Tag Archives: Chickens

A Farm Adventure for Everyone

There’s a really neat opportunity coming up next weekend here at the ranch. We’re hosting another one of our fun farm tours… but there’s more!

Last month, we had around 30 guests come visit with us to hear about our journey back to health from autoimmune disease using food as medicine. Every tour is different, and during the last one, our visitors got to pet the farm kitties, take a guess at which chickens were roosters (it’s harder than you might think!), and experience up-close a live cow moooooove. Our younger attendees got to participate in a fun little farm scavenger hunt as well, learning to identify fences, farm animals, and more. We always have a great time showing off the ranch and answering people’s questions about real food and farm life, etc.

We’re doing it all over again next week, and you are invited!

The consumer tour is $5 per person, ages 4 and up (littles are invited, too, of course, but they attend free).

I know it seems impossible that anything could be better than coming to an SGR farm tour… 😉 😉

But even better than that… we’re extending the opportunity to farmers in the area who want to see a real working pastured poultry farm. The American Pastured Poultry Association will be in attendance, and anyone who wishes to attend under that umbrella is invited to stick around afterward for an on-farm luncheon featuring Shady Grove Ranch meats (catered by locally-owned Central Perks of Marshall, TX), and a roundtable discussion of all things pastured poultry.

The cost to attend the full APPPA event is $20 for APPPA members, $25 for non-members. You’re welcome to attend even if you’re not a farmer but are interested in learning more about what makes Pastured Poultry Producers tick. They are a cool group of folks, I assure you!

Whichever hat you choose to wear for the day, be sure you pay for ONLY ONE! But BOTH require advance ticket purchase. Sign up for the consumer tour, which ends at noon, or the APPPA w orkshop, which includes lunch and ends at 4.

Pick a hat, any hat…. But only pick 1!

Saturday, May 26 starting at 10am

Consumer Tour (ends at noon) $5 per person over age 3. Buy Tickets Here.

APPPA Workshop (includes lunch and ends at 4) $20 for members $25 for non-members. Buy Tickets Here.

We’re excited to be hosting this event and we sure hope to see you there!

Meet James and Anna!

Where are the two of you from?

James: I’m originally from a small mile plus high mountain town in Arizona, named Heber/Overgaard.

Anna: I’m a Korean from Seoul in South Korea.

What are your individual backgrounds?

James: As I mentioned I grew up in the mountains of Arizona, before eventually heading down to the desert where I attended the University of Arizona. I double majored in Media Arts and Creative Writing. After university I headed to Los Angeles to make my fortunes as a movie writer and director. As with most who pursue that lofty dream it did not pan out for me. After five years in L.A. I left the country and headed to Seoul, South Korea to teach English. Living abroad was a wonderful experience. I stayed in Korea for seven years working as a teacher at a public middle school. I had met me wife (Anna) while living in L.A., but she returned to Korea shortly before I moved there and eventually we married in Korea before heading back to the U.S. to pursue our farming dream.

Anna: I was born and grew up in a quite big city right next to Seoul which is the capital of South Korea. My university is in Seoul as well and as it so happens, I majored in Media journalism, that sounds pretty similar to James’s majors. I had been living in a city in my whole 30 years and even my family and most relatives are living in cities. As previously stated, it might be easy to guess that I didn’t have many chances to experience farming so I hadn’t been interested in farming before James declared to be a farmer very soon in the future. He talked about farming and livestock all the time and encouraged me to work in one CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) team in Korea. Through the CSA, I learned many things about agriculture.

What got you interested in farming?

James: The catalyst for me was the combination of wanting to eat healthy food and not enjoying my job. I started researching ways to provide my own food then discovered you don’t have to be born into farming or be rich to get into the trade. After that I spent three years testing the idea before I quit my job to become an apprentice at Shady Grove Ranch.

Anna: It is the same as James said. And plus, I can give a more healthy and happy environment for my family.

What do you find most interesting about sustainable farming?

James: The thing I find most interesting and enjoyable is the synergy between man and land. Land doesn’t do well left to itself and the idea of being able to shape and improve the land and build something and watch its betterment over a lifetime has quite the pull for me. It’s the project that never ends, it’s multi-generational if you manage it correctly, and the value it adds to the world is a very rewarding thing to participate in.

Why did you choose Shady Grove Ranch?

