Pastured Poultry Talk

Update from the farm: The Christmas ducks are out on pasture in the unseasonably warm fall weather and doing well. A buyer from a cooking school visits the farm. Across the Creek Farm supplies this school already, and the buyer said they needed to source conventional chicken so that the students would have a realistic experience when they go into commercial kitchens. By exclusively training on pasture-raised chicken, the students were working with a quality that far exceeded what they would see in most kitchens. The Christmas lights in Fayetteville, AR, have earned nemesis status. Christmas tradition in the holler has been to cut a cedar tree from the farm, except that one year when a tree blew down from the overpass. Farmer Update The University of Arkansas is about to run a field trial with Across the Creek on feeding alternative sources of fish meal from invasive Asian Carp. If it works, we could find a replacement for ocean harvested menhaden in the future. How to From Christmas lights, trees, and bridge

  Tim Young of Small Farm Nation joins the show to discuss business, marketing, and farming. Tim is one of those guys who left a successful corporate career to farm full time. After successfully building that business, he's made yet another transition that more closely reflected his family's life goals. Today, he's a homestead food producer who teaches farmers about business and marketing. Here is a sampling of the tidbits in this show: Why people fall short of what Joel Salatin has achieved? What does scale and efficiency look like? Don’t romanticize small. Romanticize what small is and small is handcrafted. Marketing is intimidating. The point of marketing is to lower the cost of selling. There are many different parts to marketing, but they all have a common goal. Every farm needs to have a brand. Marketing is an afterthought for many people. Are you running a farm as a business or a hobby? You are an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs burn their bridges behind them. Lose that day job. Working through the side

On The Fighting Farmer, Spence goes into mouth watering detail about what makes pasture-raised duck different and provides some helpful tips on cooking it up. Sorghum glazed duck and duck fat roasted potatoes, anyone? The processing facility has been a hub of community, providing connections to growers, chefs, and neighbors. Just before the Thanksgiving holiday, the facility caught fire, but the damage is being repaired. No equipment lost. Across the Creek Farm has been a center for making personal connections around the farm life for a long time now, especially around veterans. Listen in as Spence remembers friend Jacob George. Jacob's music is the intro and outro of the podcast. Castrating pigs on the farm is just a way of life for some folk. Find out why we do it. In any livestock farm, there are always some issues that pop up. The conversation turns from castration to scrotal hernias and what that means for the herd. Stay in touch: Have a question for the podcast? Email Producer Mike. Want to reach out to

Terrell Spencer (we just call him Spence) joins the Pastured Poultry Talk network to chat about farm life. Spence is a full-time pastured poultry farmer at Across the Creek Farm near Fayetteville, Arkansas. The “Fighting Farmer”is rooted in the fact that Spence is a veteran of the Army, and farming often seems like a fight. Perseverance is key. In this initial episode, we meet Spence and talk about the goals of the podcast. In a nutshell, he wants people to have a realistic view of what it takes to farm and to give back to the community as a distribution hub of information and community. As the broiler season winds down in Northwest Arkansas, we chat about: A problem at the market makes it hard to sell ducks for Thanksgiving Those problems inspire some farm projects Shelter designs at Across the Creek Farm Why broiler production is seasonal Fighting Farmer will be a twice-monthly feature of Pastured Poultry Talk where Spence talks through the farm updates for his customers and for his peers. He's a first ge

Today, I bring you the audio portion of APPPA's "Pastured Poultry: Better Way Forward" video and then I talk with one of the video's main characters, David Hale of Windy Meadows Farm. The video differentiates pastured poultry from all the other options and explains what it is. David and I talk through these ideas, as they related to the video: What makes pastured poultry special? What kind of customer do you have? Do they prefer taste or nutrition? Who does the marketing at Windy Meadows Family Farm? Is pastured poultry ready to be chicken for everyone? How will David Hale share and talk about the Better Way Forward video and get to a bigger audience? Being prepared to talk about your farm and practices in a marketable way. Watch the video, here:

In this show, I take some momentum from episode 58 and  talk about prospecting for new customers using email cold calls and email marketing services. There's a quick technology detour as I introduce Mozilla Thunderbird, which is how I do all my day-to-day email activities, including prospecting. Email prospecting is how I start out almost every business and I use it to find customers from nothing. You can't talk email marketing without talking about websites and sales funnels. I wrap this whole conversation up into a simple system: website > email sign-up  > talk to customers. The bottom line is that email is simple and effective. Anyone can use it to sell chicken and it scales with your business. I even discuss the difference between spam and email marketing. But email marketing's biggest impediment is you. Check out this short course from Aweber, my email hosting provider of choice, for a more in-depth look at using email to capture leads. It's my affiliate link.   Learn how to grow your email list i

