A few weeks ago, I
regaled you with a summary of Joel
Salatin’s broiler chicken operation.  This post continues
the story by looking in on his Eggmobiles, which house laying hens on
pasture.



Although most of us
won’t be able to recreate Salatin’s success, it’s worth understanding
how he’s able to raise laying hens while spending only 33% as much on
feed as the average egg-producer does.  Here are the key factors
in Salatin’s layer operation:

• Non-hybrid breeds —
  Salatin raises Rhode Island Reds, Barred
  Rocks, and Black
  Australorps.  Even though they only average about five eggs
  apiece per week, he believes that these heavier birds experience less
  strain per egg since they lose a smaller percentage of their body
  weight with each egg.
• Young hens — After the
  chickens have been laying for two years, Salatin kills his layers and
  sells them as stewing fowl.  This keeps egg production high and
  the operation economical.
• Free choice food —
  Hens in the Eggmobile enjoy a buffet of whole corn, oats, meat and bone
  meal, and oyster shells in separate compartments.  Since they get
  plenty of protein from pasture, most of the chickens’ storebought feed
  consists of cheap grains.  The feed analysis I listed earlier in
  the post is a bit misleading — if you weighed the amount of feed you
  give each laying hen and the amount Salatin gives each of his hens, he
  wouldn’t be feeding only 33% as much.  However, since Salatin’s
  birds focus more on ingredients like corn, his feed cost is only a
  third as high.
• Plenty of bug-filled pasture
  — This is the real reason most of us can’t replicate Salatin’s
  results.  He keeps about 100 birds in each Eggmobile, letting them
  free range as far as they want (about 600 feet), then moving the coop
  every three or four days.  Since Salatin rests each pasture area
  for four weeks before letting chickens back on it, one Eggmobile ends
  up covering about 50 acres each year, or half an acre per bird. 
  Also keep in mind that Salatin’s pasture is home to cows, so the
  chickens get plenty of fly maggots in the manure.

Although it’s not
relevant to the discussion of lowering feed costs, I thought you might
also like to know that Salatin solves the winter
chicken pasture problem by simply moving his hens to
hoop
houses full of deep bedding.



I like to look at
systems like this as an incentive to make our homestead-scale pastures
even better.  No, we don’t have cows and 50 acres of pasture, but
surely we can use some of Salatin’s techniques and a bit of ingenuity
to lower our feed costs at least a little.  Stay tuned as I
continue to experiment with the backyard-scale chicken pasture.

I’m sure that most of
you have heard about the broiler operation that is the primary subject
of Pastured
Poultry Profits. 
However, as well-known as the Polyface Farm model is, I’ve had trouble
finding real data on the internet.  So here’s a quick summary of
the numerical side of Salatin’s pasture operation — if you’re at all
interested in following his lead, I highly recommend that you track
down his book for more information.



Salatin’s business model
is pretty simple, and probably looks good to farmers (accustomed to
making minimum wage), but not so hot to white collar workers. 
Salatin’s book walks you through raising 10,000 broilers during a busy
six months, netting $25,000.  He estimates that each bird
takes about 5.5 minutes of caretaking while on pasture and another 3.5
minutes of butchering, which results in an hourly wage of $12 to $20
per hour (when the book was published in 1993 — presumably more
now).  Yes, that does mean you’re working about 60 hours per week,
over a third of which is killing chickens, but you get the other half
of the year to recover.  In addition to the time constraints,
you’ll have to come up with $10,000 to $15,000 in startup costs (along
with 20 acres of pasture) to repeat Salatin’s success.



The reason you can make
a moderate to good living raising pastured poultry is because keeping
the broilers on pasture results in a high quality meat you can’t buy in
the grocery store.  Salatin moves his chicken tractors daily (or
twice daily when the birds are big) to ensure that the flock is always
enjoying the “cream” of the pasture — bugs and tender, young
grass.  Quick movement also prevents disease buildup by keeping
the young chickens from sitting around in their own waste. 
Salatin provides 1.3 to 2.4 square feet per bird, hitting the sweet
spot in which chickens aren’t stressed by overcrowding and don’t burn
off too many calories “running around”.  The result is a 20%
reduction in feed cost for broilers, and a feed
conversion rate of
2:1 (liveweight) or 3:1 (carcass weight).  He sees 5 to 10%
mortality, which sounds like it’s about par for the course for this
“race car” breed.



I think that those of us who
want to pick and choose pieces of Salatin’s method to incorporate into
our own farms have to keep several things in mind.  First of all,
Salatin has had no luck selling heirloom meat birds to the public, so
he has little information to share about non-Cornish
Cross broilers.  (I’ll write about his heirloom egg-laying
flock in another post.)  Less sedentary heirloom broilers act very
different and will probably need at least slightly different management
techniques.



The success of the
Polyface Farm broiler operation also stems in large part from the
diversity of the entire farm.  In addition to raising chickens,
Salatin grazes beef cattle, which he sends through the pasture to
prepare the ground for the broilers.  If you don’t have access to
some ruminants, you’ll need to mow the pastures to maintain grass at
the proper height for chickens, and you should expect your broilers to
get less nutrition from a pure grass pasture since you won’t have the
bug-laden cow pies.  (I’ve written about the ecology of a Salatin-style
pasturing system
elsewhere.)



All of that said,
Salatin clearly has a lot to teach anyone who’s new to pasturing
poultry.  And his method has turned hundreds of wannabe farmers
onto a business model that allows them to make a living on a small
family farm.  If that sounds like you, check out Pastured
Poultry Profits
for a step by step guide to making your dreams come true.