Tag: Chicken

International Poultry Producers Expo

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In January, Cathy and I (Myron) attended the International Poultry Expo in Atlanta, Georgia. It was a huge event with 28,000 attendees from all around the world. The Poultry Expo was located in two very large buildings and it took us an entire day to look at the exhibits in each building. Most of the expo was geared to the big poultry growers and processors, but not all of it. For us it was a very profitable trip. We were able to find some good products and suppliers as well as other helpful information to be able to provide you with even better eggs and chicken.

After we left to return to our motel, our first day at the Expo, we got caught in the snow storm that paralyzed Atlanta. Fortunately, our side of the highway was not blocked and we were able to make it back to the motel. At 9:00 pm there were still 99 school buses stuck in traffic. Some school children spent the entire night on their school buses! The second day we were not able to attend the Expo because the highway was still blocked with tractor trailers.


The International Poultry Expo, Atlanta, Georgia


This is a cage system for laying hens. Each cage is divided into about 4 cages which hold about 4 or 5 hens. This cage system is only four levels high.


This was a picture at the Expo showing the cage layer system with hens in it. It is how most grocery store, restaurant, and fast food eggs are produced. These cages are stacked five high. Each cage is only wide enough for 4 hens to be side by side. This is the way most hens live their entire life and shows part of the reason why we feel it is so important to provide our hens with a better living environment. As I look at this picture some of the descriptions that come to my mind are: “jail birds”, prison labor, and mechanical egg laying machines, as well as inhumane, heartless, and greedy.


The organic and pasture based farming movements are making an impact on society, and the big pharmaceutical companies are getting concerned. Two large poultry and animal pharmaceutical supply companies have launched a campaign to combat our influence with this fancy, expensive tractor trailer rig that they had at the Expo. Inside is a theater where they show movies knocking organic and pasture based farming, claiming that in order to feed the world we must use large confinement animal facilities (and of course their drugs and antibiotics).


Read the egg label carefully. It is not misspelled. We saw these eggs at a booth promoting pasteurizing eggs (similar to pasteurizing milk). Egg companies know that consumers want eggs that come from chickens on grass, not from chickens stuffed in small cages. They often design their egg cartons, like this one, in a deceptive way to give the impression that their chickens are happy hens that roam in the outdoors on grass.

Our Quest for a Better and More Humane Way to Produce Eggs on Pasture

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One hundred years ago, most eggs were produced by true free-range hens on family farms. But as egg production became more mechanized, the chickens were put into confinement chicken houses, with many of them in tiny cages stacked three or four high to get as many hens in a chicken house as possible. In the past 50+ years, much of the knowledge of how to produce eggs on pasture on a larger scale has been lost. In many ways, we feel like we are trying to reinvent the wheel again in regards to pasture-raising chickens because so many of the important little details have been lost. What works for a small family flock of less than 50 hens becomes far too labor intensive when you have 3,000 hens on pasture.

Why would a farm want to have 3,000 hens on pasture? The reason is that in order to have 100% of our income from the farm, and to be able to pay our sons a living wage for working full time on the farm, we have to have enough income. Most small, pasture-based farms receive a majority of their income from off farm sources and are stretched thin making a living off-farm and trying to give adequate care to the farm and animals too. For a farm to try to make a living from only 200 hens would be like a doctor who is a general practitioner only having one or two patients a week,  or a mechanic trying to make a living by changing oil in only two cars a day.

As we looked around at the various methods of raising chickens on pasture, we were not pleased with what we saw. The main promoter of pasture raising eggs, Joel Salatin, recommended the use of moveable hen shelters that one moved on a regular basis to new grass areas. It is a method that makes a good story and that works in the warm months of the year, but when winter comes it is a method that becomes very labor intensive with frozen water hoses and difficult access to the hens through mud and snow. In the wintertime, the pastures quickly get torn up and muddy moving the chickens around. If the hens are kept in one spot the ground gets totally denuded of grass and turns to mud with likely manure runoff and erosion. Salatin’s solution is to move his hens into confinement chicken greenhouses for five or six months during the winter with no outdoor access for the hens. The eggs then are no different than white confinement chicken house grocery store eggs for about half the year. That was not acceptable to us.

