Pastured Poultry Talk

I have a conversation with Chrislyn Wood, DVM, about the threat of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) and pasture raised flocks. Dr. Wood is a veterinarian with USDA APHIS and she is involved first hand with HPAI monitoring and response efforts.  We cover a lot of ground, including historical observations, risk assessment, disease identification, and prevention. 

I'm still here. Plus, I'd like to invite you to attend APPPA's Professional Pastured Poultry Conference (https://apppa.org/Conference) from January 16-18, 2022.  At this year's conference, I am teaming up with John Suscovich and Luke Groce to host a meetup for the listeners of our shows.  As a listener to Pastured Poultry Talk, you're invited to meetup, chat, and just connect. Stay tuned for day and time information.  

Greg Gunthorp joins the show to talk about his decision to step away from pasture raised chickens. Covid plays into the story, of course, but the challenges started long before this virus came to be front page news.  We also dig into some processing wisdom and reality. Greg talks consolidation and Bill Gates. We dig deep and cover a lot of interconnected ground.

Cynthia Capers, Heniscity Farm in Tennessee, shares her 20+ year journey from hobby chicken keeper to poultry farmer. Twenty years ago, the sight of six Black Australorps brought tears to her eyes. Today, she's serving her community through egg sales, chick sales, pullet sales, and community education. She's incorporated poultry into their rural bed and breakfast and has become an integral resource in her community.  As a black farmer reconnecting to the land and rediscovering her ancestral roots, the journey isn't easy, but Cynthia is right where she needs to be inspiring those around her. She brings the power of chickens to life. In the show we cover:  Her exposure to animals in an urban environment Incorporating chickens into the B&B Covid challenges Eggs as the answer to hunger Connecting to the land and honoring Mother Africa Importance of friends and support ...and more Resources:  Heniscity Farm on Facebook Nashville Scene Article: Black Farmers Feed Their Neighbors and Connect With Their Ancestors.

I answer a listener question, "How can I make my small laying hen flock more profitable?" With feedback from the community, insights from The Fighting Farmer, and personal experience, we dive deep into ways to prosper from your small flock of laying hens. The answer divides into three sections: management, pricing, and markets/marketing.  Ask your questions at https://pasturedpoultrytalk.com/contact.   

Perdue acquires Pasturebird and becomes the biggest producer in the space. I unpack what it means on this episode and walk through some history. 

Listener Chris asks how to utilize an all-in/all-out pullet replacement strategy without duplicating infrastructure while maintaining egg production. To help answer the question, I share insights from Mark Harrison and Dave and Ginger Shields.  The simple answer to the Chris' question is that infrastructure is required to maintain production. Listen in as I discuss the details. 

In Pastured Poultry Talk episode 110, farmer Matt Steinman discussed how he used fermented feed as a solution to feed waste and fines. While fermentation can be a viable solution for some people, it's not the only way to deal with fines. The problem with fines accumulating in your feeders instead of the birds is that that the chickens miss key nutrients, and they waste feed. The lack of nutrients cause behavioral problems and reduced production. The feed waste costs you money. Soy-free feeds tend to contain more powder and compound the issues with fines. In this episode I detail a few approaches to dealing with the wasteful fine feed dilemma, which essentially comes down to not adding old feed on top of new feed and avoiding using a bulk feeder. When you use a bulk feeder, you trade convenience for management, and it can compound the problem with feed waste, fines, and overeating (which I don't cover in this episode).

Farmer Matt Steinman (Foothills Farm in Sedro-Woolley, Washington) and Dr. Louisa Brouwer (technical advisor on the trial) share the results of a SARE-funded trial that sought to understand the economic impacts of feeding fermented feed to laying hens. The trial compared a dry feed, wet feed, and a fermented feed and then determined the net difference across to the bottom line.

