Very exciting! We are just about to start our Day Range poultry business. I've read all of Salatin's books as well as Chicken Tractor and Day Range Poultry. We are as ready as we have ever been, I think. My husband is making the hoop houses out of rebar and pvc and we are doing to do the hoops with electric netting around moveable paddocks. Since we are totally green, we are going to just start with a batch of either 25 or 50 Cornish Crosses. We figure we can learn with a batch before winter comes and then take it up in the spring.

Any tips would be welcome! Question: Why is there such a discrepancy in the cost of organic broiler feed? We are getting quotes of $13 to $30 for 50# bags (not including shipping which makes a huge difference!) Also, how do you market your birds?

Sounds fascinating! I'd love to hear more details, particularly about the various "mobiles." You'll be processing what you saw for weeks to come, I would imagine... and I think many of us would be interested in hearing more.

TooBusy,
I just got back home...been gone on business a few days.

This is great! I have so many questions for you. It sounds like we are both at the same stages of development on our farms, and I'm so intrigued by Salatins ideas.

I'll post more after I catch up with Denise and the boys. First things first :)

Dan

We used Salatin's chicken tractor idea and it ended up being the biggest money maker for our farm. His ideas and encouragement are great; you do have to adjust some things for your own farm's situation. Tom

One caution about the Salatin tractors is that during our extreme heat this summer many people lost birds. This is primarily why we chose to build hoop houses with electric netting surrounding the different paddocks. There is a forum (PasturePoultry) on a site I can't mention and they have all sorts of great information dealing with chicken tractors and day ranging.

Some of the farmers using the Salatin style model are calling them Easy Bake Ovens. Unfortunately with lots of birds in a small space with a low roof, the heat has been a killer. Yes, they get moved to new grass each day, but they are still all together. If you decide on the Salatin tractors, be sure to paint the tops white.

I read the Salatin books first, then "Chicken Tractor" and finally "Day Range Poultry" by Andy Lee and Pat Foreman. I really recommend the last one because these people tried everything and ended up with the Day Range model.

Hi Roberta, Yes, the tops should be painted white for most people. Since he is on the side of a mountain and has good airflow I don't think he has as much of an issue. Also his pastures are LUSH which, I think, keeps it cooler. If I walk across our current paxture, which is dry and has so much dirt showing it is pathetic, it seems to give off more heat than our hay field, which is very green. Salatin uses a lot of hoophouses with his poultry- I think I counted around 5 stationary and 2 mobile. The egg operations are in the hoops and the broilers are in the low shelters (he was rolling his eyes while saying he was told not to call them "pens"--didn't sound PC enough for some).

Everyone needs to make the hardware fit their situation but I do know that the biggest problem with many is that they end up making the pens too heavy to move without a tractor. I just mounted the nest box in the back of my hoophouse and I needed to get help moving it. In defense of me, I am trying to move it up a hill..... I decided on cattle panel hoophouses for my layers but I am still figuring on what we may do for the broilers. The hoophouses are nice because you can walk into them to check on the birds but they are heavier and cost more to build than a Salatin pen. On the plus side, you can put a couple of hoophouses together and have yourself winter housing for layers...

We found that 100 birds in a 18x8 tractor was too crowded and too hot. 75 worked well. For the 8' length of roof and side we used white PVC roofing material. The rest of the tractor was just chicken wire. It's just on of those projects where you have to find what works for you. That's the fun part, some days, of farm projects. Tom

I have heard some say that the PVC pens are so light that they can blow over easily. Then I heard someone mention that they move some cinderblocks around with the pens and anchor down the corners with them. Good idea, I think.

One thing that I do to keep mine predator proof is that I have scraps of hardware cloth that I roll up like a tube of wrapping paper. Whenever I have dips in the ground around the pen I put these tubes against the pen and put 2 short lengths of rebar through the holes into the ground to hold the cloth in place. Since I have started doing this I haven't lost a bird....and we have a lot of raccoon and fox around.

