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Bird’s Eye View of The Life of a Chicken

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Bird’s Eye View of The Life of a Chicken

Among the misunderstandings that abound concerning industrialized products, probably food production has some of the most. Marketing committees have developed clever ways of giving facts and presenting half-truths so that the pleasant pastoral images evoked when a shopper sees “Farmer Joe’s Free-Range Eggs” on a label that he or she feels comforted to know that the hens that gave those eggs was roaming merrily about a meadow in Farmer Joe’s backyard. Consumers are instinctively concerned about where their food comes from. If they thought it came from the farm equivalent of a torture chamber, they might not buy.

This article will give you a brief glimpse into the different “species” of production chickens from the perspective of the chicken. This is a fiction, of course, but there are lots of facts about food production within. Keep in mind that chickens that produce eggs are entirely different in breed, feed ration, rearing technique, and productive age, from chickens produced for meat. Most folks don’t know this and assume that the juicy, fried chicken they are eating was once a laying hen, if they think about it at all.

You will meet 6 chickens:

  1. Grim Gertrude, the commercial laying hen;
  2. Tricky Tina, the Free-Range or Cage-Free commercial laying hen;
  3. Mediocre Molly, the fixed yard hen;
  4. Lucky Lucy, the pasture-raised laying hen;
  5. Juiced-Up Jerry, the commercial meat chicken;
  6. Frisky Freeman, the pasture-raised meat bird.

Here are their stories.

Grim Gertrude, The Commercial Laying Hen

My name is Gertrude, and I’ve never seen the sun. I live in a big house with 80,000 of my sisters. I live in a cell with a few other gals, but I can’t move around much, so I don’t know how many of us are in here. Besides, it’s dark most of the time, so we just sit around eating and laying eggs every 30 hours or so. When I get bored, I pick off my neighbor’s feathers, or maybe some of my own. I can’t really stand up or stretch my wings, so there’s not much else to do.

When I was a chick, they cut off my beak so I wouldn’t hurt my neighbors. It’s not that I want to hurt them, but being so close and unable to move all the time can make you feel a little crazy. Not having a beak makes it hard to eat, but since all I eat is mash, it’s not too bad. We have access to it all day long, and there is something in the food that makes me crave more.

I never get to sit on my eggs. As soon as they’re hatched, they roll away to a big conveyor. For the first 3 or 4 weeks after I started laying, the eggs were probably sold as powdered egg product because they are small and irregular-shaped. Now that I’m middle-aged, my eggs, as long as they meet size, color, and density criteria, are sold to folks who crack them and cook them. But if I ever have a misfire, like a double-yolk or a soft-shell egg, those are never sold directly to customers. Customers don’t get to see all the variety I can produce.

I’ve never seen a rooster before, but I’ve heard that they make a hen feel secure. We don’t need roosters to make eggs, so the manager doesn’t bother to keep any. It would be a waste of feed, after all. When I was a chick, I was hatched in a big, warm box. For every future (female) laying hen that was hatched, there was a cockerel (young male chicken), too. There is not much use for roosters of a laying variety, though, so they immediately were sent off to the dog food company.

It smells pretty bad in my house, but I don’t have to live in it too long. My lifespan is 5 years or more, but my useful productive life is only about 2, so my sisters and I will probably end up in some canned chicken soup when the time comes. I wouldn’t make it as a meat chicken—my connective tissue is more developed and would require slow-gentle cooking, and my meat is more stringy because I am older. So into the soup can or pet food cookery I go. There is no waste in commercial food production, you know.

 

Tricky Tina, The Free-Range or Cage-Free Commercial Laying Hen

I’m Tina, and I lay eggs in exchange for food and shelter. I live in a big giant house with 80,000 of my sisters. From what I’ve heard, I have it pretty good, because I have a nest to lay in (though it is shared), and I get to walk over to it. My house is really smelly—I guess you can’t expect the manager to clean it out with all us hens in the way—but I won’t complain because I have heard it could be worse. I think there’s even a door to the outside on our house, but I’ve never been able to find it. Our food and water is in here, though, so I guess I don’t need to go out there. Some of the girls have said it’s just another litter yard with a roof and walls. Doesn’t sound very exciting. Besides, with all the other girls in here, it takes a long time to get anywhere, and I tend to get a little lost unless I just stay in my own little area.

Mediocre Molly, The Fixed-Yard Hen

My name is Molly, and I have an owner named Farmer Joe. Morning and evening, he brings food to me and my 30 sisters. We’re usually pretty hungry by the end of the day because we’ve searched our yard high and low for bugs, grass, and seeds. I vaguely recall a time when there actually was grass in here. But we just love eating green stuff so much that we ate it all pretty fast. I can occasionally grab a strand  of grass through the holes in our pen if Farmer Joe hasn’t mowed yet. He sometimes gives us the clippings from mowing—we just love it!