I close out the pastured poultry training series with a live streamed Q&A between Terrell Spencer from The Fighting Farmer and myself. We went live on Facebook and fielded questions from our listeners, and this episode of the podcast includes an edited version of that conversation. If you want to watch a replay of the stream, find it on YouTube. Before we work into the questions, I offer some thoughts on heritage poultry's potential role in pastured community. APPPA has recently started to focus on breeding specific topics and offers monthly livestreams on breeding. Check out APPPA's work here. We cover a range of topics on this episode including: Using a Poultry Man Plucker to improve processing efficiency Discussing value-added poultry products and ground chicken The number one resource for all new pastured poultry producers Spence shares some knowledge on chicken sausage, including a way to sell hearts for $10 a pound Canadians are welcome in APPPA Spence touches on some USDA processing facility challenges, such as how do you keep the plant full in winter Making hay from chickens Part of pastured poultry is nutrient management What kind of feed should i buy -non-gmo, etc.  Egg washing equipment Mike breaks some soy-free pullet news

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 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.

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. Don't buy cheap feed Pasture's role in feeding your birds  Tips for Sourcing Feed buy from local independent mill first know feed types: organic, conventional, non-gmo 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 Provide enough feeder space so that everybody eats Water consumption drives for feed consumption Will you drink your chickens' water? Feed supplements - grit and oyster shell What influence does feed have on production: lay rate and feed conversion? Tips for feeding Cornish cross 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.

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. 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 cliche 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  

As a Pastured Poultry Talk listener, it's incredibly important to me that you know about the APPPA Conference in Jacksonville from January 19-21, 2020. This episode explains that the Professional Pastured Poultry Conference is and how it came to be. Find more information. Listen for a special offer.

I'm a cotton patch goose breeder. Well, I have geese that are old enough to mate. We'll save the moniker of goose breeder until we have some deliberate success. The cotton patch goose is a historical landrace breed originally used to weed cotton fields and other crops across the South. However, the introduction of pesticides replaced the need for geese, and they've been hidden away on farms until the internet made them popular again. The common qualities of the breed include autosexing goslings and adults, gentle disposition, medium sized, great weeders, and broody. In pastured poultry, geese have a very popular use as guard animals, which is job one for my flock of Cotton Patch Geese. I will also use them for vegetation control on different parts of the farm. Most of this work relies on successfully hatching goslings, but after I have goslings to build the breeding pens out and to satisfy my utilitarian needs, I need to have a market for the geese. Christmas goose is a traditional market, and on the episode, I talk about a regional Pennsylvania holiday called Goose Day, which is celebrated in the Juniata River Valley. According to a 2015 Penn Live article, Michaelmas Day was originally a holiday to celebrate the archangel Michael in 480. Over time, by the 15th century, it became a popular day to pay leases, and the tradition of adding a plump goose to the payment was established. The tradition stuck and made it's way to Mifflin and Juniata Counties with German settlers and is popularly called Goose Day. You can read more the article Happy Goose Day! Here's everything you need to know about the holiday. It's too early to know what the 2020 goose season will bring, but my first priority is to get goslings. Pastured Poultry Talk Episodes with Breeders https://pasturedpoultrytalk.com/2019/08/27/dangerous-breeder/   https://pasturedpoultrytalk.com/2019/07/04/breeding-delaware-chickens/ https://pasturedpoultrytalk.com/2015/05/15/ppt003-hatching-eggs-on-the-homestead-with-harvey-ussery-2/ https://pasturedpoultrytalk.com/2015/07/24/ppt013-not-a-backyard-chicken-club-jim-adkins-interview-part-1-2/