Farmer, marketer, and author Charlotte Smith joins the podcast to talk about relationship marketing, or as she puts it, farm marketing from the heart. The farm's signature product is raw milk with diversified offerings of eggs, chicken, and turkey. The inspiration for Charlotte's 3 Cow Marketing service came from the realization that she sold out of her products when the neighboring farms struggled even though they were selling comparable productions. People started asking her for help. In this show we talk about what it means to know your dream customer and discuss: The high failure rate of new farms. 80% fail within the second year. How to avoid competition and price push back. The differences between an on-farm store with hours versus an honor system. Why it's important to set aside marketing time. What farmers can do to position their farms for success. Advice for marketing pastured poultry while employed at an off-farm job. Growing beyond those first 20 customers. Building relationships with people you

Dr. Michael Rothrock of USDA joins the show to discuss bacteria on pastured poultry. He overviews his research into the common food safety bacteria: campylobacter, salmonella, listeria, and E. Coli. He's not trying to figure out how pastured poultry compares to conventional poultry production. Rather, he's trying to figure out how "well" each individual farm is doing, and then work in the context of that farm. Not all bacteria has human health impacts, so it's vitally important to know what we're dealing with. In other words, not all salmonella is equal. And in Dr. Rothrock's research, he's setting out to identify as much bacteria as possible and then determine its type.   Contact:  Michael J. Rothrock Jr., Ph.D. Research Microbiologist USDA-ARS US National Poultry Research Center 706-546-3072 (office) Michael.rothrock@ars.usda.gov Sponsors: This podcast brought to you by Henlight, a fully automated solar powered lighting system for pastured egg flocks.

Today, Dave shares a new 300 broiler design that scales up the typical small-batch design of the Salatin shelters, but falls short of the size found in large scale mobile housing, such as the Mobile Range Coop. I’'s a great middle ground design for those of one small pastures, including silvopastures. And thanks to Irma, we know these shelter designs can weather a hurricane.  Ginger also talks us through how Pastured Life Farm does layer housing in the Florida climate. Resources Mentioned: Pastured Life Farm: Facebook Henlight supplemental light system.

On this episode, I’m joined by Dave and Ginger Shields of Pastured Life Farm in O’brien, Florida. Dave and Ginger started their life as urbanites in Jacksonville, but it was their preschool aged son that made them leave the city and the suburbs in search of a life more connected to their food. Their intention was to homestead and they did that for several years, but eventually, that homestead model transformed itself into a pastured poultry business. At this point, they’ve been on the farm for eight years. Today, they grow approximately 5,000 Cornish cross broilers and up to 1,000 laying hens in a sexlink / heritage bird flock rotation. Their new life is brimming with opportunity, which often rises up out of everyday farm challenges. The feed co-op they formed is one such example. They’re moving up to 100 tons of feed a month. We discuss one of my favorite topics, processing. And what’s it like to farm on sand? Dave talks through some of his tips for managing low organic matter pasture in Florida. Resources f

Paul Greive from Pasturebird joins the show. Paul is a partner in a southern California farm that started just five years ago from 50 chicks. And they're rising quickly. A $2000 investment among 4 guys started as an experiment. There came a point when the farm venture didn't have enough cash to buy zip ties. With those early years behind them, Pasturebird is one of the largest pastured poultry farms in the United States. They're working toward 6,000 a week, and they do it all in a daily move system using mobile range coops. My take from the interview with Paul is focus. You’ll hear that word pop up in our conversation in different ways.  Focus on the message, focus being the best, focus on a product, focus on the numbers. The farm grows broilers, but if you listen to Paul, you’ll hear takeaways that you can apply to your egg, turkey, or other farm business. We also cover some ground on certifications and predators. How did a startup pastured poultry farm deal with predators. Paul's conclusion provided a pivot

Nick Stolberg is just beginning his career as a pastured poultry farmer in Cap Haitian, Haiti where he’s using pastured poultry to feed people and create jobs. Raising pastured poultry is the latest stop on his long-term mission, and I use his Haitian experience to reflect on our opportunities and challenges to the pastured poultry model in the U.S. We talk about Nick’s early pastured poultry career as he goes through some of the pain points, but he’s optimistic about the future. We also discuss the economic damage the commercial chicken industry inflicts on other parts of the world, and the U.S. Most of all, we get a good lookck at how pastured poultry can revitalize people, the land, and a broader economy with nutritious food produced by members of the community. Find Nick and New Roots online: Facebook | Web. This episode is sponsored by Henlight.

