First of Joel is a personal hero of mine, like a real hero not just a facade or statue to worship. He is a man-the man-who just did what he thought was best and rejecting the advice of the 'experts'. He is farming against the machine and I love him for it and not only that he has self published his enterprises so that anyone can copy his ideas to put them into practice with all this "dirt-under-the-fingernails" experience and anecdotal research. I have read three of his books: Pastured Poultry Profits: Net $25,000 in 6 Months on 20 Acres, Salad Bar Beef and You Can Farm: An Entrepreneur's Guide To Start and Succeed in a Farming Enterprise and he is featured heavily in Michael Pollan's Omnivores Dilemma which is the 21st century equivalent to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and is possibly more disturbing.
I highly recommend Joel's book; I would rank them in order of importance from Poulty Profits, You Can Farm and Salad Bar Beef. I say that because his pastured poultry model is very easy to replicate and understand, he provides pretty much all the information you need and you do not need a lot of space to raise your own chickens. The book of beef is very complicated, you need to know a lot about pasture, cattle and the land and design necessary to succeed are mostly up to you to figure out. I found it understandable but most of the concepts are broad as opposed to the poultry which is very clear cut and specific. You Can Farm is just a great book, it does not have the detail of either of the other two but it is exactly what it claims: a guide to success in farming. Joel is a bit brass tax when it comes to economics and it will be an eye opener for most but I think he is right on most accounts. Its funny in his recommended reading section he labels Booker Whatley's How to Make 100,000 on 25 Acres but Salatin's book is far better after reading both as Whatley is a bit outdated and Joel is much more organized, less speculative and Whatley recommends things that are impractical and Joel actually goes against such as raising exotic livestock-they are expensive to buy, raise, they die easily, the market is small but they do command a high price.
I have decided to summarize the main points of the book for my zillions follows who care. First piece of advice is to start small whether it be a hobby, mini farm or commercial scale if you go through the learning curve with a small batch your mistakes will not cost you very much and the gain in experience will pay big dividends; Joel recommends maybe a hundred or so in the first season 30 or so at a time. You need to choose a breed of chicken and not all are created equal. Joel decides on a Cornish Cross for his operation which is the double breasted playboy model you find in the grocery stores. They are stupid, are disease prone but make a ton of meat in 8 weeks. Other varieties will take longer to mature, have less breast meat but will be less maintenance and likely have a lower mortality rate. I know here at Fresh Pasture Farms they raise Freedom Rangers because they have better instincts, will scratch more for bugs and graze the pasture as well as look out for hawks but they also are completely open and do not live in pens. The Rangers do take 12 weeks to mature and do not have a great breast but if you are a thigh man then you will be in luck because all the running around they do in the open makes their thighs larger and denser for a tasty bird indeed.
The secret or really the crux of Joel's whole operation is the chicken pen. His design is 10'x12'x2' which he raises 70-90 chickens; any less the birds move around to much decreasing gains and any more the birds become stressed and are more prone to disease and gain less. He mentions that you should really experiment for yourself and see what works best for you through the whole process. But I am way ahead of myself, first you need the chicks which arrive and are placed in the brooder-a nursery pen that they spend the first 12 days to 3 weeks of their lives. Joel goes to great lengths to describe the brooder conditions, this should be a very safe environment with no drafts or excessive moisture with heat lamps that keep at least some of the room temperature at 90 degrees F for the first 4 days which declines to 86 degrees at 7 days and by the tenth day 68 degrees is ok and if there is no draft they should be alright on temperature. Joel has let his chicks out on pasture the earliest after 12 days but would not recommend that too much his average is 2 weeks but gives the range to 3 weeks if necessary (what necessary is I am not sure lol).
The chicks need water to feed so if you notice that the feeds are still full then they will need water. The chicks should have access to sand or gravel to build up their grit for the gizzard to digest food properly. Feed and water dispensers need to be adjustable as a chicken has no gag reflex and cannot gulp so feed will spill and water will fall back down. The troughs should be at about back height. Some vegetable matter can be added to the brooder but with a Cornish Cross its important to know that they need a lot of carbs to grow and their metabolism is speed racer fast so do not overdo it too much. That said green material adds vitamins and minerals that may not be present in the feed which will keep the chicks healthy.
