We had two hens go broody this year so we have two batches of little peepers running around being raised by mamas, with no [...]]]> We have had a week or so of totally gorgeous weather. Everything on the farm (including me) is really happy about it!

Strawberries are coming!

And radishes!

And peas!

We had two hens go broody this year so we have two batches of little peepers running around being raised by mamas, with no work required on our parts. Hooray for mama hens.

One mama hen taught her babies how to sleep on the roost today

The other mama hen knows that her babies still need to be under a warm lamp

Last week we scored some free baby turkeys on Craigslist. Several were ill and a few had died, and their owner was sad and stressed about it, and just wanted to hand them off to someone else to take care of them. Two of ‘em didn’t make it after we brought them home, but the other nine have recovered and seem healthy. We moved them out to the coop this week.

Turkeys have also learned how to roost

And here is a video so you can enjoy their sweet little turkey sounds.

But I did go visit the goats, which I don’t do daily anymore since I stopped [...]]]> No pictures today because we spent the weekend — which turned out to be the nicest weekend of the year so far — holed up inside working on business plans and spreadsheets and other similarly boring things.

But I did go visit the goats, which I don’t do daily anymore since I stopped milking, and give them lots of skritches. So that was fun. They are feeling spring too, running and playing and headbutting and rubbing against trees to get their winter undercoat off.

I didn’t expect them to survive, so I [...]]]>

Bees doing their own thing

This is a swarm I captured, and I didn’t have frames for the box that I threw together for them. Before I could get frames, they took over the empty space and built their Gaudí-Gehry thing.

I didn’t expect them to survive, so I figured I’d just clean it up in spring before installing a new hive, but this is my strongest colony.

Last week I looked for the rhubarb and couldn't find it. Today, here it is!

Overwintered carrots, for the corned beef tonight.

Important! Please note that this tractor style is [...]]]> This past season was our fourth year of raising broiler chickens in chicken tractors on rented pasture. In that time, we’ve refined our chicken tractor style to suit our needs, but the tractor design could be used in lots of different farm setups and environments.

Important! Please note that this tractor style is NOT predator-proof. You should make sure to have some electric mesh fence to surround the tractor, or some other predator prevention method. I’ve seen folks mount a single strand around the base of the tractor, and put a solar charger on the tractor itself, but we haven’t tried that yet.

Why this style?

We rent pasture, which happens to be hilly, so our tractors are designed to be lightweight and easy to dismantle to take home at the end of the season — as well as easy to rebuild the next spring. They are also relatively inexpensive, while at the same time using some storebought parts (a metal-framed carport) to cut down on our preparation time.

A key feature of our tractors is that they are tall enough for us to walk in. This is a matter of personal preference — it’s easier to get in there to feed and water, to say nothing of catching them for slaughter day — but also of animal welfare. Our first year, we had a Joel Salatin-style tractor, which is just a couple of feet tall, alongside a walk-in-height one, similar to the ones we now use. They had the same footprint (10×12 if I recall correctly) and the same number of birds in them, give or take a few. When we processed, we found that the birds in the Salatin (short) tractor showed more signs of physical stress, such as feather picking, and they were also smaller than the birds in the tall tractor.

I am sure that folks can make the Salatin tractors be successful, but since the tall tractor isn’t really any more expensive than a short one, we find it to be preferable.

Our model is 10×10 and we can fit 60 Freedom Rangers very comfortably, or up to 75 with some crowding.

Tractor construction

Here is how we build chicken tractors for under $300 that are lightweight, easy to move, secure (with electric fence surrounding), and easy to disassemble at the end of the season and reassemble next year.

We start with a metal-framed portable carport. These can be had at Costco or similar, but we get ours from Amazon, where they are $97-140 (depending on sales). We use the Caravan Canopy 10×20 Carport.

Here is a diagram of what the carport is designed to look like, if you use all the pieces:

When we assemble it, we omit two 5-foot (purple) sections, so that it looks like this:

Next we create the bottom half of the frame, which is just made of regular storebought PVC pipe, some regular storebought fittings, and some specially purchased fittings from Peaceful Valley. In the following diagram, the three-way corners (blue) are from Peaceful Valley and the Ts are just regular PVC joints (grey).

Note that the Peaceful Valley fittings, like most, come in different sizes. Make sure you get them in the same size as your storebought stuff.

