Farm Rants

Chickens

So we went ahead with the chicken order.

For those of you who didn’t hear, we ordered 300 baby chicks to grow until the end of November. These are Cornish rock X’s and grow very fast. These little guys grow fast, at 21 days old they are now over 1lb and should be somewhere at or near 8lbs by the end of November.

Why on earth are we growing chickens????

Well its all about poop really. Yup, poop. See in organic growing the choices are limited on what you can use to fertilize the soil. Of course there are plenty of liquid and granular products available to fertilize with that are organic approved (for what thats worth anyways.). I guess for some people those products make viable options. We want to integrate though. We want to establish systems of natural fertility and mimic natural patterns as much as possible. Of course 300 hybrid chickens fed chicken food purchased by the 50lb bag is a little less than the natural we are aiming for, but it is certainly a start in the right direction. Here are a few things we are doing differently to move in the direction we would like:

• Fresh grass clipping are given to the chickens as often as we can get them to supplement their diet with vitamins (especially vitamin A), minerals, and maybe most importantly live green foods.
• The chickens are in the greenhouse giving them direct sunlight, fresh air, dirt to scratch in and eat, along with the worms and bugs.
• We add brewers yeast (from a local brewery’s waste stream) to their food, this recycles the yeast which is chuck full of vitamins and protein, also research shows that the hops help keep the birds healthy by warding off disease.
• No hormones will be used whatsoever on these birds.
• Just the chick starter feed has whats called a COCCISTAT added. No antibacterials or other antibiotics are used. With chickens a COCCISTAT is used as an anti parasitic and is valuable to get the chicks off to the right start, mature birds can cope with the parasite coccidiosis but chicks often suffer and can die if this isn’t prevented. This feed is given untill 4 or up to 6 weeks then replaced with a grower feed of mostly cracked grains without the COCCISTAT. So the chicken have plenty of time off the Coccistat and shouldn’t have any traces of it in the final product.
• We turn the soil in the greenhouse almost daily making the environment healthier for the birds, incorporating the manure for future crops, and the birds always follow us so they get first pick of the new worms.
• Chicken manure is high in nitrogen (a valuable fertilizer) which breaks down soil organic matter faster, while this can be a good thing when it comes to crop nourishment the long term effects are a soil devoid of important organic matter, we are adding tree leaves to the ground to increase the organic matter and creating a compost of sorts right in the soil for next years crops will grow in.

We like this system, it allows the greenhouse to be productive in a time where it might otherwise sit idle, fertilizes the greenhouse soil while creating an in situ compost for the next crop cycle, and gives the birds a healthier life than would be provided in some chicken broiler houses.  The finished birds will be available at the end of November and will range in size from 4lb up to 8lb. Cost will be $2.50 per pound (our competition at the farmers market is selling for $4.50lb) and we need to know if you want the skin on (without skin makes our life easier), giblets and neck included, and larger or smaller birds. A 5 dollar deposit per bird is being taken at this time.  If your interested please fill out the form below or give us a call at 208-522-4905

Posted under: Chickens