We live a pretty decent life, but it is a little stressful not having space to roam. A lot of my feathers are missing because my sisters pick on me while I’m trying to eat. But they’ll grow back, I suppose. We have a nice cozy little nesting house, but over time it gets to be pretty smelly in there until Farmer Joe cleans it out. I think he uses the litter in the garden. He sometimes gives us scraps from that garden, but we mostly eat food from the local feed store. It hurts our gizzards a little, but we seem to tolerate it. The bag says something about corn and soy.

On Sunday nights, Mrs. Joe lets us out for an hour or so in the evening. We love that time! That’s when we get to find juicy bugs and berries and nuts from the big tree in the backyard. But Farmer Joe worries about the neighborhood dogs, so he pens us back up at night. Mrs. Joe would let us out more often, but she says we’d destroy the garden if we had too much time in it. We just can’t help ourselves.

We lay eggs for the Joes and their friends, and they are fertilized by our rooster. I’ve heard Mrs. Joe talk about how much better our lives are than commercial hens, who are trapped in a big building with no space to roam or scratch. That does sound bad, but only scratching once a week is a little nerve-wracking. I wish we could pick up our yard and move it around!

 

Lucky Lucy, The Pasture-Raised Laying Hen

I’m Lucy, and I live at Shady Grove Ranch. I have about 150 sisters right now, and we share about 10,000 square feet of pasture. That amount fluctuates, but we always have access to grass and sky. We have a big house that moves along on the pasture with us, which is a great comfort to us when we venture to new territory. It’s nice to have a roof to run under when hawks and owls fly by. We also have a big electric net around us that keeps the coyotes and skunks out.

Every day, one of the Cadmans walks down and gives us fresh food, cleans our waterer out, and collects our eggs. They always laugh when we give an unusual egg. We like to keep them on their toes. Each week, they give us a new pasture by leap-frogging the nets to an adjacent area. Every other day they move our nest house. I guess they keep us on our toes, too.

They give us a really nice feed ration that complements our foraging well. Because our diet is forage-based and we are exposed to the elements, our eggs change with the seasons. When we have a lot of tiny green stuff to eat, the yolks turn very dark. When the weather gets really hot or really cold and the grass slows down, we rely more on the ration, and don’t produce quite as many eggs.

If the weather is wet, our eggs get a little muddy when we hop in and out of our nest boxes. When the weather changes suddenly, many of us skip a day laying. In the summers when it’s really hot, we stop laying for a bit and our feathers molt. Once it cools down again, the feathers grow back and we start laying, but our eggs are little like when we were adolescents. That’s ok, though, because the Cadmans don’t seem to mind.

If we get too hot, the Cadmans turn our mister on. During the heat we eat more salt than usual. It keeps us calm and helps our fluids to stay balanced. When the grasses are dry, we also eat more calcium to keep our shells nice and firm. The Cadmans try to monitor our behavior and consumption to provide real-time responses to our needs.

When one of my sisters catches a bug, we play a game where we all chase her around the pen. Sometimes someone else catches her and gets the bug. Sometimes she gets it. We all take turns.

We have a few roosters to take care of us. Since they don’t lay eggs, they can spend less time eating and more time watching the sky for predators.

 

Juiced-Up Jerry, The Commercial Meat Chicken

I’m Jerry, and I will be slaughtered at 7 weeks of age or less. My friends and I live in a big giant house with probably 80,000 other young birds. I grow so fast that I have trouble walking, so I spend most of the time laying on my own excrement. That wouldn’t be so bad, but the air quality around me is so terrible that I have irritated mucous membranes, and when the humans come into my house to clear out my brothers who have died from the high-stress environment, they have to wear masks.

We get plenty of food, but it never really satisfies. Something in it irritates our throats so we eat more to soothe them. My flesh is rosy pink because of the chemicals in the feed. I’ll be proud to be such a pretty roast chicken. I take low doses of medication (mixed into the feed) to help get through the stress of fast growth in an unpleasant environment.

Our manure isn’t cleaned out while we live in this house. It builds up, and, once we are gone, is eventually moved to a lagoon or trucked away to local cattle or crop operations. So you can imagine that it gets pretty smelly in here.

When we are harvested, we are packed into crates on an 18-wheeler and hauled to the nearest processing facility. There, we will be mechanically eviscerated. It isn’t a perfect system, so when the cutters miss and our toxic poop goes flying everywhere, the fix is to dunk our carcasses in bleach water. Nevermind that our flesh is abnormally soft because of rapid growth, unnatural diet, and lack of exercise, causing it to absorb up to 5% of this fecal-chlorine solution. That “moisture” will make cooking our breastmeat more pleasant than it would have been had we been raised the natural way.