Important! When you put the lid onto the bottom, you will drop the metal (orange, in my diagrams) fittings of the carport over the 3-foot PVC uprights, rather than gluing or screwing them. So make sure, also, that your storebought PVC is small enough to fit inside the metal corners. Your metal fitting size will depend on which carport you get, so I can’t say for sure which size PVC you’ll need.

The uprights here are 3 feet tall because we use 3-foot-tall snow fence as the fencing material, and this way we don’t have to try to patchwork it or have extra flopping around.

In all, for storebought PVC you should need:
Four 10′ lengths (one for each side)
Two 10′ lengths cut into 3′ lengths (for the uprights)
One 10′ length for the long sides of the door
Scrap, or another 10′ length for the short ends of the door (to be discussed later)

So, seven or eight 10′ lengths, depending on whether you’ve already got scrap or have another plan for your door.

The joints in the bottom part of the frame will be subject to stress when dragging the tractor. We screw them together with long screws, going through the corner fitting and into the PVC pipe, from various angles as needed.

Now get a couple folks to help you, and lift the lid up and drop it down onto the base!

You’ve got a chicken tractor!

Finishing it

There are any number of ways to construct a door. We generally use the leftover legs from the carport as the door jamb, and some more PVC to make a rectangle for the door. A post on that is forthcoming; I got tired of making diagrams.

Now you just need to put your chosen fence material all around the tractor. You’ll want lots of zip ties. Again, we use snow/safety fence, like this, but 3 feet tall. It’s pretty easy to work with. You can do a whole tractor with one 100′ roll — nearly two tractors, if you use a tarp for your whole roof.

Oh yeah, you’ll also want a tarp roof to provide shade and cover from precipitation. Depending on the size of your tarp, you can do the whole roof, or just half. If you do half, obviously you need to put snow fence on the other half. Make sure you snug the tarp down well so chickens don’t escape. We usually cut new holes in addition to the existing grommets, and zip tie it down really well.

You can see in the picture above that we’re currently using brown tarps. I think ideally we’d have white, to deflect sun rather than absorbing it. Also, the carport comes with a white tarp, which we could modify (read: cut in half) to suit, for even cheaper construction. However, our pasture is in view of the home of the folks we rent the pasture from, and they requested brown, so brown it is. Compromise is important.

You need a tow rope so you can move the tractor. Tie a rope to two corners, based on which direction you want to move it. For extra awesomeness, slide a couple of spare short lengths of PCV over the rope, so you can grab those rather than having the rope cutting into your hands as you move it.

You do NOT need wheels, or a dolly, or anything else to move it. We move ours up a steep hill by hand, solo.

If your ground is particularly uneven, or you have particularly wily chickens, you might want to put an apron (skirt?) around the tractor — to do this, just get 4-foot snow fence (or whatever) and have the extra flare out around the bottom of the tractor, to obstruct any gaps that may exist between the base of the tractor and the uneven ground.

Drawbacks

The main issue with these tractors is that they are *too* lightweight in some ways. Because our pasture is hilly, we would prefer to hang our waterers from the tractor so they can naturally level themselves, but these metal carport frames are too flimsy. It could handle one waterer if it’s hung at one of the joints, but we bent a pipe on our first tractor by hanging a full waterer in the middle of the pipe.

When we raised turkeys, they were on pasture until well after the stormy season started. Their specific location got pretty windy, and the tractors tended to take off. Occasionally they sailed away a bit, or tipped over, but even when they were just hopping up and down a bit, it spooked the turkeys enough that they broke out (adult turkeys are STRONG!) and flew away and got eaten. (That year we lost 50%+ of our turkeys, most as adults. $$$$, also :( :( :(. That was our last year doing turkeys.)

The cost breakdown

We don’t have exact numbers on this because we tend to have random PVC lengths, fittings, screws, rope, etc. laying around to be scavenged, but here’s an estimate:

Carport: ~$100
Four Peaceful Valley PVC three-way fittings: $12 + shipping
PVC from your local hardware store, eight 10-foot lengths (to be sure to have enough) at ~$5 each: $40
Two T-shaped PVC fittings: ?? Maybe $6 total?
Snow fence: ~$40
Tarp: $20-50, depending on sales (hint: buy tarps when they’re on sale, whether you think you need them or not.)
Rope, screws, zip ties, etc.: incidental
Fittings for door: < $10

Total: approximately $230-250

Next up!

How we are currently building the door for this tractor!
Recommendations for feeders and waterers!

Feedback and discussion!