What can go wrong at this point? Well rats are a huge problem if they find a way into the brooder and will kill chicks by the dozen and eat all your feed. Any drafts or moisture will kill chicks. A vitamin B deficiency will cause curling nails and an inability to walk, Joel recommends The Merck Veterinary Manual for reference on any ailments. Joel's philosophy is if something is broken, fix it at the source do not treat symptoms. If a chick has an eye infection, quarantine it in a separate 'hospital brooder' feeding it kelp, probiotics and vinegar to help heal it instead of giving antibiotics (Brie has used this method on a turkey with one such infection and it healed within 3 days). His feed consists of 52% corn, 29% roasted soybeans, 11% crimped oats, 1% feed grade limestone, 3% fertrell nurti-balancer, 3.5% fish meal, .5% kelp meal and .1 percent fastrack probiotic. He has done a bit of trial and error with some fad supplements and after a decade has stuck with this feed to reduce mortality to almost nothing. Joel can have his own feed mixed since he is commercial but the kelp meal, probiotic and fish meal really cut down on vitamin deficiencies and mortality. If you want the whole story buy the book, its very detailed and its only $15 at PolyfaceInc.com. Between batches of chicks do not clean out the brooder...yes you read it correctly do not clean out the brooder. The bedding once it is a food thick of sawdust and manure-the sawdust should be applied so that the carbon: nitrogen ratio is 30:1 or so the pen does not stink-it becomes a bed of worms and bugs that help diminish disease. The biodiversity actually limits the pathogens as they compete for resources with all the other forms of life in the bedding almost counter intuitive but it is biologically sound. A word on smell, if you smell crap you need carbon to tie up the nitrogen, Joel says the smell of manure is the smell of mismanagement and he is right, I am a chemist I would know. He says you can smell the dollar signs disappearing as the volatile nitrogen escapes so does the fertility that bedding could produce.
Ok so they chicks are looking like chickens, you move them out to pasture in the pen 85 to a pen. The pens have a frame of 4"x1" boards, two cross beams, 3/4 of the roof corrigated aluminum and the sides and 1/4 roof coevered in 1/2" chicken wire fence. The waterer is suspended from the ceiling frame attached to a white (white prevents the water from heating up too much and from bugs entering the water) 5 gallon bucket filled daily. Joel moves the pens everyday early in the morning at the same time to establish a routine and reduce stress. The method of movement is to take a dolly, slide it under the back of the pen to act as an axle-the dolly would best be modified so that the pen bottom rests slightly offset of the axle to prevent the dolly from kicking up again. Then the lightweight pen is easily picked up and moved the pen length to fresh pasture and set down. He takes the feeders out first then moves the pen, fills the feeder then puts it back as the chickens focus on the grass first this way and encourages foraging. This process takes only a few minutes per pen. The pen should be moved onto grass that is not much taller than 2 inches as chickens cannot feed on long blades of grass and it becomes difficult to walk; they prefer new grass shoots and the manure goes right to the ground instead of matting up on the dense turf. This process goes on for 5 to 6 weeks with the birds ready for processing at 8 weeks total. That is all it takes to raise chickens...sounds easy enough to give it a shot huh?
Now processing for home use aka no resale is a piece of cake, a lot of states have a 1,000 bird exemption from state inspection and custom operations (no resale) do not usually need inspection...i think lol. The whole operation takes place in 4 stages first you need to bleed the chicken out the easiest way to do this is buy some kill cones-basically a sheet of steel wrapped into a cone like you roll a piece of paper to make a megaphone-you put the chicken head first with the breasts facing you then you take the knife and in either a pulling or pushing motion (I prefer pushing with the tip) cut the corated artery on either side of the chickens windpipe. If you sever the trachea then the chicken takes longer to die and suffers a bit so try not to do that also do not cut the head off immediately as it will have the same effect...the longer dying I'm sure it cannot feel anything. The knife should be very sharp and regularly sharped as feathers will dull the blade quickly. You need to wait until the birds stops kicking before moving onto phase 2: Scalding. The scalder is a pot of water or vessel brought to 135 to 150 degrees F, anymore and the skin will peal off easily making the carcass less appealing for consumption. You dunk the bird or birds for a bit, the technique is questionable but when I did it I dunked fully then oscillated the chickens about 6 times removed them completely then dunked again oscillated about 6 times then out then dunk again basically just test the feathers and if they come out easy they are ready. Phase 3 is picking, either by hand or with an automatic picker wish is just a hallow drum dull of rubber finger-like pegs and a rotating base that spins the chickens and defeathers them. This is when the chicken now looks like something you would eat. Phase 4 is evisceration; first cut off the head and feet, then pull the esophagus to disconnect it from the trachea followed by making a wide cut on the back end to access the innards. Next scoop out the offal (guts) and make to incisions on either side of the vent (anus) to completely disembowel the chicken. Now you can save the liver and hearts if you like and either compost or feed the rest to the pigs if you have pigs but the offal is good stuff and if you can guard your compost, as rats and raccoons will begin to turn it for you to get at that delicious offal,then make it into dirt.