We appear to feed mankind at a low cost with little manpower involved using land as efficiently as possible. But the truth is that the money and manpower and land usage are spent elsewhere. Food is food, and it must be grown somewhere.

We chickens eat grain that is paid for by tax dollars, and the workers that care for us are the manure handlers and the grain growers and the businessmen that lobby for subsidies and the taxpayers that allow their incomes to pay for business decisions over which they have no control. The land we live on in such dense numbers is taken up in the corn- and soy-producing states, like Iowa and Ohio. In fact, to raise 80,000 chickens, it takes around 280 acres to grow the grain, and that’s assuming only one batch of chickens per year. Of course, to use these fancy houses efficiently, our farmers do more like 6 batches per year, making the ACTUAL average annual land usage of a poultry farm more on the order of 1,690 acres, plus the space it takes to actually have the houses and the processing facilities, etc. This is not to argue that people eat grains instead of chickens. But perhaps there is a better way to grow chickens for meat…

If I make it through the scalder, plucker, and mechanical evisceration stations at the processing unit without damage, I’ll likely be sold whole. I’ll probably end up at the supermarket with an “all natural” label on me, which doesn’t refer to the way I was raised, but rather that my carcass wasn’t injected with artificial flavors. If I have any tears in my skin, I will be parted out to be sold as leg quarters and boneless skinless breastmeat. Everyone loves eating that because it’s so easy to cook. It’s too bad they don’t try eating broth made with my bones, because that is probably the healthiest thing about me, despite my background.

 

Frisky Freeman, The Pasture-Raised Meat Bird

My name is Freeman, and I live on actual ground at Shady Grove Ranch. My house has about 100 other birds in it and provides us with continual access to grass, dirt, cow pies, and fresh air. We like to scratch around in search of bugs to eat. We also love eating the grass and various forbs in our pen. Tomorrow we’ll get a new patch of grass, just like we did yesterday. That’s always exciting.

We have a guardian dog nearby that scares away the predators. Our farmers, the Cadmans, come to feed us twice a day, and they sometimes take some of us out of these pens so we aren’t too crowded. When it storms, they run out in the middle of the night to prop up our pens so the water can drain. They also put hay around us to keep us warm if it’s windy and rainy.

We all grow at our own paces—at harvest time, some of us will be 5 pounds, but some of us will not make 3 pounds. We have different personalities, you know, so some of us don’t care as much about eating. When harvest time comes, we are placed into crates with enough space that we don’t get overheated. Then we are processed by hand and washed with pure water (no bleach!). We’ll be food for people who cannot eat soy or who want their chicken raised as naturally as possible. Our processors are very careful with us because they know that the Cadmans only sell to customers. If our carcasses get damaged, there is no canned-chicken or chicken-by-product company on standby to purchase rejected meat.

We are a meat breed, so we’re not into flying or frolicking constantly. But we do enjoy chasing bugs (and each other) and flapping our wings and stretching our legs. We live a great life making nutrients that only we can make. And because we get exercise and we grow without the use of antibiotics or arsenic, our flesh is firm and rosy naturally. It won’t be squishy like commercial chicken.

Every year, our farmers try new methods to figure out the best way to raise us. We have to be protected from predators, wind, and rain. Our house also needs great ventilation because it gets really hot in Texas. Our farmers want us to have fresh pasture every day, so our house can’t be too difficult to move. When we eat greens, our fat tends to have more omega-3 fatty acids, and we feel better. They also want us to be exposed to sunlight so our pupils can signal for the production of vitamin D.

We live a good life, despite the fact that we are intended for meat. We get to be chickens instead of machines, eating foods that are appropriate and living in a non-toxic environment. Best of all, we get to nourish people by the hard work we do of producing nutrients that are tasty and easy to digest.

Shreveport Off-Season Delivery

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Farmers Market is coming up soon, but there is still another month to go before the Fall Shreveport Farmers Market kicks off on October 27 at 8am.

Until then, Shady Grove Ranch provides a periodic drop-off service to the Shreveport area. Our next scheduled drop-off (subject to weather) is:

Saturday, October 6, 11am-noon
5060 Dixie Gardens Drive, Shreveport

Please email sales@shadygroveranch.net or call 903-665-7076 with your order and phone number by Thursday, October 4 at noon. Use our Farmers Market Price List to estimate total. You should receive an email confirmation of your order. Payments are collected upon pickup via check or cash.

Note: This is NOT a market. We only bring what you order!

Potential Thanksgiving Cooking Class

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Learn how to reduce your intake of additives, preservatives, and unnecessary sugar by attending a class on how to cook four Thanksgiving meal classic items from scratch!