What style of chicken tractor are you using? How did you develop it, and what are its pluses and minuses? If you follow our model, what are the issues you encountered? We’d love to discuss!

Here’s a list of the events I [...]]]> Sorry we’ve been incommunicado lately; there’s been a conference or other out-of-town event nearly every weekend since the beginning of the year. It’s learning-and-networking-event time for farmers from about November to about March, so the craziness should be wrapping up soon, for which I am thankful.

Here’s a list of the events I can remember:

Thursday, January 17: Garth at the South Sound Food Summit.

Friday and Saturday, January 25-26 (the next weekend): Garth at Lamb 200 on Friday, both of us at Cattlemen’s Winter School and Country Living Expo (link is time-sensitive; 2013 info will not last forever)
(Also on the evening of the 26th: Zoë Keating and Portland Cello Project at the Edmonds Center for the Arts, a lovely venue! And of course a super awesome show.)

Saturday, February 2: (the weekend after that): Farmland Changing Hands workshop, hosted by FarmLink and WSU Extensions.

Saturday, February 9: (the next weekend after that): West Sound Small Farms Expo. I won a pasture stick!

Saturday, February 16 (the weekend after that): NO farm stuff!!! We went on a tiny road trip to visit my family in Reno, which was great.

Friday, February 22: Garth at the NW Washington Farm-To-Table Trade Meeting in Bellingham.

Saturday, February 23 (the next day): Me at the Women in Ag conference.

Monday, February 25 (two days later): Both of us at meat-cutting school at the Island-Grown Meat Cooperative butcher shop. There are several more sessions, so if you’re interested in learning how to process meat, let me know and I can forward the email. (There’s no web-based info to speak of.)

In the meantime we are taking online classes in farm accounting, organic certification, and farm business planning, as well as trying to get our business plan and general finances in order.

I’m TIRED.

But we planted some sugar snap pea starts on Sunday!

Pig manure reveals more reason to worry about antibiotics.

Scientists monitored antibiotic residues in manure from three different pig farms. They found plenty, but not at exceptionally high levels.

Tiedje then tested those manure samples, looking for genes that make bacteria resistant to particular antibiotics. That’s when he hit the jackpot: He found [...]]]> :(

Pig manure reveals more reason to worry about antibiotics.

Scientists monitored antibiotic residues in manure from three different pig farms. They found plenty, but not at exceptionally high levels.

Tiedje then tested those manure samples, looking for genes that make bacteria resistant to particular antibiotics. That’s when he hit the jackpot: He found more than 100 different resistance genes. The concentration of resistance genes was almost 200 times higher in these samples, compared to manure from a pig farm that had never used antibiotics.

Interestingly, composting appears to reduce the microbe population:

The study indicates that treating the manure after it leaves the farm can significantly reduce the potential for this manure to spread antibiotic resistance to other bacteria in the surrounding environment. Composting it, for instance, cuts the total population of microbes in manure – which means fewer microbes carrying antibiotic resistance genes.

I wonder if the study shows that the resistant microbes are reduced at the same rate as the susceptible, or if compost reduces them at a different rate. Haven’t read the original study yet. Have you? Let’s discuss!

In the past months, there have been several troubling research reports, from different parts of the world, exploring aspects of the same problem: Multi-drug resistant [...]]]> “Why We Can’t See Inside Poultry Production, and What Might Change if We Could,” by Maryn McKenna and posted on Wired, is depressingly unsurprising to me, but worth reading.

In the past months, there have been several troubling research reports, from different parts of the world, exploring aspects of the same problem: Multi-drug resistant bacteria are present in chicken, apparently because of the use of antibiotics in poultry production, and are passing to people who work with, prepare or eat chicken, at some risk to their health.

The author then cites six recent studies from all over the world backing this up. It’s more than a little terrifying. The problem is more or less created by a serious lack of transparency in commercial chicken farming. Another article cited here, an op-ed titled “Why We Haven’t Seen Inside a Broiler Chicken Factory Farm in a Decade,” says:

A full 25,000 individual animals defecate in the same enclosed space for 45 days. They get a lot bigger, rapidly growing from the size of your fist to the size of a soccer ball in that short period. They crowd that space as they grow, with each individual only having space equivalent to less than a piece of 8”x11” paper. It is a sea of chickens from wall to wall, sitting in their own feces, struggling to move, in large part because of their genetics. The modern broiler chicken is unnaturally large and has been bred to grow at a fast rate. This selective breeding produces as side effects serious welfare consequences including leg disorders: skeletal, developmental and degenerative diseases, heart and lung problems, breathing difficulty, and premature death.

