Broilers Are Chickens, Too
August 4th, 2014 · 2 Comments · Posted in farming
Our Freedom Ranger broilers are growing up fast. For the 10 or 11 weeks that they live on this earth, they’re housed in wood-framed cages on our farm’s pasture. They don’t get to run around free, but we do move the cages–called “tractors” in the poultry biz–twice a day so they can forage in fresh foliage.
Their water and feed is refreshed twice each day as well.
My wife and I have debated exactly how many Rangers should be placed in each tractor and for the moment we’ve settled on 25. Since the cages are four feet by eight feet in size, that means each bird has 1.28 square feet of ground to call its own. They spend a lot time circulating.
As we move the tractors, the birds leave a swath of fertilizer. The results are pretty remarkable. You can look across the sward and clearly see bright, green lanes where the Rangers have been. My challenge this week is to build what will be our fourth tractor to house the chicks that are now living in the brooder in the basement.
You may have seen this post going around FB, but seems appropriate for your situation. http://www.hamsweetfarm.com/18-00-chicken/
I scrolled through the comments, but didn’t see anything about how they handle predators for their free-range birds (clearly an issue you’ve faced).
hard to believe you could feed all that grain to a chicken for 14 weeks and end up with only 3 pounds worth of carcass. Our Freedom Ranger roosters are pushing 6 pounds after 11 weeks. I find the complaints about what consumers are willing to pay tiresome. If it costs you so much to raise a chicken that people aren’t willing to pay, you should just find another line of work.