Show updates and a Mike's personal story of how pastured poultry was the change agent in his life; it's the thing that facilitated an independent lifestyle. He also forecasts the next month's scheudule of guests, as well as drops hints of several big projects that will soon be released. Links of stuff mentioned in the show: Discuss Pastured Poultry Talk on Facebook. So Big Farms - Sasso (naked neck) breeder. Facebook. info@sobigfarms.com. Matt Brechwald - Off Farm Income Podcast: Listen to Mike on episode 294.

Pat breeds Black Australorps in the Asheville, NC area. Her birds are becoming well known for their high lay rate of 80%+. The choice to use heritage birds is riddled with challenges, but there's also unmet opportunities. Breeders like Pat lay the foundation to meet those opportunities with strong management, breeding, and genetics. Her emphasis is on on utility, as she describes it. That means she's looking for production more than the perfect comb. She talks about her breeding, her challenges, strengths, and a hopeful future. Pat is part of a fledging group called the The Heritage Poultry Cooperative, which is a group of heritage poultry growers in the western North Carolina area who are coming together to cooperatively serve a market. You can contact Pat at theforestfarm@gmail.com or look up "The Heritage Poultry Cooperative" on Facebook.  

Grady Phelan, Farm Manager at Cobb Creek, joins the podcast as an interview. Cobb Creek raises broilers on pasture in 600 bird batches and process in their own-farm Texas state inspected slaughter plant. Grady shares the highs and lows of the last ten years of his pastured poultry farming career in this interview. Contact Grady: cobbcreekfarm.com gradyphelan.com Support this podcast: Join the Facebook Group to discuss Shop for processing equipment and ready to lay pullets at Badger's Millside Farm

Caroline Owens discusses her book, Time Management Tips for Farmers. Buy the book. Caroline and family raise sheep, Tamworth pigs, pasture-raised broilers, turkeys, and honeybees on their Sunbury, Pennsylvania farm. In this episode Caroline shares the themes she discovered while interviewing successful farmers about their time management. For more information or to contact Caroline Owens, visit owensfarm.com. Episode Sponsor: Badger's Millside Farm: Your source for Ready to Lay Pullets, Beltsville Small White turkeys, Poultry Man Processing Equipment, and other services.  

In this episode, I profile Rhode Island pastured poultry farmer Pat McNiff of Pat's Pastured. At the time of this interview, Pat raised 11,000 broilers, 600 turkeys, 1,800 laying hens, 250 laying ducks, 150 meat ducks, and 50 quail, in addition to hogs and beef. We cover a lot of ground about Pat's successes, setbacks, and vision. Some favorite highlights of our conversation: Pat explains how he uses ready-to-lay pullets to speed up the cash flow of his egg business. The vision to see what's ahead, and then act on it. Humbling yourself to the people around you. Join the Pastured Poultry Talk Facebook group and let me know what you're favorite part of the show was. Find Pat on the web: Facebook Website  

Simon Huntley, founder of Small Farms Central and author of Cultivating Customers: A Farmers Guide to Online Marketing joins the podcast to talk about online marketing. Buy Cultivating Customers (and support this podcast with the commission Amazon pays). Discover these marketing gems and more: "It may be tempting to think everyone is your customer because everyone eats." "Everything goes back to your website." "People spend a lot of time on Facebook. They got 1.5 billion active users." "Text message marketing can be really effective." Learn more about Simon Huntley at Small Farm Central.

In early December 2016, I will join the Global Poultry Initiative on a mission trip to Cameroon as an instructor in the five day Institute of Sustainable Poultry. Jim joins the show for his second appearance (third podcast) to discuss what GPI is and how it equips indigenous farmers using sustainable poultry. Listen to Jim discuss heritage poultry and breeding in episodes 13 and 14. GPI has a vision to "educate, equip, and empower indigenous people with character, knowledge, and skills to breed, grow, and market poultry that are sustainable, productive, and profitable." Learn more about GPI. Donate: If God is calling you to support this trip, either by helping the instructors (including me) offset the cost of this trip or by funding a farmer, please consider making your generous donation online through Equip International. At the time of publication, the fund a farmer option is not online yet; you may inquire directly to Mike at (mcbadger@gmail.com).    

I'm reloading the podcast, and more information will come out about that. For now, take advantage of these training opportunities: Raising Pastured Poultry for Food and Profit Workshop in Indiana, Iowa, Nebraska, California, Oregon, Idaho, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.  September 12 - 23, 2016. Large Scale Pastured Poultry Workshop in Asheville, NC. November 10-11, 2016. Sustainable Poultry Network National Conference in Asheville, NC. November 12-13, 2016.