This has been such a hit, the special is being carried over indefinitely!  Ground beef and pan sausage (with all organic ingredients) - $4.99/lb on orders of 10 lbs or more per family.

There are many deeply rewarding experiences on the farm; cleaning the brooder house is not one of them.  Although a nastier chore certainly must exist, an example evades me at the moment due to the oh-so-fresh memory of today's cleaning.

Definition - brooder house (as applicable to our farm):  The place where baby chicks live until old enough to move to pasture. 

Our brooder house is an old, old, (keep going... old, old, old) barn-like structure.  From what we gather, our farm (prior to it being "our farm") was in the same family for three generations.  This information comes from various neighbors' reminiscing.  The grandfather gave it to his son, who gave it to his son, who sold it to us. The son who sold it to us was no spring chicken (pardon please... not venturing to guess an age but definitely cruising his twilight years) and given the construction style, it would be a reasonable expectation to date the brooder house 80-90 years old, likely more. 

A key point is that, at no time during the building's existence had cleaning ever occurred.  Imagine the worst haunted house movie you've ever seen and mega-multiply the height and depth of those cob webs hanging from door frames, smothering light fixtures, darkening the windows and it still wouldn't be as nasty as the condition of the brooder house when we moved here.

This may not be true for men but speaking from a woman's perspective, the greatest joy in cleaning is when the object to be cleaned is significantly dirty.   There is no pleasure in cleaning a slightly used water glass.   Come on!  Give us a dirty, greasy spaghetti dish; a swipe here, a swipe there and voila... a sparkling, shiny dish fit for the next meal.

The original cleaning of the brooder house was very rewarding.  With every swipe, something better-than-expected appeared.  We found concrete under the dirt floor and figured out at one point it may originally have been the farm's combo cow-milking / hog butchering spot.  A little paint, a cute picket fence and it's former dreary look was gone.

A newly cleaned brooder house is such a nice place.  Before the baby chicks arrive, we generously cover the floor with 6-8 inches of fresh wood shavings and hang shiny red heat lamps to keep the babies warm.  I wish you could see the place the day the chicks arrive.  Tiny little bundles, huddled under the red lights with their cute little feeders and waterers conveniently placed so no chick has to venture far for food or water. 

The chicks are in the brooder house only long enough to grow a bit and acclimate to the outside environment.  If we are raising "layers" (hens to eventually lay eggs) they grow much slower, whereas if the chicks are "broilers" (meat birds), they may only be in the brooder house a couple weeks in warm seasons or a month if we are raising them in the colder seasons.

One end of the brooder house opens to a fenced outside area so in any weather the chicks have opportunity to venture out and start pecking at grass and dusting themselves in the dirt as they get a bit bigger.

It all sounds so charming, doesn't it?  Sweet baby chicks, fresh fluffy wood shavings, the sun shining on these precious little darlings as they meander about gleefully discovering the wonderful life of a soon-to-be free-range pasture chicken.

Come on, people!  What are we forgetting? 

Yes.. you guessed it...   THE POO !

Chickens poo.  They poo and poo and then poo some more.  They poo A LOT.  It isn't just our chickens; it is chickens everywhere doing lots of pooing.  Did you know that last August, Beijing, China opened their first bio-gas plant using chicken poo as the fuel source?  In October, 2008, a similar-type plant opened in the Netherlands that was even BIGGER than the one in China.

When I say we end up with a lot of poo in our brooder house, it doesn't mean we have a poo problem or more poo than anyone else raising chickens.  Chickens poo.  That is the plain and simple truth of the matter.

Thanks to generous use of wood shavings, the poo isn't troublesome until chicks move to pasture when brooder house cleaning day arrives and shavings are relocated to the compost pile. 

Poo settles.  It slides down beneath the wood shavings and it isn't until the shavings are removed that it occurs to you what used to be a concrete floor has now become a poo floor.  Yep... that's right.  And then the scraping begins.  Shovel after shovel after shovel of poo slowly and laboriously must be scraped up until once again concrete appears.