This is an edited version of the article I published in Issue 113 of the APPPA Grit, which was based on the conversation in this podcast. Not a member of APPPA? Go check them out. Last fall, I had the pleasure of consulting with a producer on some questions about his farm’s turkey processing procedure. Since turkey processing season 2019 is fast approaching, I wanted to share some highlights of that conversation in this podcast. One of the biggest challenges with the turkey processing was the amount of hand plucking required to finish the birds. The hand plucking went anywhere from five to ten minutes extra. The natural question becomes, "can I pluck the turkeys clean like I do with chickens?" I had this same conversation with a different person recently, so I know it’s a relatively common question. The first place to troubleshoot this type of problem is the scalder. The farm I was talking to was scalding and plucking four turkeys that dressed between 16 and 20 pounds in a Poultry Man 41” scalder and a Featherman XL plucker. Due to problems with the turkeys catching in the rotating platform of the scalder, the farm was manually dunking 4 turkeys in the rotary scalder (the platform was stationary and vertical). Then in the plucker, the birds were getting jammed up. One person actually had to man the plucker. Maintain Water Temperature and Level When scalding anything, it helps to ensure your scalder maintains the water temperature as you process. My scalder has one 65,000 BTU burner, and for turkeys, I need to heat supplemental water because I can process turkeys faster than the water recovers. The temperature recovery problem is compounded because the turkeys remove a lot of water from the scalder, so it’s not just heating up water that has cooled ten degrees, it’s heating up larger quantities of cold water. In addition to maintaining temperature, make sure you keep the water level full. Stop Dunking Birds Up and Down For the processors using a manual scalding approach, the first piece of advice I always give is to stop dunking birds up and down. This enables a bad scald. Basically, the breast gets more scald than the legs and thighs, so it’s uneven. If you are manually scalding, try dropping the birds into the scald water and then stir them like soup. Test your scald early and often because the birds will scald faster with this approach, but they will be  consistent. Plucking will be a pleasure, even by hand. This process works for heritage birds, too. I remember processing at a farm in North Carolina a few Thanksgivings ago; I ran the manual scalder and there was no dunking involved, and my back was appreciative. If you’re using a rotary scalder, there’s no reason to hand dunk. Adjust the volume of birds to flow through the system efficiently. In the case of rotary scalders, you can often increase your throughput by scalding birds on both sides of the rotating rack. Remove Feet and Point Necks In On the scalder, I recommend taking the feet off the turkeys prior to scalding (which the farm was doing) and loading the turkeys so that the necks point into the center of the tank, not the sides. Sometimes with scalders that have a gap between the rotating platform and the sides of the scalder, the long turkey necks find a way to slide into that gap. Add the Right Number of Birds to the Plucker The goal of the plucker is to have enough birds so that they tumble against each other; otherwise, the plucking requires a human hand to make the birds tumble or the feathers won’t pick off. However, there is often another problem we don’t think about in the plucker, and that’s too many birds.  My recommendation during the podcast was was to put three turkeys into that 32" diameter plucker instead of four. This gives the birds room to go around the drum and still tumble into each other. I had the pleasure of the hearing back from the farm after their 2018 turkey processing, and the tips I shared greatly helped process the nearly 500 turkeys. They confirmed that three turkeys through the plucker was the optimum number. If you’re using a smaller scalder and plucker, your batch size may be limited to one or two turkeys at a time. If you’re using a 22” or 23” plucker, you’re likely limited to one turkey. If you move up to a 27” diameter plucker, you have one tom or two hens, if we’re talking about broad breasted whites. It’s incredibly hard to pluck one turkey efficiently. It will take somebody babysitting the plucker to keep the turkey tumbling. And even in the smaller diameter pluckers of less than 30”, two turkeys will find a way to jam up frequently. Again, it needs a babysitter. Don’t fight it. Accept it. And if you’re doing more than a few dozen turkeys at any one processing, you’ll get a lot of improvement with a 32” or 35” or larger plucker and a scalder to match. Wrap-Up You’ll notice that most of the solutions to a poor pluck do not focus on the plucker. This is why you sometimes need somebody to talk through issues with you. We obsess over efficiency, especially processing line throughput to the point where we only see bigger batches as the solution. Cleanly plucking three turkeys at a time with no hand plucking will pencil out more efficiently every time compared to running four turkeys that require ten minutes of hand plucking. All the commercial scalders and pluckers should make your turkey featherless with little work from you. If that’s not your experience, troubleshoot, and invest in the proper equipment, if needed. Resources Mentioned Poultry Man Equipment Featherman Equipment The best turkey kill cone you'll ever use