To learn how to best raise chickens on pasture we did a lot of research. We visited both the Library of Congress, and the National Agricultural Library several times and researched books and publications that were written in the early 1900’s. Then, taking a blend of old technology and modern technology, we developed, over a number of years, a system that provides a good living environment for the hens, protects the soil and grass from being destroyed, and provides you with a high quality, nutritious,  excellent tasting pasture raised egg.

Our first hen shelter design was the one pictured below. It was stationary. The pasture was divided into six paddocks that radiated out from the shelter. There was a door on each end of the shelter and on each side. Each week we let the hens out a different side of the shelter into a new paddock and let the paddock that they were just in rest for the next five weeks.


This shelter and setup had many problems. The picture was taken the last day we used it. The shelter was too low, and too small for the hens on rainy and cold days. There was not enough space to keep them penned up when it was too muddy for them to be outside. The dark sides encouraged them to lay eggs on the floor. The feed and water were outside. In rain, snow, and the bitter cold, the hens had to go outside to eat and drink. As a result the grass got killed and they tracked lots of mud in and onto the eggs.


We worked with a Soil Conservation consultant, and he helped us design a heavy use area for the hens. We call it the picnic area, and it has wood chips on the ground like a playground. It gives the hens a place to scratch, dust bathe, and dig.  The picnic area is an important management tool that we use help protect the pastures from becoming destroyed and denuded of grass. In the picture above, it is the fenced areas to the left of the shelters. The picnic area is always open for the hens 24 hours a day so that as soon as it starts getting light they can go outside. During the warm months of the year, the hens are let out into the pasture about 7:00 or 8:00 in the morning and the gate is closed again at dark to protect them from night predators. The hens are confined to the shelter and picnic area any time that it is too muddy and their little feet would trample the grass into the mud. In the winter time when the grass is not growing, the hens are only let out on the pasture for two or three days a week. This protects the pasture, while allowing the hens to have some grass throughout the winter to help keep up the nutrient content of the eggs. Each week we also bring home 10 to 15 big boxes of organic vegetable trimmings from the stores where we sell eggs, and feed the veggies to the hens. This helps them get their greens when they can’t be out on pasture as much. We also significantly increased the size of the shelters to make it more roomy for the hens. We raised the height of the roof to make it easier to work in the shelters and to let the heat rise and escape from the hens on those hot summer days.


This is inside our new hen shelters. The sides are open at floor level so that the hens stay cool in the hot summer months. In the winter, we cover the sides and one end with clear plastic. The light that comes in the sides close to the floor helps to discourage the hens from laying eggs on the floor.


These are our hen shelters in the winter time. Each flock has about two acres of pasture. The small sheds along the lane beside the shelters are the nest houses where the hens lay their eggs. The nest house concept was an idea that we got from a book written in the early 1900’s. The central lane makes it efficient for hauling feed to two shelters at each stop and also for gathering eggs.


We designed geo-thermal waterers for the hens. The blue barrel, with the bottom cut out is buried halfway in the ground. The waterline from the well is buried in the ground to keep it from freezing and it comes up through the bottom of the barrel. The geo-thermal heat from the soil keeps the water in the small two gallon bucket on top from freezing on all but the coldest nights. The most that it freezes is about an inch on top, which we remove in the morning when we check on the hens. These waterers also help to keep the water cooler for the hens on the hot summer days. Also, for those hot summer days we installed fogger nozzles under the peak of the roof to help keep the hens cool.


We developed a predator-resistant fence that has made life a lot simpler because we don’t have to move the fence like the electronet fences have to be moved. The wires of this fence are electrified. It does a good job of keeping out foxes and other predators and keeping the hens in.


This is one of the nest houses that we designed and custom built. In the nests and the trays are blue astroturf nest pads. The hens lay their eggs in the nests and the eggs roll out into the tray. This design helps keep the eggs clean and simplifies egg gathering.


Inside the nest house. The hens access the nest house through a covered ramp from their shelter. The floor is slatted to discourage them from laying eggs on the floor and to make the nest house self cleaning. That is also important to keep the eggs clean.