That is the meat of the bird as far as raising chickens. Obviously a home grower would need to just buy feed and supplement a bit of probiotic and kelp but this is mainly the story. If you were paying attention to the math on this one each pen is 120 square feet for 85 birds and you have about 35 days on pasture which means you use about 4200 square feet to raise 85 birds which is roughly a tenth of an acre. Now you can have two batches on the same land before the ntirogen begins to pollute the environment so in a reasonable backyard in any suburb you can have 165 chickens which each chicken is about 4 and a half pounds at slaughter weight so that is almost 750 of chicken that is home grown without chemicals, that did not spend all its life shoulder to shoulder with another bird, that did not have its beak sawed off to prevent cannibalism, that did not live its life inhaling the fecal dust that saturates the air in a confinement operation, that did not suffer from constant disease and treatement with antibiotics from a weakened immune system, that was humanely treated and lived as a chicken should followed by a quick and painless end. Now it may cost slightly more than $2lb but the meat is of a finer quality-10% of industrial raised chicken is fecal soup they are dunked in during processing-because it is denser and has a much better ratio of nutrients and it actually takes like chicken. Imagine chicken that tastes like chicken, what a concept; you will not be able to put the tasteless white meat in your mouth again without cringing I guarantee it.
Ok that was the chicken for Salad Bar Beef I am just gonna do a quick outline. First start off small, buy stocker or year old beeves and raise them for a season then sell them after processing before building up a herd of your own. DO NOT LISTEN TO EXPERTS!!!! Joel emphasizes that hard, they are paid by the USDA and do not have a clue what you are trying to do. Do not plant seed, a pasture will mature with a few seasons to produce clover and other good forage by itself, you just need to give it some love and time. Do not build a lot of permanent electric fence as the key to the salad bar is rotational grazing. The cow day is a cow equivalent of how much each cow will eat in one day and is the standard measure of a pasture. Continuous grazing does not let the grass recoup from being eaten while rotational grazing mimics natural herd movement and extends how many cows it will feed. Build ponds, fence them off to prevent damage, they will keep the herd watered. Grass grows at different rates throughout the year, in spring give a quick graze of the whole pasture to stimulate growth then go to more standard grazing. The cows should be moved everyday at the same time, Joel recommends 5pm and then the act will be routine and not a hassle as most farmers think. The cows could make a routine of going through the corral so place it in the center of the property so come time to be loaded on a truck there is no hassle. Again prevention over cure makes a farmers life easy, Joel is not an expert in cattle diseases he just prevents them with good breeding, a nutritious salad bar (oh and free grazing on kelp which is about 8 oz a week for minerals). He is a good manager, that is the requirement for a small farmer as industry favors standardization and size, a size neutral model favors knowledge and ingenuity. Make as little hay as possible throughout the year and do not be afraid to feed hay in summer to prevent overgrazing the pastures. Grass has an explosion of growth period between 2 inches and 6 inches so try to keep the pasture well managed (overgrazing stunts growth while undergrazing causes grass to seed and become less palatable). The cows should only graze for a few hours a day or they need something like a bigger paddock or minerals.
I wont try to summerize You Can Farm but here is his list of top bread and butter enterprises and supplemental sources of income
Mainstays Supplements
1. Pastured broiler chickens 1. Pastured Turkeys
2. Laying Hens 2. Lamb
3. Salad Bar Beef 3. Pork
4. Grass-fed Dairy 4. Rabbit
5. Firewood
5. Market Garden 6. Agrotourism/recreation
6. Home Bakery 7. Greenhouse/flowers
7. Bandsaw Mill 8. Honey
8. Small fruits mostly Upick 9. Stocker cattle
This is just a list for if you have the space and materials these will turn a profit now for the recommended donts
1.Seedstock (breeding stock)
2. Exotics
3. Pet livestock
4. Horses
5. Anything capital intensive
6. Confinement raising livestock
7. Monocultured income
8.Anything you do not enjoy
9. Get rich quick scheme
Honestly any of his books are likely worth a read but if you have a direction or calling toward sustainable farming I recommend his methods for a base. He has been doing this for a long time and has been successful going against the grain and producing quality, delicious food for local folks. I hope you enjoyed my synapsis of his work and that you feel empowered to learn more or just go out and do it, it only takes 8 weeks and 4200 square feet to raise chickens and nothing will taste better in your life. Happy farming
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