James: Because we got rejected by Polyface [a sustainably-minded farm in Virginia that has pioneered the farm-apprenticeship movement]. Haha. Actually Shady Grove Ranch ended up being the perfect fit for us. Matt and Jerica are basically doing everything we want to be doing and they’re of similar age, and the timing was right for them and us. We placed an ad on the Eager Farmer website and they contacted us. We started a dialogue and soon after we both agreed it would be a great fit. I also loved the idea of working with two engineers. I knew I would learn much more than just the ins and outs of pastured meat farming.

Anna: When we were looking for a farm to have internship, James told me we would need to choose between Shady Grove Ranch and a farm in Virginia. I said I liked Shady Grove Ranch more because Texas looks better and Matt and Jerica who are the owners of Shady grove ranch do most things by themselves like building mobile houses or marketing so I was sure James and I would learn a lot from them. Also, I had a good feeling with Matt and Jerica’s attitude and personality. I never had talked with them before I came to this farm but I could feel by our email conversations.

What did you like to do for fun before you started farming?

James: Before I got interested in farming I was doing a lot of hiking in Korea. Korea has 21 national parks, and I visited and summited the highest peak on every one. It took me two years to do, but was a great adventure that allowed me to see the country. Many of the parks I visited more than once.

Anna: I had visited famous restaurants and cafes with friends to taste delicious foods. I (and most Koreans )didn’t have enough vacation or days off so tried to do something or anything on the weekends. Like Hanging out with old friends, date, go to walk… So I researched interesting places that have delicious food was the thing I did many times when I could.

What do you do for fun now?

James: Now I go to Walmart on my day off. Haha… Just kidding. We’re trying to see the local area when we can. We visited lake Caddo and Big Cyprus Creek. I also enjoy reading if I have the energy after a full day of farming.

Anna: It is not for fun but I am kind of enjoying baking and cooking although I have failed some times. And gardening.

What has surprised you most about the farming lifestyle?

James: I always knew farming and building your own farm business was extremely tough. However, when I first got here it really hit me hard at how much sweat must have gone into building Shady Grove into what it is now. I did enough research to anticipate the lifestyle more or less, but the work life balance is certainly a challenge. I guess that’s why farming is considering a lifestyle and not a job.

Anna: I realized that you don’t need many things to maintain the farming lifestyle. Of course, you need farm gear, tractors, truck and fences. But except stuff for farming, you are able to be self sufficient . For example, TV, extra shoes and clothes, nice furniture, extra food and nice car are not necessary or expected. The farming life is simple and not wasteful.

What is your favorite thing about being farmers?

James: Being able to spend my days working outside with nature and of course the farm animals. I also enjoy working on a variety of different projects so it’s nice to work on and complete projects instead of doing the same thing or things every day that most jobs offer. We’re always trying to innovate and get better and you can see the results of your work and that’s very satisfying.

Anna: I don’t do a lot of work as a farmer yet, I love to watch happy animals. These animals are healthy and happy and I really appreciate healthy food James are helping to raise.

What is your least favorite chore?

James: Currently my least favorite chore is feeding the pigs. I hand feed about 700 pounds of feed each morning and the pigs get a bit ornery and start bumping into me and it can get a little chaotic. However we’re working on changing the feed set up to a self harvest system for the pigs so hopefully that won’t be my least favorite chore for much longer. Even though it’s my least favorite chore the pigs are indeed healthy and happy, it just puts more chore into the chore for me. 😃

Anna: I am still afraid of chickens. I am getting more brave but it is a little bit hard for me to catch chickens. why? I don’t know. I feel they would attack me or I am afraid if I could hold them too hard and hurt them.

The Day The Chicken Paddock Became A Mudslide

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Farming often feels like feast or famine. We believe we have exited a 3-year-long drought that started … oh, our FIRST summer of production. We made it. By the Lord’s grace we made it. But the pendulum seems to have swung the opposite direction, and rain has absolutely been dumping on us this spring! It started as two heavy snows with some ice, and then turned into cold rain, and then turned into not-so-cold rain. But it left the chicken paddock in a downright mess.

All our critters are in non-stationary paddocks, meaning they are never in a permanent location. This is called rotational grazing ,or perhaps more correctly, since chickens don’t exactly graze, rotational management. It means we move the chickens every 2 or 3 days. But it just-so-happened that when the snow hit, the chickens were a few hundred yards from this big beautiful pond:

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Which was not quite so big and beautiful at the time.

