pasture raised birds, and how not to fail at things

this morning I dropped an egg on the floor.  not such a thrilling story, but revelatory none the less.  I always—regularly and often—advocate for people to purchase pasture raised birds and eggs from a local farmer.   but I buy free range, they say.  but I buy organic.  these are steps in the right direction, for sure, although generally not in the way the buyer may be thinking.  free range invokes images of pasture.  of sunshine.  of, well, some mother fucking range!  excuse my french, but am I wrong?

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one hundred and fifty chicks first day at school

what an amazing thing.  one hundred and fifty peeping little puffs of feather—all in  a box—and waiting at the post office like an amazon shipment.  much like everything else on the farm, things that sound simple inevitably turn into complex challenges.  after debating back and forth on what sort of structure to build to house the baby chicks, we decided to go with one similar to what we saw over at darby farms earlier in the week.

we spent two days clearing out a cluttered green house, building a wall, enclosing the place with chicken wire, filling it with hay and bedding, and rigging up a lighting system.

our biggest concern, after containing the chicks in a dry, warm environment, is to prevent predators from snacking their way through our flock.  rats, our biggest concern, can enter without much effort and pick off baby chicks—one by one—without much detection.

the video below is an overview of the two days leading up to our chicks arrival, as well as their pickup at the post office, their arrival at the farm, and their first feed and water.     



peep, peep

today's visit to darby farms was well worth the drive.  after seeing dan's simple, clean, and easy-to-manage greenhouse brooder model, we chalked our initial plans of building a stand alone wooden structure with a tin roof, and decided to clear out a section of our greenhouse instead.

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cluck, cluck

early this morning, after checking for damage from last night’s thunder storms, farmer root and I are taking a drive to put some eyes on our friend daniel’s chicken operation, darby farms.  two facts bring us here:  first, dan raises the best chickens.  second, root and I have one hundred and fifty baby chickens arriving from a hatchery sometime in the next three days, and no experience to speak of.  stack that against dan’s quality of pasture birds, and it’s easy to see why we want to pay him a visit before designing and building our brooder today.

a brooder is what you use to heat the baby chicks during the first few (or many) weeks of their lives before they are stout enough to withstand life on the pasture.  “in natural brooding, this heat is provided by the chick’s mother, a broody hen.”^  while some resources recommend five, or six, or more weeks of life inside the brooder house, dan’s birds are out to pasture on average at just two to three weeks of age, depending on the weather.  this standard will be our goal as well.

flying by the seat of our pants, we are.  the chickens are shipping today, and we are building their brooder today.  not ideal, but good enough.  baby chicks in a few days, brooder today.  gotta keep moving forward.

^success with baby chicks, by Robert plamondon