Our method of raising eggs on pasture is part of what goes into making some of the best tasting pasture raised eggs you can buy. We do not feel like we have “arrived”, but we continue our quest to have the best, most humane, environmentally sensitive method of raising chickens that we can. We also are continuing our quest to produce the most nutritious meats and eggs that we can for your health and ours. As our slogan says, we are: “More than a farm — A living laboratory researching the secrets of food, health and life.”

Our Quest for a Better and More Humane Way to Raise Chickens on Pasture

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Like most others who raise chickens on pasture, when we first started farming in 2000, we followed Joel Salatin’s method of raising chickens on pasture. The Salatin method of using 10 foot by 12 foot movable pens sounded great, and the description of the chickens getting a fresh salad bar of grass each day and enjoying the fresh air and sunshine were great selling points. But it was not long into that first year that we realized that putting 75 chickens into a 10 foot by 12 foot pen with no floor was not as great or humane as we had been led to believe that it was.

The problems with the Salatin “pull pen” method
Instead of our chickens being in a large commercial confinement chicken house, they were in a small confinement chicken pen. They had much less space to move around than in a big commercial chicken house. It was confinement chicken raising on pasture. Confinement was the very thing we wanted to avoid. The birds only had about an hour after the pen was moved when they could eat fresh green grass. Within an hour, most of the grass became contaminated with chicken manure from the chickens stepping in their wet droppings and walking around on the grass. For the rest of the day the chickens had to lay in their own filth. By the time the pen was moved the next morning there was a mat of manure covering the ground. Not a very humane situation.

Because the chickens were in such tight confinement, they got very little exercise. Therefore, when the pens were moved they did not like to walk very much and it was easy to trap a chicken’s leg under the back of the pen and cripple it. It would then have to be put down because it could not walk properly. That was especially likely to occur when the pens had to be turned around at the end of the pasture.


This was our “pull pen” patterned after the Salatin method our first year of raising broilers. The rope in the front was used to pull the pen forward one pen length to a new clean section of grass – hence the name “pull pen”.

On an ideal warm sunny day, like the one in the picture above, the pull pen looked great sitting in the green pasture. But in the spring and fall when we had cold nights in the 40’s or 50’s and it rained, it was not a very humane situation. The poor chickens had to be on the cold wet ground 24/7. There was no place for them to get off the damp ground. We tried putting down some hay in the pens, but it took a lot of hay and the hay quickly got wet also. We have heard of chickens dying during a rain storm because their pen was in a low spot or a place in the pasture where the water ran through the pen.

On the flip side, when it was hot, the pen turned into an “easy bake oven”. We lost chickens because of heat stress. The pens were too far out in the pasture to run electric for fans.

The pull pens also required a lot more labor than what we had thought they would. So we looked for a better method.

Day Range Method
The next year we tried the Day Range method of raising broiler chickens. The shelter was stationary and had a slatted wood floor to keep the chickens up off the ground. The feed and water were outside on the pasture. We set up an electric fence on one side of the shelter and the chickens had full access to the grass in that paddock. That solved a lot of the problems with the Salatin pull pen method. The grass stayed much cleaner and there was much more fresh clean grass for the chickens to eat. The chickens got a lot more exercise and because of the exercise, it took a week longer for them to get to market weight. They had a floor that kept them up off of the damp cold ground and the higher roof of the shelter allowed the heat to rise away from the birds better on hot days. A number of our customers commented that the chicken meat had a better flavor and texture.


Our Day Range shelter in our early years of raising chickens on pasture.

The Day Range method had its problems too. The raised slatted floor created a breeding ground for flies and we produced an abundance of flies. Sigh!! Chickens wake up just before dawn, which is about 5:00 am in the summer. By the time we opened up their shelter at 7:00 or 8:00 am they were starved and would dash out to the feeders, fill up and then go back into the shelter to rest. They did not eat as much of the pasture as we wanted them to. The mixture of feed and manure around the feeders killed the grass and made bare spots that would last for several months. The bare spots became a problem after a number of batches of chickens had been run through the shelter. I did not feel like I was being a good steward of the soil and the pasture because the grass was being destroyed rather than being built up.

We continued to modify things in the Day Range method over the next number of years until we developed the method that we use now which we call the Jehovah-Jireh Method.

