Poultry Your Way - Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems ...

MANAGEMENT
ALTERNATIVES
74
FARM PROFILE • Pasture: Day-range
The Joneses don’t know for sure just how much green grass and
clover, bugs, and worms their chickens eat while pasturing, but
probably less than 30 percent of their feed needs. Still, Kay and Frank
are sure that pasture makes all the difference. Being outdoors and
getting light, exercise, and fresh air is better than total confinement,
but forage consumption is the key to quality meat and eggs,
Kay believes.
Birds
Frank and Kay use mostly Redbros broilers—the kind favored by
French farmers who produce Label Rouge chicken. Most of the layers
are Golden Comets, but there are other breeds as well. Frank and
Kay buy some replacement layers each year and usually buy different
breeds. They can tell bird ages by the breed, which include Barred
Rocks, Rhode Island Reds, New Hampshires, Black Astralorps, and
others.
Labor
On any given day, the Joneses have 500 to 600 chickens—250 of them
laying hens, two batches of 100 growing broilers, and another 100
broiler chicks in the brooder house. In late summer, there are also 60
turkeys growing toward Thanksgiving. Each group needs daily care.
Eggs are gathered once a day, and dirty eggs must be washed. Designing the nests so eggs roll away after they
are laid helps keep eggs clean. Frank enjoys building things, and part of his day is devoted to making feeders or
building houses, roosts, and nests for layers. House construction is simple—two-by-fours, chicken wire, conduit
bent into the proper shape, plastic tarps for roofs.
Feed and waterer in pasture.
Frank Jones checking on birds in machine-
portable broiler house.
Feed and water
After Frank or Kay let the birds out in the morning, each group gets feed and
water. Feeders are simple devices made of plastic eaves trough and are filled
using a five-gallon plastic pail. Five-gallon buckets of water are inverted over
special bases, dispensing water as it is consumed. The broilers are fed all they will
eat, but the layers are limit-fed to keep them productive but lean. They feed twice
a day.
Frank and Kay buy organic grains that Frank grinds in batches of 1,000 pounds
with a portable feed grinder powered by tractor power take-off. Chicks need
higher protein and a finer grind. Grains include oats, corn, wheat, soybeans, and
field peas. The Joneses use Fertrell minerals and supplements that include oyster
shells, which can enhance egg shell quality.
Health and welfare
Chicks need special care. They are kept in a brooder house, where heat lamps keep temperatures at the 95-plusdegree
level young chicks need. Need for heat decreases rapidly, about one degree per day, and by the time they
are three weeks old, the chicks can be moved into houses on pasture. It only takes seven to nine weeks to bring a
broiler up to the four-pound dressed weight the Joneses want.
Layers are completely different, and quite a bit more frustrating, according to Kay. “For one thing, they are stronger
fliers than meat birds,” she said. They can—and do—get outside the net fence. They take up more space than the
broilers, a factor on their small acreage. While broilers are summer projects, layers live much longer—several years.