Turkeys are one of the most adored birds in the pastured poultry community with a strong emotional tie to family Thanksgiving; however, they can often be challenging to raise because they require more time and attention than a chicken. Those challenges often see high mortality rates or farmers who opt out of turkeys all together. There are at least two possible solutions to the turkey raising woes. The first is to get better at turkeys, but turkeys arrive on farm in one of the busiest times of the season, so it's not always that easy. The second possibility is to purchase started turkeys from another grower. In addition to the opportunities, this podcast episode will focus on the math and marketing of 6 week old started turkeys. How much does it cost to raise a turkey for 6 weeks? As producers, we spend a lot of time focusing on cost of production, and with young turkeys those costs are evident from day one. The cost of day old turkey poults is all over the map and can range anywhere from $6 to nearly $9 for a day old poult. Badger's Millside Farm resold day-old sexed old turkeys poults for $5.50 each. The high poult cost from commercial hatcheries is made worse with mortality. The first calculation I share in the podcast episode is refactoring poult cost to account for the first week mortality. If I purchase 20 poults for $6.43 and have 10% mortality in the first several days, I'm left with 18 turkeys. The new cost per poult becomes $7.14. I look at feed next. If you feed 8 pounds of certified organic feed at $0.42 / lb., you end up with $3.36 per turkey in feed cost for six weeks. The feed cost is not all that dramatic when placed in the context of poult cost and labor. If you source a non-organic feed at $0.25 / lb., the feed cost would become $2.00 per bird. Next up is labor. I calculate an example of $15 / hr. for 15 minutes a day to arrive at a $8.75 per turkey in labor. Put it all together, and the cost to raise 20 turkeys is $19.25 per turkey ($7.14 + $3.36 + $8.75). This example doesn't factor in bedding, grit, electricity, infrastructure costs, or mortality after the first five days. The comparison is simple from this point. Badger's Millside Farm sold 6 week old turkeys (fed organic feed) for $16 each. There are a couple reasons why your cost would be higher than $16. I raise more than 20 in a batch. My flock mortality was 4% and I did not pay a retail cost for poults. Marketing Started Turkeys The best leads came through existing channels, either through exising customers or word of mouth. To sell some of the started turkeys I raised on spec, I tried Facebook Ads and Craigslist. Facebook has never been a good marketing channel for me to find pastured poultry growers, and that hypothesis continues to test true. I spent $30 in advertising to make one $64 sale. Definitely not worthwhile. The Craigslist ad received less than 1/3 of the responses, but it reached my target audience - pastured poultry farmers, which is different than people who raise a few birds. My Craigslist ad generated $160 in sales. As you can see, we're talking small numbers of birds in these channels. I'm taking interest for 2020 day old poults and started turkeys through my farm page, Badger's Millside Farm.  

It's no surprise that I'm hot on the  podcasting medium. Pastured Poultry Talk is a podcast, after all. In Episode 93 of the show, Kenny Troiano referenced his podcast, Bred to Perfection, as a primary marketing asset for his membership site. The publication of the episode was well timed because it happened soon after I returned from the Podcast Movement conference in Orlando. If you want to hone your pastured poultry business, you associate with expert people (through APPPA, for example). If you want to develop your podcasting craft, you seek out the smartest people you can and spend time with them. That's what Podcast Movement was for me. Here are the key points: Don't be afraid to selectively focus on a niche group for your products and farm. Success will demand it. Don't measure your success by impressions or population; there's a subset of the existing population who is your customer. Develop your marketing so that it creates relationships, so you can connect with your niche. If you're already engaged in relationship based marketing, you can power up your approach with a podcast targeted to your customers (not other farmers). You're already creating the content; repurpose it. Resources https://pasturedpoultrytalk.com/2018/08/13/ppt073-exploring-the-intersection-of-podcasting-pastured-poultry-farming-and-business/ https://pasturedpoultrytalk.com/2019/08/27/dangerous-breeder/

