even dark yellow/orange shades. Unfortunately, color alone is not sufficient to judge egg quality, as it's easily manipulated. Read more about xanthophyll and egg color from Leroy S. Palmer, which he "discovered" in 1915. Recipe for success and mastering new ideas: Throughout my career, I've found myself faced the task of learning new ideas and disciplines. Here's the short recipe for success I lay out in the podcast, and it works whether you're a pastured poultry farmer, a marketer, or a podcaster.

1. Find and associate with people who are smarter than you
2. Read a lot (in niche and out)
3. Question everything to understand how something works
4. Take action and do something with your knowledge-turn that knowledge into wisdom
5. Evaluate results and repeat

You can hear me talk more about these ideas inside the podcast episode. The 3 "T" bottlenecks of podcasting for farmers (and everybody else): In the Pastured Poultry Talk Facebook Group, I asked what kept you from podcasting. I share my view on the feedback in this episode, but it's basically three large ideas: Time, Technology, and Topics. But the challenging question from the episode is, "do you have to master all three issues before you can launch a farm podcast to help you sell more poultry and eggs?" If you treat your podcast as a marketing asset that helps you build relationships with your customers and even generate leads, then you can make the time and hire the technical parts out. It's assumed if you have a viable direct-marketed farm business that you could whip up 15 to 20 topics within the next 20 minutes. I don't really dig into these bottlenecks on the episode, but it's a question to ponder. I'd recommend you check out my "Work with Me" page if you want to explore marketing farm products with podcasts more deeply. Timestamped outline of topics: 01:14 Eggs good for infant nutrition 02:13 Vaccine resistance in poultry 05:04 Effect of laying hen diet on egg yolk color 10:52 Short Recipe for sucess 15:12 what I learned at Podcast Movement 16:42 Can I make money from pastured poultry? 18:52 Cliff Ravenscraft gives us a way to think about pastured poultry business through his business coaching 20:28 Determine where you want your business to go and what you want 21:58 Identify where you already add value 22:39 Determine ideal customer 24:04 Identifying ideal customer with Seth Godin 24:26 Questions to learn about your ideal customers 24:55 How many people have chickens on the ground nobody wants to pay for? 29:41 Farmer podcast opportunity 30:48 3T Bottleneck issues of podcasting: time, technology, and topics 31:40 How many bottlenecks do you have to master in order to leverage podcasting in your farm marketing?

Episode 72 takes on the soy-free poultry feed for your chickens, ducks, and turkeys. Up to this point, if you've fed soy-free feeds to your chickens, then you've likely experienced slower growth, more expensive feed, and improperly feathered birds, just to name a few problems. Jeff Mattocks from The Fertrell Company joins the show to discuss the problems of soy-free poultry feed, the solution, and then discuss Fertrell's response. Jeff has developed a new soy-free feed ration using 5 different protein sources and that formulation is available in two new products – one for production-based flocks and another for family flocks. Fertrell is a Pastured Poultry Talk show sponsor. If you're new to Fertrell, check them out and let them know Pastured Poultry Talk with Mike Badger sent you. Upcoming Events Check out the Appearances page to see where Mike Badger will be speaking and attending. Show Topics

• The biggest problem with soy-free feed.
• How do producers overcome problems with a no-soy poultry feed?
• Feed trial results.
• Performance gains in soy-free feeds
• Cost of feeding soy-free feeds.
• Will Fertrell's no-soy formulation work for turkeys?

Fertrell is having an open house with Daniel Salatin as the featured speaker. Fertrell products discussed on the show.

• Soy-free protein crumble for poultry and pigs.
• Homeowner collection in 20 pound bags. (Just add corn!) soy-free protein blend (with vitamins and minerals). Contact Fertrell.

Previous Episodes with Jeff PPT041: Jeff Mattocks Provides a Primer for On-Farm Feed Mixing for Freshness, Health, and Profitibility PPT042: Definitive Guide to Feather Pecking with Jeff Mattocks PPT043: The Richard Simmons Approach to Molting Hens with Jeff Mattocks PPT044: Understanding the Nutritional Benefits of Black Soldier Fly As Poultry Feed