1. Bread Stuffing

2. Brown Gravy

3. Traditional Cranberry Sauce and Fermented Cranberry Chutney

4. Sweet Potato Pie with Crust and Whipped Cream

It’s amazing how simple, delicious, and healthful these complementary menu items can be for your Thanksgiving Day meal. If you are intimidated by from-scratch recipes and fall into the trap of buying frozen, boxed, or canned goods, consider attending Jerica’s Thanksgiving cooking class! In 3 hours you will learn the skills to make these items, most of which can be made ahead and frozen for your special holiday. This year, choose to nourish your family with lovingly prepared sides at America’s favorite meal!

Cost is $35 per person (bring a friend and you each get $5 off!) . Includes printouts of all recipes necessary to create these 4 dishes. RSVP required.

Time, Date, and Location: To be determined by you!

We need your input! If you are interested in this class or others like it, please take a moment to complete our 6-question survey:

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world’s leading questionnaire tool.

The Price of An Egg

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Lots of folks ask us about why our egg prices are so high. We get lots of different responses when we tell them. Sometimes they are offended. Sometimes they lament over how they cannot afford them. Sometimes they are utterly grateful that someone somewhere close by is raising hens truly on pasture, without using soy or genetically-engineered ingredients.

It doesn’t really hurt our feelings when people don’t want to pay $6 or $7 for a dozen eggs. But it does make us wish that there was a way to bring our price down. If that isn’t possible, we strive instead to make people see that compared to many other foods (particularly Frankenfoods) or the alternative of facing a life of poor nutrition, our eggs are really quite cheap. But we won’t go into that now. The purpose of this particular post is to explain what an egg really costs.

Being in farming, being young, and being fairly outspoken make for a very noticeable combination when Matt and I meet new people. It helps that we are excited about what we have learned about eating traditional foods and how good we feel compared to just a few years ago when we were eating the SAD (Standard American Diet).

One day, a fellow farmer came up to Matt and asked him, “How much do you get for your eggs?” Matt told him. (At that particular time, they were $7/dozen.) His eyes bugged out at Matt’s answer. He couldn’t believe it. He was ANGRY that we charged that much for such a low-value commodity. He asked if we sell them all. Most of the time, we do. (But we only have a small flock of chickens.)

He wanted to know why we charged so much. Matt explained our management and feeding principles: rotational “grazing,” non-genetically modified feed, non-soy feed.

Matt asked the man what he charged for his own eggs. “$3.50. And they’re almost organic! I let them out every night to forage!” Matt, loving a challenge about the definition of that term, asked him, “What do you feed them?” “I buy a layer ration from ___ Feed Supply [a popular local feed store].”

“Do you know what the ingredients are?”

“Yes!”

“What’s the first ingredient?”

“Well, I don’t remember right now…”

“Well, I’ll tell you. The first two ingredients are soy and corn, and they are both genetically-modified.”

The conversation continued, and it was clear that the man was frustrated because he wasn’t making money, but he didn’t know why people wouldn’t buy his eggs if he charged more.

About a week later, Matt visited his booth, and the same man offered to sell Matt his entire chicken operation—birds, equipment, everything. He wanted out of the business. He wasn’t making any money.

During both conversations with the man, Matt tried to convey the fact that the feed which he was buying—a VERY trusted and widely-used brand—a brand that boldly advertises its product in red, white, and blue letters–was in fact giving him a GMO product.  But he would not even consider that this American-to-the-core company would do such a devious, underhanded thing.

You see, despite the fact that he was buying the conventional (aka cheap) feed, and despite the fact that he was marketing to a crowd that like the idea of buying from a farmer that raises hens that get outdoor access, he still couldn’t make a go of his products. It’s because he, like many farmers, doesn’t understand that the cost of something is not just the price of the feed. To make it as a farmer, not only do you have to factor in all the costs it takes to get your product to your customers (your fences, your property taxes, your water bill, your tractor wear-and-tear, your egg cartons, your banking fees, your gas to get to market, the feed for your livestock guardian dog, depreciation on every single piece of equipment used for the egg operation, and your pay for your labor), but you also have to educate your customer about why your product is special (if it is) and why it costs what it does.

We try to be transparent about this idea. A worker deserves his wages. And we can guarantee that charging $7/dozen for our top-quality eggs isn’t making us rich! But it can’t be breaking us, either. We know that in 15 years, we’ll need to rebuild our fences. In 5 years, we’ll need to buy a new livestock guardian dog. In two years, we’ll need to replace the shade cloth and the summer mister in the hen house. And every year, we have to buy new hoses and waterers and feeders and egg cartons. Part of our job is to find innovative ways to cut these costs. Trust us, the wheels are ALWAYS turning on this issue!

But, as Matt tried to explain to this other farmer who has a day job and is now having to give up “farming,” we have to charge what our products are worth. We only hope that you will find that when we do not compromise on the values that uphold the God-given laws of nature, that we have contributed to the health of our earth, our economy, and our customers.