Dangerous breeders are everywhere and the internet gives them a platform to perpetuate bad breeding habits at the expense of offspring that represents the breed. A dangerous breeder is someone who produces offspring that doesn't represent the breed. They often don't know how to selectively breed, and they're not interested in learning. I may be characterized as a dangerous breeder in that I have done things that are counter to good breeding practices, but I've not really perpetuated my lack of knowledge by selling my failed breeding projects. I understand my gap in breeding knowledge and the gap in the quality of my birds. I tend to eat my lack of understanding rather than selling it. Master breeder Kenny Troiano of the Breeders Academy and Bred to Perfection podcast joins the show to help us become better breeders. Too often, when we talk to breeders about their work, we focus on the end result--the successes they've had and that leaves a large gap in knowledge for people who want to start breeding. If you want to breed well, then your effort goes way beyond mating a rooster and a hen to hatch an egg. In this episode of Pastured Poultry Talk, Kenny lays out the foundation for any serious breeding effort. You'll still need to read, to learn, and to seek a mentor, but you'll get a clear picture of the work involved. It's not an easy effort, but that's why it becomes important for you to determine your goals. If you want a few birds on the farm to admire and eat, that will have different requirements than selectively breeding a family of birds for productivity and breed representation. What Have Commercial Breeders Done The commercial breeders understand hybrid vigor, says Kenny. That understanding has produced the 300+ eggs per year layers and the meat birds that can be slaughtered as early as 35 days. It's incredible to think about that this productivity came from within the traits that already existed within the genetics of the chickens; the hybrid crosses enhance the traits. Hybrid vigor has a ceiling, however. Cross two breeds and they increase their production. Cross two hybrids and you end up with variable, unpredictable results that produce at a rate less than the original hybrids. The commercial breeders, according to Kenny have pushed their breeding so far with proprietary crossings, that they are at risk of inbreeding depression. Disease resistance is also suffering in the commercial breeding lines. A Breeding Checklist Kenny covers a lot of ground in the episode, but here are some key points to think about as you (re)start your breeding journey. Learn the origin and history of breed you want. Understand culling and learn about defects. If you see a defect, don't buy the bird. Defects are recessive, and if you breed two birds with the same defect, all offspring will be affected. Breeding hybrids will have a variability in size, color, shape, etc. Commercial hybrids have unknown genetic qualities. Every breeder should know what their common defect is. Hint: If you're buying breeding stock, ask what the common defect is! Always select offspring that's better than the parents. When selecting birds, go beyond the top 10%. Look for the stand outs that take the family to the next level, whether that's one or a handful. Find a breeding trio to establish your program so you can see exactly what the birds are. Hatching chicks as a way to establish your family is often problematic, variable, and disappointing. Setup a clan mating system (also called spiral mating system), which is three groups of birds. The clan mating system is a good maintenance system and helps ensure genetic diversity. Kenny has not introduced new bloodlines into his breeding in over 30 years. Understand clan mating is only one of the types of breeding programs. You'll use other programs in parallel to achieve the results you want. Another common approach is to line breed. Never mix breeding birds with production birds. Only breed birds that have the potential to advance the family by selecting offspring better than the parents. Hatch has many offspring as you can afford. Understand genetics. Get a mentor and hang out with people smarter than you! Kenny provided this reading list. His writings and Breeders Academy make these topics more accessible: Mendel's Law of Independent Assortment Mendel's Law of Segregation Sexlink traits and quantitative traits (polygenic) Mutation theory Punnett Square Show Resources You can connect with Kenny through any of these resources or email him directly. Breeders Academy Podcast Breeders Bulletin (Free Email Sign up) Breeders Academy Sign Up for Pastured Poultry Talk Listeners Publications Poultry Press Gamefowl Breeders Manual (Amazon) Pastured Poultry Talk Episodes Referenced https://pasturedpoultrytalk.com/2015/05/15/ppt003-hatching-eggs-on-the-homestead-with-harvey-ussery-2/ https://pasturedpoultrytalk.com/2015/07/24/ppt013-not-a-backyard-chicken-club-jim-adkins-interview-part-1-2/ https://pasturedpoultrytalk.com/2017/05/20/ppt051-pat-whitaker-breeds-black-australorps-for-utility/ https://pasturedpoultrytalk.com/2019/07/04/breeding-delaware-chickens/

https://pasturedpoultrytalk.com/2016/06/14/ppt044-understanding-the-nutritional-benefits-of-black-soldier-fly-as-poultry-feed/Confused about the difference between feed values expressed in as-fed or dry matter percentages? The difference between as-fed nutrition and dry-matter nutrition in poultry feeds is water. The dried feed removes the water, giving us a dry matter calculation. Using the mealworm protein example provided by Cheryl Powers in episode 91 of Pastured Poultry Talk, the live mealie has a 19% protein level. Dry the meal worm by removing the water and the protein jumps to 55%. As a producer, you need to know the nutrition of your feed if you purposefully give that feed to your flock. In the podcast episode, I talk through an example where this knowledge would be beneficial. If you wanted to increase the protein of a chick starter from a 21% protein to a 26%, you could use the Pearson Square to create a new ration from the chick starter and the mealworms. But which type of mealworm should you use? The as-fed protein level of a live mealworm will not work in our example because the protein is too  low. You'd need to use the dried mealworm to increase the protein level of the chick starter to a turkey starter. Resources about Dry Matter and As-Fed Feedstuff Comparisons – As Fed versus Dry Matter (PDF) Dry Matter and As Fed Conversions (PDF) Formulating Rations with Pearson Square https://pasturedpoultrytalk.com/2019/08/15/farming-mealworms-for-chicken-feed/ https://pasturedpoultrytalk.com/2016/06/14/ppt044-understanding-the-nutritional-benefits-of-black-soldier-fly-as-poultry-feed/ f