In Episode 71, learn how to grill chicken barbecue that's flavorful and moist. Email questions to [email protected]. As this episode drops, the United States will be in full-on summer picnic mode with the fourth of July. It's a perfect place to showcase pasture-raised chicken. In a bad cook's grill, however, it's a great opportunity to for a tough, dry, and poor eating experience. Mike talks about some of the biggest challenges to eating chicken: bland chicken and grilling. Mike shares tips for grilling pastured raised chicken using two types of charcoal grills. The first is a typical homeowner style grill, such as a Kamada grill, using direct heat. When grilling chicken barbecue for large groups, Mike uses a commercial chicken grill manufactured from Poultry Man. All the details are in the episode. Bland flavor is the second biggest problem to grilling chicken. Pasture-raised chicken has an inherent advantage in the flavor department because of the diverse diet, older birds, and sometimes, different breeds of chicken. The flavor of the chicken starts on day one of its life in the brooder based on what the farmer feeds. Find out how you can create flavorful chicken in this episode. Taste test. Taste is incredibly subjective, and you know this if you've ever talked with people who eat. This article from Farm Babe conducted a blind taste test among friends using several brands of chicken, including a pasture-raised variety from Pasturebird. These types of taste tests are great fun, educational, and offer lots of anecdotal discussion. In this episode, Mike breaks down the problem with this taste test. Hint: the winner was seasoned the same as the other participants. Chicken Basting Sauce I baste this on my chicken as it grills when I'm cooking on direct heat using my chicken grill from Badger's Millside Farm.

• 5 cups apple cider vinegar
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup salt (original recipe calls for 1 cup)

Add water to make one one gallon. This will easily handle 40 pounds of chicken. Sponsor: if you have a poultry nutrition question and are looking for the best feed formulation possible using poultry nutri-balancer, contact show sponsor Fertrell at [email protected].

Episode 70. Beginning pastured poultry farmers have a common question: "What are the margins in raising pastured poultry?" In other words, "will it work?" The margins in your pasture-raised broiler business is what's left over after you pay for expenses. The margin is the profit that goes back into the business. Mike Badger answers that listener question in this episode by showing you how to calculate the cost of the raising a broiler. This question has been answered before by Mike and Grady Phelan. In episode 28, Mike and Grady walk through calculating price in different housing systems and at different scale. Listen to PPT028 How to set broiler prices that show a profit. Pastured Poultry Headlines Pastured Poultry Nutrition: A European study, "Fatty acid composition of breast meat in two lines of slow-growing chickens reared conventionally or on pasture by Teodora Popova" concluded that the the pastured poultry production model contributed to higher omega 3 and lower omega 6:3 ratio. The study looked at the effect of genetics and pastured poultry model and concluded that the pasture had a greater impact. The lines of birds were La Belle and Bresse Gauloise. Read the report. Speckled Sussex Hatched: Mike sourced, incubated, and hatched a small batch of Speckled Sussex chicks. 20 chicks are in the brooder right now. The Speckled Sussex is a dual purpose breed with a great disposition. Hens lay a large egg. It's an all around great homestead bird. More info coming soon. The Badger's love this breed. Muscovy Ducks: Mike is currently evaluating Fertrell's non-soy protein crumble by custom feeding a group of Muscovy Ducks from Fifth Day Hatchery. Stay tuned for updates on the ducks and the feed. What are the margins on pasture-raised broilers? Listener Alex is contemplating a move to back to the farm and simply asks, is pastured poultry feasible and is there enough margin to support a family? Mike walks through the basic formula for figuring out how much it costs to raise each pound of pasture-raised chicken for a group of 250 birds to a 4 pound carcass. The big variables are feed cost, feed conversion, and labor, but you need to start somewhere. This exercise yields a conservative and ideal price per pound that can be adjusted for local markets and goals. Episode 52 of PPT is recommended because it shows how Mike uses Pastured Poultry to make a living. Spoiler alert: it's not all from raising and selling chicken to consumers. Also mentioned in this episode: Fighting Farmer 22 - complementary farm enterprises. Fighting farmer 21 - Value-adding poultry.

Ready-to-lay pullets, sometimes called point-of-lay, are one of the pastured egg farmers best competitive advantages. But it's not all upside. Pullet supplier Mike Badger discusses the advantages, disadvantages, and opportunities for farmers to save money on replacement pullet costs. It also calls out an unmet demand in the pastured layer community for a diversity and quantity of birds.

[caption id="attachment_1140" align="alignright" width="300"] Look at the beautiful beak on that ready-to-lay pullet.[/caption]

(Dis)Advantages of Ready-to-Lay Pullets

Generally speaking, the advantages to buying point-of-lay pullets are:

• Competitive cost over raising your own by leveraging commercial scale.
• Ready-to-lay pullets were raised with proper nutrition.
• Avoid risk of disease, distraction, and predation.

There are also some disadvantages:

• Production system - Commonly available pullets are are not pastured and may be beak trimmed. Mike sells untrimmed beak ready-to-lay pullets through Badger's Millside Farm.
• Breed availability - It's typically hard and expensive to find non-commercial hybrids (i.e., the sexlinks) as ready-to-lay pullets.
• Feed during the grow-out - Many pastured producers feed non-gmo (not organic) or a certified organic feed, but large suppliers do not.

This episodes talks through all these issues, and puts them in context.

Opportunities for Pullets

Realize that if you're a pastured poultry producer, everyone of these advantages and disadvantages represents an opportunity. The advantages are easy, but often if you're left looking for something that doesn't exist, the chances are other farmers are looking for it too. That's your opportunity to provide a service to your community while generating an income for the farm.