Our three-week-old chickens moved to pasture

We have made directly opposite choices in every respect. We generally run our chickens at 60-75 birds in a 10×12 chicken tractor, which is moved daily to fresh grass and has mesh sides so they get fresh air and sunshine. We choose a breed that doesn’t grow as quickly and that we’re happy to spend time with. We feed Organic grain and the pasture is untreated (though not certified Organic).

But — or maybe “and” — we medicate them when they need it.

In four years, and around 1000 broiler chickens and turkeys, we’ve only had to give antibiotics once, when the alternative was potentially losing a whole batch of 60 chicks. We didn’t love doing it, but we were really glad that we had the option. The chicks were all healthy within a few days and we didn’t see any further problems.

The other key aspect of this, to us, was customer communication. We made sure everyone was informed about the antibiotic delivery. Although it happened very early in the chicks’ lives and presented no harm to the consumers of the meat (at least according to the pharmaceutical manufacturer), we let customers know we’d cancel their pre-orders or honor them later in the season if they wanted to opt out of the medicated batch.

We weren’t perfect; in the future I would try to get an official diagnosis before medicating, if time permits. (It didn’t in the previous case.) I would also plan to remove from rotation the pasture the chicks were on when medicated, and let it rest for … a while. Another time, we gave baby vitamins (the kind for baby humans) to a flock of young turkeys to treat a riboflavin deficiency that was causing paralysis and death, and completely forgot to mention it to customers. (Oooops. They were human-grade vitamins, though, so everything should be fine.)

We’ve been fortunate to have no serious health issues with our birds. A lot of that has to do with the way we raise them, but we’ve also been lucky. We feel that medicating sick animals can be the correct thing to do from an animal welfare standpoint*, but that relies on the medication still being effective when it’s time to deliver it.

Blanket applications of antibiotics, as in the commercial chicken houses, are a crutch that allows the producers to raise the animals in unhealthy conditions, which then require more antibiotics, setting up a sad, scary vicious circle. We’re committed to finding a better way.

Whew. On a lighter note, here’s another post from the same author about a Georgia initiative by chefs to support small-scale chicken farming by promoting the birds’ quality and flavor, as a way to “advocate for change in chicken raising.” Yum!

And I’m off to take a chicken out of the freezer for dinner tomorrow …

* We’re not certified Organic (though our purchased feed is) and we’re largely unfamiliar with the regulations simply because we’re so small that it wouldn’t be cost-effective even a little. The question of being able to deliver medication when needed would be a key decision point when we do look at getting certification.

Most of the details are as in previous years. It’s all explained here.

The most pressingly relevant is that processing day(s) are August 25 and 26, and September 1 and 2. You can pick up on the 26th (Sunday) [...]]]> We are doing just one batch of chicken this year, and here it is!

Most of the details are as in previous years. It’s all explained here.

The most pressingly relevant is that processing day(s) are August 25 and 26, and September 1 and 2. You can pick up on the 26th (Sunday) or the 2nd (Sunday) at Day Road Farm, same location as last year, starting in the afternoon. The price is $6/lb this year, and no deposit is required. We will be taking orders for ~75 birds in order to budget for losses and birds damaged in processing. If you’re interested in helping out, please let us know.

Order here: http://bit.ly/chickens-2012! And order soon!!

As always, we’ll be in touch soon with more details for volunteers and/or a reminder for customers. And please feel free to get in touch with us for any reason! You can email us at farmers@dropstonefarms.com or call 206-855-5493 with any questions, concerns, ideas, feedback, etc.

Thanks for supporting local agriculture!

We have a batch of ~140 chickens this year and we will be selling ~100 of them — SOON. However, I realized a week ago that I forgot to renew our permit to [...]]]> Wow, I guess I have been meaning to post and then putting it off for several weeks now … oops.

We have a batch of ~140 chickens this year and we will be selling ~100 of them — SOON. However, I realized a week ago that I forgot to renew our permit to slaughter and sell pastured poultry: it is a two-year permit now and unfortunately for me that is a long enough time that I didn’t have to worry about it = I became complacent = I forgot to take care of it. Another big OOPS.

So we sent our stuff in on Monday and now we cross our fingers, because those birds are getting big. They are gorgeous and healthy but they’re starting to try to crow already!

