Encouraging Life
I’ve talked about the nuance of space per bird and how that should look in a pastured model.
I’ve also talked about how that is being twisted and used in marketing. I heard this week from someone that there are over 250,000 chickens WEEKLY as pasture-raised that are really coming from stationary houses with no real access to pasture. Full disclosure… I don’t have a citation on that stat but the person it came from runs the largest pasture poultry operation in the US and I do trust his prediction on it!
There is another overlooked nuance to why its important to poultry outside and on pasture…
I think that we forget about the LIFE that animals living within the correct context can create. Industrial agriculture focuses on death a lot of the times. They don’t want that weed so they kill it. They make spacing decisions based on how many animals they can cram into a space (and a lot of the time those calculations include “acceptable loss” numbers). Industrial agriculture looks to limit losses with their methods.
I think that my job as a regenerative farmer is the opposite of limiting losses… we focus on working within our environment to ENCOURAGE life to thrive. I want my plants and soil to thrive. I want my chickens, pigs, and cows to thrive. We definitely deal with death and loss on the farm too, that’s a fact of farming, but our focus is putting animals and soil in a situation to thrive.
When we see an industrial chicken house where chickens are given outdoor access in dirt yards we completely remove LIFE from the picture. The first life that is removed are plants and insects that should be available for birds to eat. Outdoor access yards for barn raised chicken are very quickly eaten down and turned into a barren wasteland. One of the most important tenets of regenerative farming practices is that we need animal movement and rest. On our farm we want the chickens to eat and knock the grass down, but after they do that we move them to a fresh section of grass. If you give an animal continuous access to the same piece of ground for too long then they will strip that soil. No plants, no insects, and no life.
The second life that is removed in the industrial system is the fertilizer that a chicken leaves behind to build the soil.
Manure applied at the right place and right time will also add life and rejuvenation to the soil and plants… chicken yards are constantly being oversaturated with manure and this causes harm to the soil as well. Manure that’s applied at the slower rates will be absorbed into the soil… when we move our animals every day at Alden Hills we have a really good absorption rate this way. Animals used in their proper context will add life the soil with their manure. Animals overstocked for their living areas will destroy the soil.
It's a more positive way to farm but we like encouraging life on our farm