If you want to raise pastured poultry, there is no law that says you have to sell ready-to-eat products to consumers. Explore the B2B world, or in this case, the farmer-to-farmer marketplace.

Economics and Cost Benefits of Ready-to-Lay Pullets

A common question that many pullet dealers get is, "how can you sell started pullets for that price?" The answer is self evident, but still not believable. The only thing you need to understand is that you, as a direct-marketing farmer, need to raise a lot of birds to compete with the large suppliers and their dealer networks.

This episode features some napkin math to prove the cost benefit of pullets against raising your own layers from day 1. We don't need to go very far to realize the deal.

The napkin math for raising your own pullets from day old is simple: cost of chick + cost of feed + labor per bird. The episode dives into these numbers and assigns values to raising your own 17 week old laying hens in flocks of 250 and 600. For comparison, we look at a non-gmo feed and a certified organic feed.

Chicken math on a napkin or the back of the envelope is beautiful.

Calculating the Cost of a Replacement Pullet

Based on an APPPA survey I conducted several years, the average pasture-raised egg laying flock was 225, so I'll round that up to 250. At the APPPA conference in Arkansas, the median sized egg flock of that group of experienced producers was somewhere around 600 birds. Let's compare those two flock sizes.

I can source a day old production hybrid layer from Moyer's for $2.50 each. If I give the birds 30 minutes of labor each day for 17 weeks, I've got 60 hours of labor (it's actually 59.5 hours, but you'll find a way to spend that half hour).

We estimate total feed consumption to be 20 pounds per hen during that time. Can it be better? Yes.

I can source organic feed for approximately .40/ lb and non-gmo for .30/lb.

Let's put it all together.

Cost of chick + Labor per pullet + feed cost.

Labor cost here is a wild card and I think we get too bogged down in the labor, but the time and effort is real. You have to account for it. I assume a labor rate of $15 per hour.

Cost to raise 250 ready-to-lay pullets

Over 250 birds, you'll put ¼ of an hour of labor into each bird. That works out to $3.75 per bird in labor. Let's add it up: $2.50 (chick cost) + $8 (feed cost) + $3.75 (labor cost). Feed is being calculated at 20 pounds at $0.40 per pound.

An estimated cost to raise a hybrid point-of-lay pullet is $14.25 each in batches of 250. If I use a non-gmo feed, at .30/lb, the feed per bird is $6 and comes down to $12.25 per pullet.

You can buy a 17 week-old sexlink pullet for $7.00 each, if you buy 250 at a time.

Cost to raise 600 ready-to-lay pullets

Now let's consider a bigger scale of 600 birds. The chick cost is $1.95 each. The organic feed cost is the same at $8. The labor per pullet comes down to $1.50. That's a napkin cost of $11.45 per pullet on organic feed. If you feed the non-gmo, the per pullet cost becomes $9.45.

You can buy a 17 week old sexlink pullet for $7.00, if you buy 600 at a time.

Economies of Scale

Do you get what's happening here? There are several really important takeaways:

The smaller flock you raise, the more expensive it is in terms of cost-per bird. Scale brings down the price because you can spread the same amount of labor out over a larger quantity of birds. The chickens cost less per unit when purchased in volume.

Our costs didn't even factor in other direct costs – bedding, heating, mortality, and infrastructure.

Even as you match the scale, there's something to be said for losing 17 weeks of risk. You give up the predation risk, the health risk, the improper nutrition risks of a developing pullet. If you get the nutrition of a layer wrong in her development period, she'll never provide a profitable return on her work, regardless of how cheaply you raised her.

Pastured Poultry Headlines from the Episode

Muscovy Ducks. Mike talks through his Muscovy duck, non-soy feeding trial with Fertrell's new non-soy protein pellet. He's also looking for producers who have experience hatching muscovies to be a guest on the podcast.

Fighting Farmer Podcast. If you're not listening to Spence on the Fighting Farmer, I encourage you to check his podcast out. We moved The Fighting Farmer to its own feed a few months ago; you can find it him on itunes and Google play.

Pastured Poultry in Attica New York. If you're in the neighborhood, I'll be presenting at Herm Weber's annual pastured poultry day on the differentiation of pastured poultry from field to plate. I'm going to also bring Eli Reiff (Poultry Man) with me. The day will also include a farm tour (weather permitting) and open Q&A. To register, contact Herm directly at (585) 591-0795. There is a registration fee and lunch is included.

Where to Buy Ready-to-Lay Pullets?

Buy Ready to Lay pullets from Badger's Millside Farm in central Pennsylvania.

Badger's offers 17 week old red sexlink pullets in the spring and fall from Moyer's Chicks. All birds have a full, untrimmed beak.