Like a dirty greasy spaghetti dish being cleaned, eventually the brooder house looks good again, ready for the next batch of chicks.

A customer the other day asked if he could have some of our brooder house compost.  We told him, certainly, there was plenty to share.  He said he would return with his trailer.  His wife asked why he wasn't bringing the car.  He looked at her sweetly, smiled and said he'd be happy to bring the car but didn't think she'd like the smell of chicken poo in the trunk.  We all smiled.  Sometimes it takes a minute to see the big picture.

Although little in a conventional grocery store is appealing, one product I've bought with measured confidence in the past (before raising our own chickens) was "all natural, no antibiotic" Tyson chicken. Surely, this was a better choice than factory-farm chicken, right?

Wrong!

According to the November 9, 2008, issue of Natural News, Tyson, the world's largest meat processor and the second largest chicken producer in the U.S., has been found to regularly inject antibiotics into their eggs 2-3 days before hatching. They claim their chicks are raised without antibiotics since "in ovo" pertains to the egg, not the chicken.  Tyson also raises its chickens on feed containing ionophores, classified by the USDA as antibiotics. Tyson states ionophores are antimicrobials, not antibiotics. And the difference is?

To read the entire article, click here.

This type of behavior on the part of big companies such as Tyson is insulting. We have the right to know  what is in the food we eat. We deserve to know.

According to Mercola.com, Campylobacter is responsible for food poisoning in more than 1 million Americans every year and is considered a growing health threat. A study by Johns Hopkins tested chickens from Tyson, as well as other major manufacturers, and found the chickens 460 times MORE likely to have antibiotic-resistant strains of Campylobacter.  They use antibiotics prior to hatching, feed their chickens antibiotic-laced feed and still have antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria in their meat.  How bad can their chicken raising/processing be for this to happen?  Please do a search on YouTube.com for "Tyson chicken" to view some of the undercover videos and employee interviews to get a glimpse of their process.  It is beyond disgusting.

We are what we eat EATS. If the chicken we consume was fed antibiotics, those antibiotics end up in us.

It is estimated that 70 percent of the antibiotics used in the United States for humans are also given to animals used for food (REF: Jeff Gelles, “Why Antibiotics in Meat Should Give You Pause.)  The result is that when you get sick, the antibiotics your doctor prescribes may no longer work.

In an U.S. Department of Agriculture study, researchers found that 67 percent of chicken samples and 66 percent of beef samples were contaminated with “superbugs” that could not be killed with antibiotics (REF: David Perlman, “Doctors Seek to Limit Antibiotics on Farms; S.F. Group Also Decries Excess Use By Humans,” San Francisco Chronicle).

A report by the U.S. General Accounting Office warns, “Antibiotic-resistant bacteria have been transferred from animals to humans, and many of the studies we reviewed found that this transference poses significant risks for human health” (REF: General Accounting Office, Antibiotic Resistance: Federal Agencies Need to Better Focus Efforts to Address Risk to Humans From Antibiotic Use in Animals.)

Two major antibiotics are quickly becoming worthless due to factory farms' widespread use. These include Vancomycin, used to treat blood infections and pneumonia caused by Staphylococcus bacteria, and gentamicin, used to treat Campylobacter infections in humans (REF: Consumers Union SWRO.)

On Yonder Way Farm, we do not use antibiotics in any capacity.  We do not use growth hormones, vaccines or chemicals on or in our animals, our pastures or our feed.

Healthy animals do not need antibiotics.  When animals have opportunity to live in their natural environment and eat food compatible with their breed, they don't get sick and they don't need antibiotics.

Pure, clean, healthful meat... that's what you get with Yonder Way Farm chicken.  Enjoy!

This past week, a variety of propositions were up for vote across America. One of curious interest was California's Proposition 2 that would require factory farms to provide enough space for chickens, calves and pregnant pigs to turn, stand and stretch their limbs.

Proposition 2 passed with a 63% vote and takes affect in 2015.