Reflections from Matt:

On a side note, I recently read an article published in the “NOW” alumni magazine from my alma mater, LeTourneau University, which was celebrating “50 Years of Women on Campus.” (Being a technical and engineering school, getting females was a BIG deal…)

As a fun comparison in the article, they listed prices of many items in 1961, and then fifty years later, in 2011.  In the last 50 years, the price of gold has gone up by a multiple of 39 times, a new house 18.5 times, a postage stamps and gasoline 11 times, bread 13.2 times, eggs and bacon only 5.5 times, and milk…a measly 2.5 times!!! 

You may ask yourself, “Why have REAL food (milk, bacon, and eggs) only gone up by 2.5 to 5.5 times, while processed food (bread) and all other “necessities” have gone up 11-40 times?” 

Matt Cadman’s answers are:

1. Because our government subsidizes certain commodity crops, most of which are genetically-modified.

2. Because our farmers in America have been convinced that their labor is worthless, that they shouldn’t make any money, and that they are not allowed to produce a quality product.  They have succumbed to a form of modern-day slavery.  Sadly, American citizens have demanded it by declaring that a dozen eggs (which can feed one person for days) should cost 99¢ and a 20 oz bottle of diet soda (which might give you cancer) costs $1.25!   

3. Because the conventional farming industry feeds their animals junk and confine them at concentrated numbers in unnatural environments that cause disease and create the need for continual drug intervention.

4.  Convenience is king!  Why pay $6/dozen of eggs and build your health, when you can go to the Golden Arches, and have ObamaCare pay for your chemo and dialysis?  You WILL pay…now or later.  At least if you pay now, you’ll have a good chance of healthy children, enjoyable meals, and quality family time during dinner!

What do Farmers do on a Friday night?

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A typical Friday night here at Shady Grove Ranch is usually set apart by some special food or drink and the general merriment that comes with the end of a week filled with hard work, long days, and more than could be accomplished by our small team of four people plus two (little) kids. But last Friday night, after the meal of homemade pork pie, we were relaxing and watching a movie, just about ready to turn in for the night, when it suddenly started to rain.

Excitement quietly made its way around the room, “Is that rain? Alright!” Thoughts raced through all our minds, mentally checking off all the lists of things that should have been done in case of rain—did we cover the feed? Did we roll up the vehicle windows? Did we put the tools away? We sat and rejoiced for a few minutes for the long-needed replenishment of our pastures and ponds. After 2 years of drought, you learn never to complain about rain. Still, Matt decided to go make a quick check on the chickens. He slipped on a pair of rainproof overalls and his rubber boots, expecting to be back in a few moments.

The chickens are three weeks old now and can handle a bit of weather. But if they get too wet too fast, they can develop hypothermia and die. (One of the many reasons commercial chickens are raised indoors! It’s not easy keeping these guys on pasture!) There is a big difference between a modern-day meat chicken and a laying chicken. Once grown, laying chickens can handle wind, rain, and even snow. Their fully-feathered exterior protects them against most weather threats.

Meat chickens are only sparsely covered in feathers, bred that way to make plucking and cleaning the carcasses easier. They also happen to be much thicker through the middle (also the result of careful breeding), so even if they had a lot of feathers, it would take a very thick covering to really insulate their bodies well.

So when it is pouring down rain, even in mid-September in Texas, our birds are as exposed  as Schwarzenegger in a Speedo on the Atlantic sea coast as a storm blows in (excuse the analogy, but it is a good one). We try to  anticipate weather, adding or removing slats of sheet metal to the chicken huts to deflect wind and rain or to allow ventilation. But our precautions were meaningless against this particular storm.

The storm developed quickly. Weather forecasts said we might see up to 1 inch per hour. The birds are located midway down one of our gentle slopes here in Jefferson. Not in a valley at all, but the way their huts are constructed can sometimes lead to pooling water along the lowest edge. This rainstorm ended up dumping almost 3 inches in a little over an hour. Only thirty minutes into it, the chickens were already soaked.

When Matt got there, he realized the birds were drumstick-deep in water that was quickly gushing down the hill. Our pastures have been mercilessly afflicted by the drought, their soils baked by the unrelenting sun for two summers in a row. Despite our efforts at rotational grazing, avoidance of chemicals, and heavy fertilization using animals, the ground just can’t absorb as much water as was falling. Matt began the colossal chore of rescuing the chicks from death, whether by hypothermia, or by drowning when their exhausted little legs couldn’t hold them out of the water anymore.

Inside, Matt’s parents and I were entertaining the kiddos, wondering why Matt hadn’t returned yet. He hadn’t even brought a two-way radio, thinking he’d be right back in as soon as he had made sure all was well with the animals. All was not well.

