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