Crickets are a popular insect protein for humans, and black soldier fly larvae receive most of the attention among chicken keepers; Cheryl Powers, Jord Producers, plans to change that by farming mealworms as a supplemental chicken feed. Actually, she's working to position mealworms for reptiles, exotic birds, and humans (but we tend to stick to chickens). One of the biggest benefits of mealworms is that they are high in protein. There has also been published research in Poultry Science that shows feeding mealworms to chickens can increase average daily gain, feed conversation, egg size, and flavor. According to Cheryl, you only need to feed a small amount of mealworms to see an increase in the protein intake of the chickens' diet. Less than 10 mealworms is her recommendation. Chickens love the mealworms, and they will forage on them without hesitation. There can be too much of a good thing. If the birds fill up on the fiber of the mealworms, they won't get all the other vitamins, mineral, and nutrients they need to thrive. Mealworms, in other words, are not a complete diet. Nutrition of Mealworm as Chicken Feed According to analysis by Jord Producers, the mealworm contains the following nutrition profile: Protein As-fed: 19% Dry Matter: 55% Fiber As-fed: 3% Dry Matter: 8% Fat As-fed: 9% Dry Matter: 26% As-fed calculations represent the live mealworm, as eaten by the chicken. The dry matter removes the water from mealworm, thereby concentrating the nutrition. Growing Mealworms for Chicken Feed As Cheryl describes in the podcast episode, the mealworms are raised on a wheat bran with sliced potatoes or carrots as a water source. Mealworms are farmed indoors in an environmentally controlled space. The tubs containing the mealworms are stacked vertically, making this a versatile farming operation. One of the company's growers, has actually repurposed an unused hog farrowing barn for the mealworm farm. Jord Produces is in the first year of business and building markets as they learn to be insect farmers. They have a first goal of being able to produce 400 pounds of mealworms a week. For now, the poultry focus will be on supplemental feeds and treats for chickens. Cracking the commodity pricing floor to compete with soy is a difficult task. The other interesting challenge is that it takes mealworms approximately two-and-a half months to reach harvest. When you put that in perspective, a cornish cross chicken can be ready to harvest in under two months (7 or 8 weeks). But as more and more consumers move toward soy-free fed poultry products, insect proteins may make inroads as a poultry feed ingredient, pending certification from  the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO). Contact Cheryl Powers Jord Producers: website | Instagram | Facebook | Email Resources Mentioned in Episode Efficacy of mealworm and super mealworm larvae probiotics as an alternative to antibiotics challenged orally with Salmonella and E. coli infection in broiler chicks Bug Eaters Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO)