Finally, Bobbi decided to go see how things were going. She returned a few minutes later, sopping wet, and asked me if I could come out to help. I promptly put the kids to bed, trying my hardest not to show too much worry, and explaining to Shevi that I was going to help Daddy. He is such a perceptive child. He asked, “Daddy hurt?” I smiled and reassured him that, “No, Daddy is not hurt. He is trying to dry off the chickens, because they got wet in the rain. Just like you get wet in the bathtub and Momma dries you with a towel. Momma is going to help Daddy dry off the chickens.” I tucked him in and plugged in the monitor and handed it over to Pap-Pap, along with the 2-way radio. I quickly donned long pants, a raincoat, a hat, gloves, and a flashlight, and headed out the door. You learn to dress fast when you run a ranch.

If you wear corrective glasses like I do, you know how hard it is to work in the rain with glasses. Couple that with working in the dark in a pasture on a hill in the rain. I half-jogged, half-walked down the hill toward the broilers, treading not through puddles, but through one huge puddle that covered the entire ranch. I tried to keep my glasses covered as I scurried toward the chickens so that I could prolong my ability to see clearly. There were inches of water over the whole of our place. I began to fear what I would find at the chicken pens.

When I arrived, it was still pouring, and the rain on the tin roofs of the pens was deafening. In the dim light of our ATV, I saw Matt under one of the pens. I shouted to him for instructions. Bobbi was carrying hay to each pen, and I was to crawl inside and distribute it in a 6-inch-deep bed to put the chickens on. I peered into the huts with my flashlight to assess the damage and the task at hand. Things did not look good. I saw many chickens laying on their sides, eyes closed. I knew they didn’t have long. No wonder Matt hadn’t come back to ask for help. He couldn’t leave. We would have to work fast.

The two pens nearest the bottom of the hill, each with about 100 chickens inside, were the worst. They were at the shallowest part of the slope, so more water had accumulated in their pens than the others. I climbed into the pen with my raincoat and hat on, flashlight in hand. Gloves were useless. Everything was so wet, they wouldn’t help at all. I quickly put them into my pockets. The roof of the pen is very low, maybe only 24” from the ground, so my hat, which was supposed to serve as my cover to keep my glasses dry, would get caught on the support beams, shift down over my eyes, and blind me. I threw it onto the top of the hut, thinking I’d be mostly under the tin, anyway, so I could probably make do.

Down on hands and knees, I began to crawl under the pen with the birds. They were soaked. I began to move the little birds, most of which probably only weigh about 24 ounces, out of the way so I could make a path toward the back of the pen. I dragged hay along the pathway, trying to reason out the best strategy for not crushing any of the birds, not having to move birds twice, and getting as many birds as possible out of the four-inch-deep water as quickly as possible.

It was hard not to get overwhelmed. One of the hardest things in farming is to keep your head when things look bleak. And from under that tin roof—rain pounding down so loud that you can barely hear the chickens weakly peeping for help, army-crawling through mud and litter and pounded-down grass with water 3 and 4 inches deep soaking into your shoes, your pants, your arms—things looked pretty bleak.

The best strategy is not to focus on how bad things look, but rather to focus on the goal and task at hand. The task in this case was to get warm, dry hay and make a bed six inches deep with sides to keep the chicks from falling off into the water. There was only one opening on the 20-foot-long pen, so the hay had to be dragged from the opening to the back of the pen. I had to be careful not to crush any chicks as I dragged the hay into the pen, and I had to move any chicks prior to putting the hay down so that they wouldn’t get trapped underneath and smother. Then the chicks had to be placed on the warm bed and frequently spread out so they wouldn’t crowd each other in attempt to get warm, else they should suffocate.

I began my task in the pen at the lowest part of the hill—under the hut in the worst shape. First I cleared a path to the back of the pen and assessed the highest and driest part of the pen where I would lay hay first. Then I assessed which chickens were in the worst shape, and tried to focus on those first. I built a bed of hay in the back corner and started gently tossing chickens onto it. Once I cleared out one area where chickens had been standing in water, I could then fill that space with more hay, making room for more chickens. I had to leave myself a path so I could crawl back and forth, grabbing as much hay as I could drag while crawling on elbows and knees through the pen.

My raincoat was doing little to keep my dry, since most of the wet I was experiencing was coming from the pool on the ground. I finally took a moment to crawl back to the opening of the pen and remove the coat so I could better maneuver in the tight space under the roof. When I dragged the next armful of hay to the back of the pen, I realized that much of the hay I had already put down now had more inches of water on top—the birds were standing in water again!

