Free Range Heritage Poultry

2006 was our first year raising poultry, we raised 50 Cornish Cross Chickens and 12 Bronze Turkeys. This first year, we used a pastured poultry pen based on Joel Salatin's design, but modified to be made out of PVC pipe instead of wood. This pen worked great for 50-ish birds, but we found that the Cornish Cross birds, the standard in the meat industry, were simply not suited to foraging. The philosophy of the pen is that you move it once or twice a day to a fresh piece of ground, allowing the chickens to have access to grass and insects, while keeping them contained and safe from predators. The system itself is a good one, but the larger our hybridized "meat birds" got, the less they moved around, spending most of the day just laying down. We also lost over a dozen in a single day that year due to overheating. This was partly our inexperience - we should have known to hose them down when we saw them panting - but also the fact that we had the wrong breed for our goals.

In 2007 we changed breeds and decided to try raising 100 Dark Cornish chickens. This breed of chicken is just what we wanted. We changed methodologies and used the pen as a roost, closing the chickens in only at night, but allowing them to range far and wide to forage for insects and plants to eat during the day. 100 Birds was really too many to have in the pen all the time, plus we knew there was a lot of food out in the woods that was just going to waste. The Dark Cornish birds took to this system with gusto and were much heavier than we expected come butchering time, having eaten much less grain per bird than the ones from the previous year. We did loose some to predators, that's just a fact of free range poultry, but we felt that the quality of the meat and the cost savings in grain made it worth while.

In 2008 we decided to jump from 100 to 150 Dark Cornish. It seems we always end up giving away quite a few to friends and family, plus extra meat is never a bad thing. By chance, the hatchery had to send us 25 Barred Rocks and 125 Dark Cornish because of problems hatching that year. This gave us a great opportunity to compare the Dark Cornish against another heritage, non-hybridized breed to see how they compared. We were astounded that at the end of the season, we had lost 12 of the 25 Barred Rocks to predators, and only 5 of the 125 Dark Cornish. These birds are truly the kings of self sufficiency and we admire them greatly. We also noticed that the Dark Cornish were larger and meatier at butchering time. The only upside of the Barred Rocks is that they look more "store bought" after dressing, having a yellowish skin and lighter plumage.

Another upgrade in 2008 was the nighttime accommodations. The pen was starting to fall apart, so we commandeered an old greenhouse frame that was in our garden, wrapped chicken wire around it and put a tarp over one corner to keep the elements out. This arrangement worked out fantastically. The birds fertilized the garden bed where the greenhouse frame was located, while removing all the weed seeds and old vegetation. This new housing was also very nice come butchering time. Instead of having to crawl around in a 2 foot high pen trying to catch each bird, 2 or 3 of us could go into the greenhouse frame at once and grab 6 birds fairly easily.

A word about butchering...

While many of our neighbors ship their birds out to be butchered, we are firm believers in processing our meat at home. Our chickens may not be as perfectly plucked as a store bought bird, but we find that there's a great deal of satisfaction that comes from knowing that the animals we kill and eat were treated respectfully during their entire lives. Many of the killing practices used at slaughter houses are not respectful. While they are humane in the scientific sense of the word, we feel that there is more to it than having a quick death. In many slaughter houses, the birds who are waiting to be killed, wait in full sight of those being slaughtered. They must stand there and hear, smell and see others being killed. The additional stress of being crammed into a cage and hauled for miles to the nearest slaughter house puts additional stress on the animals too.

Death is part of life, and those of us who pay others to do our "dirty work" are missing out on the fullness of being alive.