The Jehovah-Jireh Method – Let Them Run
“Jehovah-Jireh” means “The Lord will provide”. Over and over, we ask God to teach us how to farm and to give us answers to our problems. The method that we now use is one of those answers. We feel it is a much better and more humane method of raising chickens on pasture than anything else that we have seen or tried.

The shelters are large, airy, and stationary. The sides are open on all four sides. The roof has an 11 foot high peak that allows the heat in the summer to rise and escape away from the chickens. We also installed fogger nozzles on the shelters to provide a cooling mist on those really hot days. In the early spring and late fall, if it is cold and windy, we close up one end and a side of the shelter to provide a windbreak.

The floor is a bedding pack of wood chips. When the wood chips become contaminated with manure, we rototill the manure into the bedding pack and bring up drier bedding. Periodically we also add more wood chips to keep the bedding dry. It solved our fly problem. The manure and wood chips in the lower layers of the bedding pack decompose into compost which we apply to our gardens.

The feed and water are kept inside the shelters. Now, when the chickens wake up at 5:00am, they can have their breakfast right away. Then when the doors on the shelter are opened a little later in the morning, they are more ready to roam around and eat grass and look for bugs. The grass in the broiler pasture has been steadily improving in quality and is now the best pasture on the farm. We can see that difference in quality when we put the cows in that pasture. They always give more milk. The chickens now have access to a lot of fresh clean grass, even at the end of the summer.


The broiler chicken shelters in our current setup.


The broiler chickens on fresh, clean pasture.

We continue our quest to have the best, most humane, environmentally sensitive method of raising chickens that we can. At the same time, we also are continuing our quest to produce the most nutritious meats and eggs that we can for your health and ours.

Pulled Chicken

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This recipe is a form of BBQ chicken, but has a unique flavor because of the orange juice and lots of cayenne pepper sauce. Yes, 1/3 cup is the right amount of hot sauce. Cayenne pepper sauce is a milder variety of hot sauce that adds tang and flavor, not just heat. If your chicken is large, just double the amount of sauce you prepare. This recipe is delicious served with mashed potatoes.

2 tablespoons oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 medium green pepper, chopped
1 whole chicken (about 3 1/2 pounds), cut into quarters
1/3 cup cayenne pepper sauce*
1/2 cup orange juice
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup ketchup
1 tablespoon cider vinegar

In a 5-quart Dutch oven or sauce pot, heat oil over medium heat. Add onion and green pepper and cook until tender and browned, about 20 minutes. When vegetables are tender, add chicken quarters, cayenne pepper sauce, orange juice, brown sugar, ketchup, and vinegar. Reduce heat to low; cover and simmer 1 hour or until chicken is very tender.

With a slotted spoon, transfer chicken to large plate, cool slightly. Skim fat from sauce in Dutch oven. Remove meat from bones; discard bones and skin. With two forks, pull meat into large shreds. Return meat to Dutch oven. Cook, uncovered, over medium-high heat until heated through.

From Good Housekeeping Best Chicken Dishes.

Sunday Fried Chicken

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This chicken recipe is a little more involved, but always worth it. There’s always extra coating left after I’ve coated the chicken pieces. I put the extra coating in a ziploc bag in the freezer and label it. Then I use it for a coating for any meat I want to fry.

2 cups flour
1/2 cup cornmeal
2 tablespoons salt
2 tablespoons dry mustard
2 tablespoons paprika
2 tablespoons garlic salt
1 tablespoon celery salt
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1 tablespoon pepper (optional)
Chicken pieces from Jehovah-Jireh Farm
Cooking oil (I recommend coconut oil)

Combine all ingredients except chicken and oil. Place about 1 cup flour mixture in a paper or plastic  bag. Shake a few chicken pieces in the bag at a time, coating well. On medium-high, heat 1/4 inch of oil in a large skillet. Brown chicken on all sides; remove to a shallow baking pan. Bake, uncovered, at 350 degrees for 45-60 minutes or until done. Recipe makes enough coating for three chickens. Store unused mixture in an airtight container.

Cathy’s Cooking Corner: Saucy Apricot Chicken

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This recipe doesn’t keep you in the kitchen very long, but it is simply delicious.

