Pasture-Raised Chicken FAQ How do you raise your chickens? Our Cornish Rock Cross broilers have constant access to sunlight and fresh air from day one, in our 4x8 brooders which are half covered with wood and half covered only with chicken wire so sunlight can get through and predators can stay out. Their bedding of wood shavings is renewed with clean material as needed, while a heat lamp provides the warmth chicks need. At 2 to 3 weeks, the birds are hardy enough to be ranged on pasture in “chicken tractors”, floorless coops that are moved daily, so they can have the constant access to sunlight, grasses and insects they need to be healthy and happy birds. What do you feed them? Our chickens are currently fed an all-grain (containing no animal by-products), antibiotic-free commercial feed. During the first four weeks we supplement that feed with soybean meal to increase protein levels. We have no need for growth hormones, and they are no longer used even in conventional poultry production. Once the birds are out on pasture (at 2-3 weeks of age), they have constant access to plenty of grasses and clover. They are moved daily so they can have fresh new plant material and insects to eat all the time. While we would like to feed them organic feed, it’s just not widely available enough and cost-effective enough for us to do so. One third of the cost of raising our chickens is in feed, and they already cost more to raise than mass-produced conventional chicken cost to buy in a supermarket. Are they Organic? Free Range? We believe these types of labels should not serve as a shortcut to understanding how food is produced. According to the USDA, certified organic chicken must be fed certified organic antibiotic-free feed. They also must be “free range”. Here is how the USDA defines “free range”: “Birds are raised in heated and air-cooled growing houses with access to the outdoors” http://www.ams.usda.gov/poultry/pdfs/TradDesc2.pdf “What is access to the outdoors? Access to the outdoors simply means that a producer must provide livestock with an opportunity to exit any barn or other enclosed structure. Access to the outdoors does not require a producer to comply with a specific space or stocking rate requirement. Neither does the requirement mandate that an entire herd or flock have access to the outdoors at any one time” http://www.ams.usda.gov/nop/NOP/PolicyStatements/LivestockAccess102902.pdf Our practices far exceed the National Organic Standards requirement for “free range”. In fact, we don’t even give them access to the indoors. How are the chickens processed? Every Castlemaine Farm chicken is processed in a USDA-inspected facility, air-chilled and vacuum-packed. Air-chilling is a more sanitary method of cooling the chicken than having them immersed in cold water baths, as most large scale US plants do.

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Egg Layers

We are often asked, sometimes suspiciously, what we’re feeding our hens to get the yolks so bright orange. That orange pigmentation is known as xanthophyll. Xanthophyll occurs in plant leaves. The kinds of eggs available in supermarkets are from hens raised in indoor battery cages. They don’t have much access to plant material, other than what’s in their feed, usually resulting in pale, tasteless yolks.

Our hens are as “free range” as possible without leaving them vulnerable to predators, and leaving our vegetable fields, tractor, truck, garage and neighbors’ yard vulnerable to the hens. In the daytime, up to 50 chickens roam around in a 1700sq ft field sectioned off by portable net fencing, scratching around, picking up grasses, legumes, bugs and seeds. Once the hens scratch up and eat a lot of the fresh vegetation of a field, we will move the net fencing and chicken tractor to another field.

The hens lay their eggs and sleep in the chicken tractor. A chicken tractor is a floorless, portable coop we can move around the farm. Ours are all 10’W x12’L x 5’H, A-frame coops that we can walk around in. There is plenty of roost space to hold 50 chickens comfortably at night.

Our net fencing can be electrified, but we haven’t really had to set this up yet. Predators haven’t been too much of a problem thus far. Our dog, Mama, runs free, and chases anything that’s not a cat, chicken or the other dog. She keeps most of the ground predators away. Twice we had a hawk grab a hen who escaped from the fenced-in area and was thus unable to retreat into the coop when the rooster gave out a warning crow.

Salty the Rooster stays with 50 of the hens. He’s loud, lets us know when it’s time to wake up or when the water’s about to run dry, and doesn’t let anybody mess with his ladies, so we like to think he’s good protector from the predators.

We have 100 layers currently, so this means half the eggs we have for sale are fertilized. There is absolutely no difference, in terms of nutrition, taste, and appearance, between a fertilized and a non-fertilized egg. The only difference is a fertilized egg, if incubated by machine or hen for 21 days, has a chance of developing into a chick. Our eggs are collected daily and immediately refrigerated. So you have no chance of finding any little guys in any of our eggs!

Breeds we’re raising currently: Barred Rock, Rhode Island Red, Delaware, Black Australorp, Buff Orpington, and Easter Eggers.

We are still trying out a variety of breeds. We have found that when deciding on a breed, temperament of the breed comes into play along with its productive capacity. So far our favorite breeds have been Black Australorps and Buff Orpingtons. They both have very laid back temperaments and lay well. I also like the Barred Rocks and Delawares, although both can be a little more feisty than the former two. We’ll absolutely never get a Rhode Island Red hen again – the ones we have are just too jumpy and mean. For example, while a Buff Orpington will let us get eggs out from under her every time, a Rhode Island Red will snap at us every time.

Our Easter Egg hens lay blue-green eggs. The birds themselves are nice to look at but they are very wild. We have one that jumps out of the fenced-in area every other day and finds a grassy spot to lay eggs in. The others frequently jump out too, and they are always jumpy when people are around them. But their feathers and eggs are cool looking, and they have sideburns. We’ve had a few customers who are afraid of the green eggs, but there’s nothing to be afraid of – they’re not rotten – just green!