Then it started raining. And it didn’t quit. For days. For weeks. Rain every day. And every night. We got like 7 inches in a day. So the pond started to overflow. And the chicken paddock became a mudslide. After the icey weather subsided, Matt was catching back up on chores, one of which was to move the chickens (remember that every-2-or-3-days idea?). Well as it turns out, the overflowing pond decided to fund some underground streams which led right to the land surrounding the chickens. And the tractor got stuck. Again. And Again. It was like a new routine item on the checklist. Try to move chickens. Check. Get tractor stuck. Check.

Thankfully Matt is pretty clever and was able to pull himself out each time using his hay fork. (Oh, if only I had THAT on camera! But alas, it was too slick to bring the kids down with me. As if I didn’t already have enough wet-weather laundry…) And for a while, he had been mulling over a new skid design for the bottom of the chicken house that would solve some issues with wheels on soft pasture. So he brought a large steel bowl down and planned to attach it to the egg-mobile. The problem was that the ground was so soft, there was no way to lift the structure to do undercarriage work without the tractor. And the problem with that was that there was no way to get the tractor down there without getting really, really stuck.

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Finally one day he decided the ground was approaching a firm enough state to drive on, but the chickens had been there so long that the ground was really slick. You see, the main reason we are committed to this rotational management stuff is because any animal, left in the same location for too long, will decimate the landscape there. To their own detriment, in fact. It had only been 3 weeks since the chickens had been moved, but every lick of grass was gone and manure was starting to cake up. Most “range-fed” or “yard eggs” chickens are often in a permanent chicken run that gets filthy and stinky and downright miserable to live in.

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The scary thing is that as far as chickens are concerned, this is considered normal. Most folks don’t have the means, knowledge, or ability to rotate their chickens on a regular and frequent basis. Sadly, it turns into a filthy mess in no time. Above is what it looked like after only four weeks. Four weeks! Chickens have a productive life span of 3-4 years! Can you imagine what it would have looked like after that length of time?

Matt was determined to get that chicken paddock moved asap!

So after a day of sunny weather, he brought the tractor down again to try to use it as a jack to install the new sink-resistant skids. But he was still up against the issue of traversing the slick mud to get to the egg-mobile. The tractor slid down the hill… and the hay fork crashed right into the tire—pop! No more tire. The hay fork had skewered it! And the ground was still so slick that there was no way to navigate the tractor to lift up the house. Plan… C? D? Where were we at this point?

Matt called our neighbor, who has a slightly larger tractor with a winch cable. The plan was that Matt would hook up to the egg mobile, and Neighbor would hook up to Matt with the winch and pull the whole assembly uphill to a new paddock.

It actually did work, but that popped tire acted like a plow and left a long, deep rut in the pasture.

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That’s what shovels are for, I guess.

The chickens are now on new, dry ground where Matt can repair the egg-mobile and move it with his own tractor. And they are happy. I can tell because I got over 3 baskets of eggs that afternoon!

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The lesson learned? Next time we’re expecting 7+ inches of rain… keep the chickens far from the pond!

Winter Photos and More

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Just for fun, I thought I’d post some photos from our snowy adventures and beyond. Here’s what we’ve been up to at the ranch for the past couple of weeks.

: The pigs just get rid of the snow. What do they do? Eat it? Smash it into smithereens? We will never know.

: We tried two methods for snowman-making–the traditional rolling method, and a new bucket method! But we only had one pair of safety glasses…

: The boys say “Hi!” And then they threw snowballs at me.

: It truly was a white-out for a while!

: The view by one of the ponds.

: The chickens got out to scratch around a bit.

: Zeke didn’t mind the snow. He’s not so white, after all!

: It really was pretty to look at.

: 185 acres holds a lot of snow! This pond even iced over a little bit.

: And right before the snow came, Matt started on a new homemade rollaway nest box project to help get fewer soiled eggs. (I don’t make it into many farm photos, so I photobombed this one.)

: The occasion called for a new power tool: a brad nailer. Happy early birthday, Matt.

: Cool design from the Green Machine Farm.

: Marking the next template in preparation for cutting.

: All the pieces ready to assemble.

: Careful cuts make it go together easily.

: My handsome hubby needed a tea break during his work.

: Here are the plans by a fellow engineer-farmer.

: A lovely snowy sunrise to enjoy despite the cold and lack of electricity!

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