In the week or so preceding this episode, Polyface announced it was slaughtering one of its sacred cows. They were going to ship product. Social media was a angry throng of pastured poultry injustice warriors. If you're looking for commentary on Daniel and Joel's decision, you're in the wrong spot. My commentary is for the people commenting, and I'll place that commentary in the context of pastured poultry. Episode 89 of the podcast featured Garoleen Wilson and Jhawk Farm in Kansas. That chat Garoleen brought into focus the context from which we should be evaluating whether or not shipping is a viable option for your farm. It won't be for everybody, but that doesn't mean it's wrong for the community at-large. A critical distinction, from my perch, is to ask yourself, what are the principles that can't be compromised and what are the limiting beliefs (for you Ravenscraft listeners)? Shipping is a limiting belief, an obstacle that could prevent you from growth. It could keep you and the community from relevance. Or it could fizzle from the consumer demand. I implore you to go beyond the copy cat-style of production. Don't adopt another farms business vision, mission, and beliefs just because you idolize what they're doing.  Learn your craft. Learn the principles to stand on and then innovate around those principles. In pasture-raised poultry, two principles to stand on are rotational grazing and seasonally appropriate outdoor production. Should you ship pasture-raised poultry? Not all of us live on the coast or have easy access to population centers that can sustain a direct-to-consumer model. Garoleen lives in a county that is 30 miles x 30 miles and has a population of 3,600 people. It's over two hours to a town that's big enough to support a Wal-Mart. She's producing as many chickens as there are people in her county. And we know not everyone in the county is eating pastured poultry. Garoleen has the foundation for her pastured poultry business - she can articulate a why, a how, and a what. To make it a business, she has to work through coops and distributors. The coop takes the chicken to the Denver and Golden, Colorado markets and stretches local to about 200 miles. She also works with Crowd Cow who consigns the chicken and then ships it through the mail to customers. These two sales channels enable Jhawk Farm to grow a business that wouldn't have been feasible 10 years ago. The coop would have been possible, but the expanded regional or national distribution would not. And it's that additional option that builds scale within the community or at least provides potential. The fight for relevance is real. Pastured poultry gets an upsized exposure due to social media and the ease of information delivery. But if we want to impact the health of the environment, the health of the chickens, the health of our rural economies, and the health of our eaters, we need to slaughter some sacred cows. If shipping product bothers you, take a personal stand.  Don't abstain just because you heard a presentation five, ten, or twenty years ago. Resources https://pasturedpoultrytalk.com/2019/07/16/side-hustle-kansas/

Correction: In the podcast episode, I  state Garoleen is producing 7,000 broilers. That was an error in my interpretation of her numbers. She's actually on track to produce 3,500 broilers on pasture in her fourth year. That still a fantastic trajectory and that growth is the point, as the numbers will fluctuate from year to year.  Pasture-raised broilers make a great side hustle, but when you're farming a niche product in a rural community, sometimes you need to think creatively and efficiently to make the business work. That's what Garoleen Wilson from Jhawk Farm in Kansas discusses on episode 89 of the Pastured Poultry Talk podcast. I first met Garoleen through my work with APPPA in 2016 as I was planning a cross-country seminar series. We had talked about potential seminar locations in Kansas. As luck would have it, we did not go to Kansas during that tour, but Garoleen did get involved with pasture-raised broilers. Her start in pastured poultry was heavily influence by a bout with uterine cancer. Cancer caused her to focus on clean eating and made her seriously evaluate what she was eating. Garoleen's story is one we see play out regularly through the pastured poultry producer community; as people seek better food, they often times turn to producing it for themselves and others. During her research, she found the Pastured Poultry Talk podcast and binge listened. She's since sought the comfort and wisdom of the pastured poultry community through APPPA has been steadily growing her pastured poultry side hustle ever since. Garoleen went from a few family hens to thousands of broilers by the end of her third year. By her fourth year, she's adapted the pastured model to fit her farm circumstances and create some of her own efficiencies. For example, Garoleen day ranges broilers inside a electric netting with regular flock moves to keep them on fresh grass. The day range model suits her time constraints and labor requirements. Mobile Brooder To reduce stress on the chicks when moving from the brooder to the pasture, Garoleen and husband Joe use a round, mobile brooder that can be drug from the brooder barn to the pasture. This eliminates the handling stress of crating, transporting, and unhandling. The brooder has a door that allows the hens to unload themselves. Check out this video from Jhawk Farm to see the mobile brooder in action. Handling Full Chicken Crates with Ease In the podcast episode, Garoleen made a few things clear. This is a pastured poultry side hustle, so she didn't have time to waste, and she's not getting any younger. These two points really punctuate the loading and handling of crates full of market-weight broilers. The practical solution? Use to rollers to move the weight onto the trailer instead of the legs, backs, and arms of the farmers. Garoleen and her chicken catch crew can load chickens into a stack of crates. Normally, each loaded crate needs to be lifted and carried onto the trailer. The physical exertion and wear on the body from moving chickens is a real health concern. To make the handling of full crates less work, Garoleen and Joe repurposed roller conveyors to easily move the stack of crates from the pasture shelter onto a stock trailer. Two tracks sit on the floor of the trailer beside each other. Another set of rollers connect the trailer floor to the ground. Crates are stacked on a piece of plywood to make rolling the stack even easier. After the stack is loaded onto the stock trailer, short blocks of wood are placed between the bottom crates to maintain air flow around all sides of the crates. At the processor, unloading crates is a one person job. Garoleen can roll each stack off the stock trailer and onto the processors unloading area in a matter of minutes. Watch the Wilsons load crates in this video: [video width="1280" height="720" mp4="https://pasturedpoultrytalk.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Crate-Handling-at-Jhawk-Farm.mp4"][/video] Advice for Future Pastured Poultry Farmers Garoleen encourages people to start small if they think pastured poultry is something they're interesting in pursuing. She's taking that advice in 2019 by raising just a couple dozen turkeys for Thanksgiving. Resources Contact Jhawk Farm - Facebook | Instagram | Website Named Resources: American Pastured Poultry Producers Association (APPPA) Crowd Cow High Plains Food Coop SWOT Analysis