8 boneless skinless chicken breast halves (4 ounces each)
2 to 3 tablespoons butter
1 cup apricot jam
1 cup Catalina or French salad dressing
2 tablespoons dried minced onion
1 teaspoon salt

In a large skillet, brown chicken in butter over medium heat for 3 minutes on each side or until lightly browned. Combine the apricot jam, salad dressing, minced onion and salt; pour over the chicken. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes or until juices run clear. Delicious served over rice. Yield 8 servings.

Cathy’s Cooking Corner

Fried Turkey Cutlets 

This is by far Myron’s favorite way to eat turkey. It’s delicious, moist, tender, and so quick and easy. It is sure to get compliments from your guests.Cut turkey breast meat into 1/4 inch slices across the meat fibers. Dip in flour and sprinkle both sides of cutlets with salt. Fry in oil or butter just until no longer pink. Do not over fry it or it will get more dried out and tough.

Fajita Chicken and Vegetables on Rice

1 1/2 – 2 lbs. chicken breast
1 large onion, sliced
3 large carrots, peeled and sliced
1 lb whole green beans (can be frozen)
Rice, cooked
Oil for frying

Sauce:
1/4 c. oil
1/4 c. vinegar
1/2 tsp. oregano
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. chili powder
1 tsp. salt

Cut chicken breast into into strips or bite size pieces. Stir the fajita sauce ingredients together and pour over the chicken. Stir to coat. Let set 1 hour and up to 24 hours. Fry the chicken pieces in a small amount of oil. Spoon into a large oven proof bowl. Set in a 200 degree oven to keep warm. Stir fry the carrots and onions in a little oil till crisp tender. Add to chicken. Stir fry the green beans in the remaining fajita sauce until crisp tender. Add to the chicken and veggies. Mix everything together. Serve over rice. (Note: You can also use leftover roasted chicken that you have taken off the bones.)

Have a blessed Christmas and Holiday Season!
Myron and Cathy Horst and Family

Jehovah-Jireh Farm
https://www.jehovahjirehfarm.com/

Pasture Raised Broilers — Dial-a-size with…

by Myron Horst

When you prepare meals for yourself and those who will be eating with you, do you use your computer to carefully formulate the percentage of protein, calcium, sodium, fiber, available phosphorous, metabolizable energy, vitamin A, C, D, etc, and select the right foods and quantity of each food to fit the nutritional requirements for each person? Unfortunately, for humans we do not know what the optimum amounts or percentages should be for each of those nutrients. When we eat, we focus on what tastes good and what we think is “good for us”. The health care industry basically ignores nutrition and focuses on drugs.

What we eat is very important for our health, strength, and vitality. What we eat has a significant effect on who we are and what we look like. That point was driven home for me this year as we discovered the reason why our broilers had been smaller last year and also the first batch this year. Being a small farm, we do not have a professional poultry nutritionist to carefully formulate our chicken feed. Unfortunately, those who are advising small farmers are basing their advice on the advice of others, who are basing their advice on old research.

What I found is that in the 12 years since we started farming, the poultry industry has been improving the genetics of the broiler chicken each year. They have been shortening the time it takes to grow out a chicken by one day each year. That means that the market weight of a broiler chicken at eight weeks of age 12 years ago can now be reached at a little over six weeks! To achieve proper growth, these chickens need more protein.

I was able to find a broiler manual for the breed of broilers that we raise and discovered that our feed was lower in protein than what was recommended. We got a computer program for formulating our chicken feed and can now accurately adjust our chicken and turkey feeds for the needs of the poultry. We increased the percentage of protein and increased the average size of the broilers by about 1 3/4 pounds.

Going back to the title, I realized that it is possible in raising chickens to “dial-a-size” to a certain extent with — protein! If you want an average of 3 lb chickens, feed them a low protein diet. If you want 7 lb chickens in the same amount of time, feed them a very high protein diet. It is amazing what 3 to 5 percentage points can make on the size of a broiler chicken. Earlier this year, another pastured poultry farmer was having a problem with getting too many 7 lb chickens in eight weeks. She was feeding them an incredible 29% protein the first three weeks (the recommended is 22-25% protein). She was feeding a mixture of something like two scoops of feed and one scoop of fish meal.