About this time, Matt checked in on me, and I told him that the water kept getting higher. He asked if I needed help, but I decided to keep working alone, knowing that he had other pens to tend to. I asked Bobbi to bring me more hay. I started my task over again, moving the birds out of the water, stacking the hay double of what I had last time, piling it highest near the driest (really, the least wet) corner of the pen. Then I began quickly moving the birds back onto the dry hay, adding more hay where those birds were standing, the moving more birds onto that spot. It felt like one of those Chinese square puzzles. Finally, all the birds were out of the water, and where I crawled on hands and knees, much of it was dry hay instead of underwater grass. There was hope.

The birds, however, were still crowding each other—not good. When chickens, especially young chickens, get really cold, they start standing on top of one another, sacrificing the bottom guys to save the ones on top. The ones on bottom don’t put up much of a fight, and this is probably our fastest bird-killer when the birds are young like this. I started weeding through the bunches of soggy, clammy white bodies, tossing the stronger ones near stronger ones and moving the weaker ones to more spacious areas so they could recover without the oppression of the ones more likely to survive.

Matt came over to check on me again, and he said my batch looked pretty good. I was glad to be done, but daunted by the idea that we had 4 more pens to go. Once again, I army-crawled back to the opening, ducking my head against roof screws and low-hanging support beams. I stood and stretched and looked by the light of the ATV at the rest of the pens. Taking my tiny flashlight (it’s times like these when you find the weaknesses in your emergency plans and supplies), I quickly shone it in at the other birds to see how they looked. I heard faint chirping and saw upright legs and movement, which were good signs.

Now Matt called our attention to the rest of the hay bale. We could stack hay on the north side of each pen to help dissuade more water from rolling down the hill into the pens, and would help to maintain the heat that the little birds inside were busy generating atop their new dry hay beds. I tried not to think about how hard it would be to move the cages tomorrow after the rains. All the hay would act as an anchor under the pens. But we would cross that bridge when we came to it. For now, our mission was to keep them alive.

We unrolled more hay off the oversized round bale. Despite the continuing heavy rain, the unraveled bale created a huge amount of dust that lit up in the light of our ATV and made us cough and sneeze. But we hurried to carry it to each of the six pens, piling it thickly along the north side, peeking in at the chicks one last time before we covered their houses.

Finally we had done as much as we could do. Exhausted, we gathered our supplies, clothes, and flashlights, and headed back home. As the adrenaline wore off, we began to feel just how wet and dirty we were. There was grass everywhere—in our hair, under our shirts, in our shoes. We tried not to think about how much chicken poop was once on top of that grass (natural fertilizer, you know), and hoped that most of it had washed away before we got there.

Back at the house, we stood dripping in the falling rain and removed as much clothing as was decent. But we took a picture first, just to have the memory of this so-absurd-it’s-funny experience. I walked into the house first, headed straight to the shower, when I saw the computer screen was on. I glanced over to find my 2.5-year-old son sitting at the desk, clicking away at emails, documents, and programs! I was surprised he was up by himself, and guessed that he was too worried to go to bed and had come back out of his room after I left. I told him I would take a shower and be back out—I couldn’t very well hold him as filthy as I was. So I took the ultra-fast version of the shower I had longed for, dressed, and came back out to get him.

Once we were all cleaned up and dried off, we ventured to the living room to relax and laugh at our crazy lives. Despite the destruction among the chickens, we were giddy over the 2.5 inches we had already gotten. We had been looking at a continually falling water level in our ponds and hoping for enough rain to get at least one hay cutting on our own property this year. We are always glad for rain, even if it means extra preparations or work (which it usually does). I was also grateful that many other things hadn’t gone wrong. We didn’t lose power, for example, which would have mean no real showers without the generator running, and that’s an ordeal of its own. The wind wasn’t bad, so we didn’t have to worry about tornados or falling trees. It was pretty warm, and the chicks weren’t totally new to pasture, so they had a fighting chance of survival.

We also had experience on our side, having experienced a worse, colder storm in 2011 with 2-week-old chicks that had just been moved out to pasture that afternoon. We used the same technique—bunching hay around the chickens and getting them upright, out of the water. It worked then, and we were confident that it would work now.

The damage assessment the next morning revealed success. Out of over 700 chickens, only 12 or so dead. Had we done nothing, or not known what to do, it might have been closer to half of the birds lost, maybe even most of them. We are so grateful to God for the rain, for the wisdom, and for the amazing fruit of the work of our hands. When we harvest these chickens in October, you’d better believe they’ll be our tastiest yet!

How we do Soy-Free Pasture-Raised Eggs

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At long last, we finally have a chance to tell you about our new EggMobile, built during the visit of some of our relatives that visit each spring to help us with ongoing work projects.

Laying chickens have very specific and unique needs that must be fulfilled in order for them to live long, productive and happy lives. One of the things that makes Shady Grove Ranch different is that we keep our hens on pasture in a mobile pen. Contrasted with most other egg operations, which keep hens on one piece of ground continually, our mobile strategy allows the poultry manure to remain the asset that it was created to be, and it is spread across pasture with immensely less labor than would be required if the hens were in a permanent pen. It also allows the hens access to fresh new forage throughout their lives, which of course, results in delicious, nutrient-dense eggs. It’s a win-win situation!