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 | info@dawnridgefarm.com 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 Set aside time to deliberately market and write emails on a weekly or daily basis. An imperfect email that you send will have better results than imperfect email you don’t send. Your list is more responsive when you talk to them on a regular basis. Send emails that are relevant to the people on the list and follow the one topic per email guideline. Set up automatic welcome emails and onboarding series to automatically email new email list subscribers. 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: Support/information Marketing and sales Customer discovery 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.

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. Find and associate with people who are smarter than you Read a lot (in niche and out) Question everything to understand how something works Take action and do something with your knowledge-turn that knowledge into wisdom 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 mike@pasturedpoultrytalk.com. 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 livestock@fertrell.com.

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.  

[caption id="attachment_1113" align="alignright" width="300"] Plucked chickens ready to be examined along with healthy hearts, liver, and gizzard.[/caption] Episode 68, I help you identify poultry production problems from your gutting table. When your chickens are laying on your table naked and unafraid, they hold no secrets. It's the perfect time to observe them as a way to identify production problems. This episode examines the scratches, bruises, hearts, livers, gizzards, green muscle disease, ascites, and uneven growth and ties it back what happened during the growout period. Pastured Poultry News Round Up A Small Business Administration report identifies over $1 billion in bad loans for contract poultry barns. At issue is whether or not poultry contract growers are really independent businesses or just affiliates of the integrators. Spoiler alert. SBA calls them affiliates and therefore finds they aren't entitled to taxpayer subsidized and guaranteed loans. Read article. Ding. Dong. The Organic Livestock and Poultry Practices update to the NOP is officially dead. Fertrell announces a non-soy protein pellet that doesn't sacrifice growth. Check them out. Poultry Man developed a new universal, round kill cone for broilers, hens, ducks, geese, and heritage turkeys. Contact info@millsidefarm.com for details. Ascites (aka water belly) You identify ascites by the belly full of fluid and purple skin. Ascites likely happened weeks before and many times can be traced to a traumatic event in the brooder-at least for most pastured poultry producers. Scratches on Back of Broilers When the back of your broilers are scratched up, you have feeding problem. It's time to reevaluate your approach to feeding and management. Bruises and Dislocations Did you know that a bruise requires blood, and the color of a bruise is an indicator of the age of the bruise? It is. Many times you blame the plucker for breaking your chicken's wing, but if there is bruising, look at handling errors or other injuries in the field. Runts and Uneven Growth Of all the things I talk about on this episode, identifying the cause of uneven growth is the most difficult to diagnose. I share some common places to investigate. It's not always genetic, and it's not always your feed. Green Muscle Disease Also called deep pectoral myopathy. Green muscle is discovered by the green decaying tender of large breasted birds. You only see it when you cut open the bird. While green muscle is likely genetically predisposed, a high incidence rate is a signal that you should look for problems in the field. Healthy Hearts, Livers, and Gizzards Always examine the organs. Healthy livers have crisp edges, a uniform color, and are firm. Hearts should be firm, have a bit of fat on the tip, and muscular walls. The gizzard should be firm, large, and muscular. There's a good test when dealing the organs and judging their health. Ask yourself, "would I eat that?" If the answer is no, then there's a problem. ==> Download a live processing cost calculator that Mike uses to estimate equipment costs, labor costs, and total cost of processing your own chickens.  Have some feedback? mike@pasturedpoultrytalk.com