Protein is not the only factor in the size and growth of chickens. There are many other challenges for pasture poultry farms – hot weather, cold weather, too wet, too dry, stress from predators, etc. At our first farm, we had to set up “tents” over the feeders that were outside so that the broiler chickens would not be afraid of the huge “birds” (airplanes) that flew over our farm on their way to Dulles Airport.

With the hens, we found that they were getting too much calcium and it was reducing the percentage of protein in their diet. We reduced the calcium and increased the protein slightly. The hens have been laying well and have not dropped off as much in production with the hot weather like they have other summers.

Protein is necessary for new cells to develop and growth to occur. Protein and the growth of chickens is an important object lesson for each of us in understanding the role of protein in human health. It is important that children get the proper protein so that their bodies grow and develop properly. Protein is important when our bodies are repairing from an injury. Protein is important so that the cells in our bodies can be replaced to reduce aging and degeneration and to increase strength and longevity.

We started raising chickens twelve years ago, not because I liked chickens—I had said, “I’ll never raise chickens”—but because God had directed us to raise chickens. A number of years ago, I realized that our farm was a protein farm. Most small farms are vegetable farms, but we don’t sell any vegetables, just protein – eggs, chicken, turkey, and lamb. I thought that having a farm producing protein was interesting, but did not see the significance of it. Now with the example of the chickens, I see the importance of having a protein farm for human health and strength.

Chickens and eggs are an important protein source. Chickens are the best fed farm animal. Because of their short life span and rapid growth, scientists have been able to pinpoint week by week the nutrients that a chicken needs. Our chicken feed is formulated with many vitamins and minerals. Add to that the benefits of pasture-raising chickens and eggs and you get a superb protein source for your dietary needs. So now I know the rest of the story — why we were led to have a protein farm!

Cathy’s Cooking Corner

Brunch Casserole

3 cups bread cubes
3 cups cheddar cheese
3 cups meat of your choice
6 eggs, beaten
3 cups milk
1 Tbsp mustard
2 tsp. onion powder
1 tsp. salt

Layer bread cubes, meat and cheese in a 9 X 13 pan in that order. Mix the rest of the ingredients and pour over the top of the bread, cheese and meat. Refrigerate overnight. (Or bake immediately.) Bake at 300 degrees for one hour.

Cheesy Eggs on Toast

4 eggs
1 Tbsp. butter
1/2 cup cheese
2 Tbsp. mayonaise
1 Tbsp. onion, minced
4 pieces toast, buttered

Mix cheese, mayonaise and onion. Melt butter in skillet. Add the eggs. Fry on one side. Flip eggs and top with cheese mixture. Cover skillet with lid. Cook eggs to desired doneness. Serve eggs on buttered toast.

Cathy’s Cooking Corner

This month I’m going to give you a recipe that I believe I’ve put in the newsletter before. I decided, however, that I wanted to put it in again for those of you who didn’t receive it the last time and for those of you who might like to add it to your recipes. It is probably the all around favorite way of baking chicken in our family. This recipe is super fast and easy to prepare. Butter chicken stars with pasture raised chickens because the butter enhances the superior flavor of the chicken so well.

Butter Chicken

1 chicken, whole or cut into halves or pieces
1/4 c. butter, melted
salt

For a whole chicken, brush the chicken with the butter. Sprinkle the whole chicken with the desired amount of salt. Set into a roaster and cover. Bake at 350 degrees 1 1/2 to 3 hours or till the chicken is tender. (The time will vary quite a bit between a 3 pound chicken and a five pound chicken.) You can add vegetables such as potatoes, carrots, onions, squash or sweet potatoes around the chicken and bake them with the chicken for a complete meal.

For chicken halves or pieces, sprinkle the underside of the chicken pieces with salt. Place them in a baking pan. Pour the butter over the chicken pieces and sprinkle the tops with salt. Bake, uncovered, at 350 degrees for1 to 1 1/2 hours or till fully baked and tender. For an optional idea that we positively love, slice the desired amount of potatoes and place them in the bottom of the baking pan. Top the potatoes with onion slices and then with a little thyme. Place the chicken pieces on top and bake. Absolutely delicious!