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Home-Grown Pastured
Poultry
Dave & Bel Lilligren
Home-Grown Farm Sandstone, Minnesota
(Note: This is an older article.
We hope to provide updated information soon. Click here to see article
about our new watering system.)
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August of 1998 we began a new adventure in country living.
We now live on a 60-acre farmstead near Sandstone, Minnesota,
and next door to the Audubon
Center of the North Woods. We raise grass-fed beef cattle,
(most are Hereford-Angus cross), free-range egg layers, pastured
poultry (for eating), Muscovy ducks, and a few hogs. We
also have a fluctuating population of cats, and, of course, Daisy.
We have been raising
egg-layers for over four years. This will be our third year
to raise broilers as "pastured poultry."
Much of what we
learned about raising pastured poultry we gathered from Joel
Salatin's book, Pastured Poultry. If you are interested in
raising broilers this way, we highly recommend Joel's
down-to-earth and easy-to-understand manual on how to do it. |
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We have
never tasted chickens that are as tasty, tender and juicy as the
ones we raised on pasture. We butcher our broilers at
anywhere from 7 to 9 weeks. At least half of their lives are
spent on pasture in a moveable pen.
Because they are raised on a
pasture, our broilers are healthier from eating grass and all the
bugs they can find. They will also have a higher ratio of
omega 3 fatty acids and will have more beta carotene than birds
raised under more conventional conditions. Because their
pens are moved daily, they are virtually immune from many of the
diseases that have plagued confined flocks, such as coccidiosis.
Because they are penned, their meat will not be as tough as
free-range birds. That's why they taste so good, and are
good for you!
We now have two years of
experience raising pastured poultry. We raised 100 in 2001
and 400 in 2002. This page includes pictures from both
years. Check out these photos that tell the story of how we
raised what we believe to be the best-tasting chicken in the
world!
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2001 broiler chicks two days old
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2001 Gold Link egg layers two days old
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In 2001, we used
makeshift brooder boxes that we put in the back porch for the
first week.
In 2002, we used old
cattle watering troughs as brooders. In this picture, there are
about 120 in each brooder, and put them in our garage to protect them
from predators.
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Broiler chicks
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Broiler chicks and black sex
links (egg layers).
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