We are HOPING to be able to process on the weekends of Aug 25-26 and Sept 1-2, but I can’t say for sure until we get our permit in place.

As soon as we know, we’ll start taking orders, so be on the lookout, and be ready to spread the word.

We have had good luck with this recipe before: last year we made it [...]]]>

Green garlic kimchi, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

After this recipe for ramp greens kimchi, except with homegrown green garlic. The peppers (paprika and cayenne) were also last year’s homegrown. Ginger, soy sauce, and sesame oil obviously not.

We have had good luck with this recipe before: last year we made it with spring onion tops and some garlic scapes. This batch smells amazing; I can’t wait.

Ducks [...]]]> After a couple of raccoon attacks a couple of months ago left us with just one adult duck, we placed an order at the feed store for four more Khaki Campbells. They are champ layers; they lay an egg a day every day year-round, while the chickens dry up in the winter.

Ducks are also pretty messy, and not particularly friendly, but they get us through the winter so we put up with them.

Anyway, we currently have a broody hen. This is moderately annoying and in the past we’ve had success in breaking their broodiness by giving them eggs or chicks. Last summer we had three broody at the same time and we got them six chicks and put two under each. One got out of the nest and died, but the remaining five chicks were very happy with their three moms, who they all shared.

So, we have a broody hen, and we have ducklings coming and we’re tired of brooding poultry in the house, so … hmmm.

We put the ducklings under the hen in the middle of the day today, which is not ideal, but they did seem to bond. The ducklings snuggled right up under her fuzzy butt and went to sleep. Later when they were exploring the coop, and I reached for one, Mama Hen pecked at me with serious authority. So it seemed like it was going well.

However, as the ducklings started to range a little bit further away, and she tried to call them back, I realized the major flaw: they don’t speak Hen. She was saying “hey, don’t go so far away, get back here,” and they didn’t realize it. (I have seen hens do the same thing for chicks, and the chicks definitely understand.) She was very flustered by her inability to round them up and get them back into the nest; they were oblivious.

Eventually she got tired of it, apparently, and went back to her nest on the top tier of the nest boxes — which was another issue; they couldn’t get back up there and she didn’t want to use the nest box we prepared for her on the floor. We put a heat lamp for the ducklings and wondered if she’d come down to them later, but she didn’t. We didn’t want to leave them out all night without her, so we brought them inside into the laundry room, which is our traditional brooding room.

Bummer; it would have been a lot easier to have her raise them for us. But it was worth a try, and we got some super cute pictures out of it.

Cleared strawberry bed of weeds and dead strawberry leaves

Weeded two raised beds of all random weeds.

Cleared thatch from around rhubarb.

Removed hay mulch (not Haymitch [spoilers!]) from the peas, as it was too heavy and was getting soggy and [...]]]> Surprisingly nice weather. We got out and dug in the dirt.

Cleared strawberry bed of weeds and dead strawberry leaves

Weeded two raised beds of all random weeds.

Cleared thatch from around rhubarb.

Removed hay mulch (not Haymitch [spoilers!]) from the peas, as it was too heavy and was getting soggy and moldy and the peas and radishes were struggling to break through.

Looked in on the garlic.

Transplanted some kale starts that I direct-seeded last fall, which never got big enough to separate, but which survived the winter and are looking pretty good.

Garth raked up dead stuff [...]]]> Got outside a bit today. Started two seed flats with a bunch of lettuces, two kinds of broccoli, cabbages, and a few green onions. Put them under lights in the mudroom. They have heat mats but we didn’t turn them on, as it didn’t seem they needed it.

Garth raked up dead stuff from a raised bed that we’re trying to rehab. We planted it with buckwheat last spring and it helped. There are still some blackberries but it’s much reduced. We found some field peas and some clover seed in our cover crop bucket, so we scattered those in the bare bed. I added some to last year’s garlic patch, too, since its cover crop never took after we pulled the garlic last summer. It has some volunteer garlic as usual, so we’ll have green garlic in a bit.

I started cleaning out the strawberry bed a bit.

We planted a packet of snap peas and a packet of shelling peas in this year’s garlic bed, with a bit of radishes in between to separate the varieties. They both want the soil to be at 45° to germinate, so we mulched it with some hay sweepings. I hope we don’t regret using hay with seed heads in it, but it was cheap.

The chives are growing and the garlic is looking great. There are still lots of delicious carrots and green onions in the ground. The chard is coming back to life too.