Skagit--your tractors are 18' long???

could you describe the harepen for rabbits and how they use it on pasture. a picture would be most helpfull if you have one. Thanks, Johnny

Sorry typed it wrong. Our tractors are 16x8. They're built on a 2x4 frame with the sides being cattle panels covered with poultry netting. 8' of each side has PVC over the cattle panels. A garden tractor moves it easily but it stays put in heavy winds. Tom

We put 20' rebar through the hoops and that weights it down enough to not blow away but still light enough for two people to easily move it.

Hi Johnny, sorry it took me a while to get back to you. I didn't catch Daniel's talk about the rabbits (was sitting in another building listening to a different topic) but I did see a harepen that was sitting next to the summer Raken house (it is covered with an opaque cover and is much, much larger than the ones they use in the winter.) In the winter they use hoophouses that have the translucent covers so the hens will get as much daylight as possible, and the sun will warm up the house too.

I think you are talking about the portable harepen that he has made to go on pasture?? I seem to have overheard that these are a work in progress so I don't know how well it works. It looks like a regular rabbit house but instead of a traditional floor it has long slats that may have been 2x2s that only ran in one direction. The distance beween the slats was about 2 or 3 inches. I am assuming that this would give the rabbits access to the grass without as great of a risk of them digging out the bottom. Since I really didn't know what I was looking at this is the best description I can give you. I don't know much about rabbits or their housing in general.

I haven't gotten my film back yet (someday I will get a digital.......) so I don't have pictures. I may have a picture of it since I took 2 rolls while I was there, I will post it here if I do have one of the harepen.

HTH, let me know if you were wanting to know more about the raken house where he has the rabbits above the chickens. I got a better look inside one of those and I know I have pictures of that.

Skagit and Roberta- I went ahead and made a virtual copy of a Plamondon hoophouse (with a few small modifications that were suggested by people on a different list). It is light enough for me to move by myself, even though it has gotten tougher since I mounted the nest boxes in the back. I did attach a rope to both the front and the back which makes it easier to get it just where you want it, especially if you live in an area that is not flat and smooth and have a constant need to dodge obstacles. The bottoms of mine are 2x4s so it is plenty heavy enough to not flip but the top is all cattle panels, plastic and wire so it is very light. Mine is only about 9x10x6.5 tall.

We went our own way as far as day ranging poultry. We started out with the Andy lee chicken tractor method but many years ago decided it was much better to put pop doors in the broiler tractors (which are made out of old 65BU pig feeders we got at an auction for $7.50 for 7 feeders)so the birds can go in and out of their houses at will during the day. This way they do not overheat and get to exercise their legs and wings which makes for better meat. To keep them in a trqactor 24/7 is little better than caging birds in a barn. Plus you don't have to move the tractors more than once a day when they are really day ranging. if they are kept in tractors all the time you really need to move them at least 3 times a day or they will not have any forage to eat as they trample it and poop on it making it inedible within 60 to 90 minutes after moving them. When they are free they have forage to eat all day that is fresh and nutritious. hens we keep in a stationary coop and give them about 1/3 to 1/2 acre to roam around in that is fenced in with 6' wire fencing on iron stock, not fence stakes, so it is easy to get in and out of the ground so the fence can be moved every 5 days or so

We make sure the birds are ranged either in an area with trees or they have good artificial shade (shade cloth on a frame of some sort) for hot days and change their waterers several times a day when it is over 85ËF so they have cold water to drink. If you must keep them caged in tractors hosing down the structures in the heat of the day will drop the internal temp about 15 to 20 degrees.

We have never used electric netting for either the meat birds or layers and have rarely lost any to predation (the few times this has happened was when we had a farm sitter who would leave the dogs inside and not close the chickens at dusk so owls could eat what they wanted). But we do have an excellent farm dog who takes chicken guarding very seriously (dog is a mutt we got for free BTW)