We will walk you through our pasture-raised laying chicken operation. We have an assortment of breeds, mostly for the fun of having multi-colored eggs. But various breeds bring various traits into our operation. Some lay big giant eggs. Some are good setters, meaning they like to raise their own young (this will be good when we are ready to start hatching our own replacement hens). Some are wonderful foragers. And some are remarkably dependable egg producers.

In the picture you see, there are Barred Rock, Rhode Island Red, Americauana, Buff Orpington, Australorp, and Leghorn hens. They are out looking for bugs, seeds, and grasses on a lovely August morning.

Chickens need continual access to water, especially in the hot months in Texas. We use gravity-fed bell-style poultry waterers that keep their water as fresh and clean as is possible around chickens. If you’ve ever raised chickens, you know what we mean.

Chickens also need shade. Since we move their paddock around, we don’t always have access to trees. That’s what the extra-large roof on the Egg-Mobile is for. During the middle of the day, the hens often bed down in the cool grass under here to wait until the sun goes down a bit before going back out to forage.

In Texas, we have found that almost all animals need an external source of cooling in the summer months. We discovered a very low water usage mister system and placed one under the roof of the EggMobile. It’s made a huge difference in mortality rate of our hens during the summer. Not to mention egg production stays more consistent!

Hens are capable of making their own nests, but for production purposes, we want them to use the ones we provide. A hen needs to feel secure enough to rest for the hour or so that it takes to comfortably lay her egg. However, we have found that keeping the hens too secure and too warm makes them want to sit and hatch the eggs. So they sit, and they don’t eat or drink or lay any more eggs while they wait for their “clutch” to hatch. The way we decided to encourage them was to build nests with two solid walls and one wall that appears solid but allows significant light and air circulation into the box to keep the hen cool and aware and prevent her going into “broody fever.” It sure beats dunking the hens in cold water for 3 days straight! That works, too, but it’s a little violent…

Here’s a shot of the back of the boxes. You can see the chicken silhouettes in the boxes.

To help the birds get up to their boxes, we provided some stairs.

Chickens feel especially secure when they don’t have to sleep on the ground (No, they don’t sleep in their boxes. That would result in very dirty eggs!) Here are their roosts, staggered so the poop drops onto the ground during the night, not onto the lower hens!

We provide all our critters, including the chickens, with salt. In Texas heat, the heavy water intake of animals must be balanced by having a good supply of salt and minerals.

Laying hens need a good amount of calcium to produce all those nice strong shells. They do get a large amount of minerals from the bugs and pasture they consume, but depending on the season, they may need some additional help, provided in the form of crushed coral and oyster shell.

Chickens are omnivorous and need a source of animal protein. Bugs are a major part of this, but we also supplement raw milk as much as possible. It’s a great probiotic, too. They LOVE it!

To ensure that our hens get the nutrition they need so they don’t become weak or resort to cannibalism, we supplement a soy-free, non-GMO peanut-based feeds that is locally milled. It’s pelletized so the chickens don’t waste it and so that they get a complete ration and don’t sort the feed.

Matt moves the EggMobile about once a week, providing the chickens with a new paddock surrounded by electric net fencing. It’s pretty labor intensive, but worth it for the great eggs we get in return.

On to the new paddock!

All for lovely, pasture-raised eggs…

 

The Feed & Breed Experiment

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A major component of successful sustainable farming is figuring out what strategy works best in your climate for which animals. Pastured poultry is one of the most difficult and unpredictable aspects of our operation here at Shady Grove Ranch. Everything loves to eat chicken: people, owls, skunks, dogs, coyotes, snakes, foxes… Only the first on that list are paying customers! Young chickens also like to die when it rains, when the wind blows, when it gets too cold, and when it gets too hot. It’s not easy being a chicken!

As a result, we are continually searching for the best combination of nutrition and genetics (just like with our pigs and beef cows) to ensure minimal losses and nice plump, healthy meat chickens. Our first batch of broilers are in the brooder now, working on growing their big-bird feathers, and almost ready to be moved to pasture. We purchased two different types of feeds and birds from two different breeders, so we have four combinations of broilers to test which combination performs best for us here in East Texas. Matt keeps close track of mortality rate, unusual events, and feed consumption rate, and will compare the input costs to final harvest in August.

Despite the severe weather patterns we’ve been experiencing over the 18 months, it’s important to maintain our standards without reducing the quality of our products. Matt’s and Jerica’s engineering degrees really come in handy around here where it’s all about learning how to fit the pieces of the puzzle together!