Let's dissect this a bit. Requiring factory farms to provide enough space for animals to turn, stand and stretch means the animals do not have this opportunity now. Allowing factory farms seven years to comply indicates the physical changes needed must be extensive. All this being true, what does it say about current conditions on factory farms?

Wikipedia defines factory farming as the practice of raising farm animals in confinement at high stocking density where a farm operates as a factory.

A factory... not a farm? To see one of the nicer examples of a pig's life on a factory farm, click here. YouTube.com has many other investigarory videos about this topic.  Be warned!  The scenes are graphic, disturbing and should make us think twice about the meat we buy at the grocery store and whether or not we want to feed it to our family.

The day after Proposition 2 passed, one of our mama pigs had her first liter of 12 baby piglets.  There definitely are no modifications needed on our farm!

Our breeder stock consists of eight mama pigs and one daddy pig named Dudley.  This family provides approximately 80 new pigs a year for harvest.

They share our barnyard with a sweet family of pygmy goats, our original "layer" hens and ever-multiplying barn cats.

The barn has a south-facing open side with connecting pastures leading to some wooded acreage.  Our pigs root in the pasture, eat acorns from the big oaks in the woods, bathe and create mud pools from a fixed sprinkler we run in the afternoon and sleep outside under the open side of the barn covering.  Throughout their area are several fresh well-water hook-ups for their drinking convenience.

As Michael Pollan states in his book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, when farm animals are free to behave according to their natures, in environments that use species diversity to create bio-synchratic relationships, they neither fight nor suffer from stress-related illness.

As you can see, there is no stress in our barnyard!

Who would ever have thought chickens could grow this fast? Less than a month ago, they were the cutest, teeniest, sweetest little chirping things. Time can be most unkind, even to chickens!

Moving day had arrived and out of the brooder house they went.  All 400 broiler hens were gently carried a few at a time, riding on fresh hay in our used-for-everything portable kennel, out to pasture to finish their days roaming the green grasses, chasing bugs and doing whatever chickens in all their glory desire to do.

From birth to harvest, Yonder Way Farm animals are always happy!

Even though the broiler pasture is enclosed with "hot" wire netting with only rare hawk sightings and other predators (raccoons, coyotes, etc.) not being a problem, some shelter was needed for night and temperature protection.

Farmer Jason built four mobile "coops" for our flock. The coops are mobile because every day we pull them an additional 12 feet forward. Our hens never roost in yesterday's poo. They also have free roam of the entire pasture. At no time are they confined inside the coop.

Something you may not know about Farmer Jason is this... he is very orderly.  It is a gift that serves all of us well here on the farm and one for which we are most thankful.

What does this mean in terms of chickens going to pasture?

Let's do the math. There were 400 broilers and 4 chicken coops. Diligently and methodically, Farmer Jason counted each chicken as he gently placed them inside the door opening. Each coop had exactly 100 chickens, not one more and not one less.

How long do you think they remained 100 birds per coop? HA! We no sooner had turned our backs but what those unruly hens were seeking residence in someone else's house!

Evidently, they had so many residential options, they couldn't decide in which house they wanted to sleep. The first night those silly birds, all 400 of them, laid down just outside the coop door openings. Using "pirate vision" (more to come on that in a later post) each hen was carefully placed back in the closest coop. Eleven o'clock at night, out in a dark pasture putting 400 chickens in a coop, no one was counting to 100 at that point.

The second night, not as many opted to camp out. Again, each was placed back in the coop. Within a few nights, they sweetly mosey'd back under their little tin roof before roosting quietly. Thank goodness!

Come about end of November, these broilers will be ready for harvest.

What happened the afternoon after these broilers went to pasture? MAJOR BROODER HOUSE CLEANING! A new batch of 400 day-old chicks arrived the following morning. In another month, they will be moving to pasture as the first group reach harvest weight. This will give us a total of 800 broilers to add to inventory.

There will be plenty of chickens for everyone!