Pasture Raised and Grass Fed on Stony Brook Farm

[Note: In early 2009, I sold off my laying flock, but I will keep the laying hen practices page up for anyone that might be interested.]

To date, I have not raised my laying hens from day old chicks. Instead, I have purchased them as seventeen week-old “ready-to-lay” pullets from a neighbor who gets them in every six months or so from Moyer’s Hatchery down in Pennsylvania. They are a high-production, brown-egg laying commercial breed known as Production Reds, a cross between a Rhode Island Red and a White Rock. Starting in 2009, laying hens will be raised on the farm from day old chicks. There are a number reasons for this: the pullets have trimmed beaks (just the tip, as opposed to de-beaked); they are raised in confinement; they spend five or more hours packed in crates on a truck; and they are handled with little concern for their welfare by the delivery person.

As soon as the pullets arrive, I put them out on pasture where they have a portable coop. Until noon, the hens are confined to a 1600 square foot area of poultry netting so that they lay their eggs in the coop instead of in the field or hedgerow. At the noon feeding, I open the poultry netting so that the hens are free to range wherever they would like. Like clockwork, the hens return to the coop as dusk gathers.

Food
I feed the chickens purchased grain grown, mixed, and bagged on a local farm and the cull and waste vegetables and fruit from a local farm that I feed to the pigs. I do not use hormones. I do not routinely use antibiotics, although I will use them if necessary to treat a sick animal (I have not yet needed to use antibiotics on any chickens).

I feed the chickens free choice. I check and/or add feed to their feeders three times a day when I feed the pigs.

Water
I use a five gallon metal purpose-built waterer. I check and/or fill it three times a day. I scrub it out when necessary.

Shelter
The chickens have an 8′x16′ portable coop on skids. The coop is six feet high with a domed, tarp-covered cattle panel ceiling/roof. There are two tiers of community nesting areas along the back wall, making sixteen feet of nesting space. I can add another eight foot tier if sixteen feet seems to be too little. The floor of the coop is 1″x1/2″ 16-gauge wire mesh. The poop falls through the mesh and fertilizes the pastures. The chickens’ feet are substantially wider than the holes in the mesh and they show no signs of minding walking or standing on it, which they do not do for extended periods of time. There are eight staggered rows of roosting bars running thirteen feet down the length of the coop, four on each side with an aisle down the middle, from 10″ to 40″ above the floor, which gives the chickens one foot of roosting space each.

Environment and Handling
Between the coop and being kept on pasture, the chickens are free to express all of their natural instincts, including roosting, egg laying in a comfortable, safe-feeling place, foraging, and dust bathing, which altogether makes for a low-stress environment. When I walk among them, I do so slowly in an effort to excite or frighten them as little as possible. When I need to handle any of them, I try to catch them quickly and without too much stress, but chickens are fast, so it is sometimes necessary to snatch them by a leg or pin them down by the back in order to get a proper hold of them. Ideally, the chicken I would like to pick up will instinctively adopt the “submissive hen” posture so that I can reach down and wrap both of my hands around her back and wings and pick her up that way. Whenever I load or unload chickens into or from a crate or some other carrier, I do so slowly and carefully.

Life Span
Naturally, a chicken lives quite a long time, up to ten years or more, assuming she isn’t killed by a predator or a marauding dog. As a member of a commercial laying flock, however, her days are pretty numbered. After about a year and half of laying, her eggs start to get bigger and bigger and to come with less frequency, which means she costs more and more money. Ideally, “spent” laying hens can be sold to people with backyard laying flocks, who are not overly concerned with the hens’ rate of lay. However, if the hens can’t be placed, the next best option is to be able to sell them all as stewing hens. The least best option is killing them all and composting them.

Laying hens are one type of livestock where the hypocrisy of my “animal welfare trumps all other concerns, especially profit” rhetoric is exposed. It is simply impossible to keep hens in a commercial flock beyond a couple of years. Hopefully I will be able to place them all live, or find a market for them as stewing hens.