That's a heck of alot to comprehend but you did great. Because my area of work IS pasture management here is what I saw from visiting farms like these or seeing them from Google Earth with stationary barns. Chickens like safe places so if the barn is open (small 2'x8' doors to the outside), only a fraction actually go out. That leaves many birds hanging around the buildings or still inside, because that's were the feed, water and nesting boxes are. Where then does the pasture part of an egg come from? From the few that "access" the outdoors. I have found that most of the manure is in the barn and around the barn and not out in the pasture. The barn manure is usually spread on other lands to mitigate fertility buildup, however that's not what we see in pasture pictures. I came up with a rotation grazing system for 5000 birds around a stationary system and needed over 3 acres per week of 8" thick forage then move to another paddock. The given concerns from the farmer needing to collect eggs and practice animal husbandry daily is real. They are trying to get better but chicken behavior is thwarting the "ranging out" to eat the forage. Forage near barn decimated, forage 100' away over grown. I actually suggested using an outside concrete feeding area where hens would have free choice grass baleage or green-chop. It would give more hens the opportunity to eat green food and influence egg quality. Think mini-outside feedlot. Not exactly what a consumer would be thinking. If I want integrity pastured eggs, I buy from a farmer who is moving his flock "however big it is", daily and I can actually see what he is doing and trust my gut. The green-washers are doing the best they can within the system they created at the price-point everyone can live with I guess. It's a mere substitute for the real thing.
Troy Bishopp The Grass Whisperer Great points! Chicken behavior and tendencies simply don’t lend well to stationary barns. They are jungle fowl and do not like to leave the covered / perceived protected areas to forage in open fields. They are in fact prey animals, people tend to forget that.
My grandfather did this from the 30's through the 60's. They had coop's and fences they moved every few days. Little sheds in runners they pulled with a farmall a. Seemed pretty economical and seemed to work well. In the 60s they remodeled the dairy barn and focused on that.
@@troybishoppthegrasswhisper3703 I suspect so myself, even though I don't own land yet, to make my own experiments and see with my own eyes. But I believe Joel Salatin's method is not only better for the animals but also cheaper and easier on labor too. (from what I've seen about it)
VERY interesting! I'm just a 2/3 acre backyard homesteader raising a dozen hens and trying to create some pasture. This is very helpful, including your links - thank you! And for those questioning how far from the coop that chickens will roam, well my chickens somehow have figured out the perimeter of our yard and will NOT CROSS THE ROAD - bwahahaha!
The reality is probably that most of the birds spend most of their time in the barn, and don't even use the 108sq ft available to them. Most of the poop probably accumulates in the barn, where it can be scooped up and sold to organic veg growers as fertilizer.
Thanks for the valuable information as always! I do not farm but I am in the food service business and appreciate the thought process behind the business. It helps me understand the root of where our food comes from and how it effects the earth we all share. Versus just shopping retail and mindlessly making a purchase based on what's on sale.🐔🐓
I have a question or observation.... i watched your math... and it was good BUT your assuming all the poo is outside would it be safe to assume some manure would be left in the barn and that POO would go in a different area?
Great video! Does this math include the pooping done in the barn? That would presumably account for about 50% of manure output and make a pretty big difference to the numbers. It still has to go somewhere of course, but if it's composted with a carbon-rich bedding, I would guess that the increased carbon would allow it to be safely spread on pasture that was already near its maximum nitrogen load. Don't know really, just curious. Thanks for the great content!
Alec H. This math is based purely on 100 percent pastured (layers are in mobile trailer). That being said, it would cover the manure being laid in the barn assuming they were spreading it..
I was thinking the same thing. These birds probably spend most of their time close to the barn, and drop most of their poop in or near the barn. Still deceptive marketing though. My pastured birds are in a mobile coop. They go in at night and do a lot of pooping on deep bedding which gets composted every three months. Because of this, I can get away with much less than 745 sq ft / bird. But I figure just less than 1/2 that, not 1/7th.
Another factor to consider when contemplating raising livestock is the amount of space required to grow the feed for the animal .. taking chickens as an example, with .25 lbs/day/bird, and 8400 lbs of grain (corn)/acre, each bird needs an additional 473.4 square feet of space to grow the feed. 92 birds/acre .. lets see: That is a little over 54 acres to supply those 5000 birds, not counting their pasture space. On the small scale, if I wanted to raise chickens on my little 1/3 acre, I could sacrifice my vegetable garden area (60'x48') to grow feed for the chickens, and wind up being able to keep 6 chickens .. assuming perfect laying from those birds, that would be 2 eggs/day per person in a family of 4, but have no fresh vegetables .. not a good trade!
John, just started watching your channel. Watched your series on raising poultry for meat. Do you still raise the cornish/cross or freedom rangers. Are you still making a profit. You may have addressed this is another video, but have not had the time to access all your videos. Thank you.
Great advice. Seriously appreciate it. Amazing how formulaic it all is. Thanks for simplifying it for us. BTW, what’s with the wood paneled wall behind you? I’m dizzy 🥴
Can thank you enough for this video. As a newbie raising pastured poultry, this helped clarify so much. My math brain loved it 😁 How long do you recommend to rest an area before putting chickens on it again?
This is actually very area/soil dependent. The average CornishX will consume about 15lbs of feed over there life with probably 3lbs of that in the brooder and 12lbs in the field which is about 100sqft assuming you’re soil type application rate is 4000# but there are a lot of variables to that. We probably hit the same ground twice a year, however we plant spring and fall forages in our pasture to use up the manure. The key is you need a rest period relative to your growing periods. Most northern farms may only have a 6-8 month growing period to use up nitrogen, whereas in Florida we can grow forages year round. We can use up nitrogen throughout the year in more than one planting which increases our carry capacity per acre. The key to all of this is you have to know your soil and it’s water soluble nitrogen levels throughout the year to make this judgement for your land.
The problem is not really how much space they have access to. It's how much they actually range over! Let's say a chicken never goes farther than 50 yards away from it's feed and water. That's 70.650 sq ft for 5000 chickens, so something closer to 14 useful sq ft/bird... The exact distance a chicken will go depends on many factors. If nothing is done to make it happen, it's not much. There's quite a bit of litterature in France on how to make the bird go far from the building using tree plantation (for example www.produire-bio.fr/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/CASDAR_Parcours-Volailles_Typologie_140130_Synthese.pdf or www.parcoursvolailles.fr/)
I wish truly pastured eggs were available at the grocery store. I don't have a car so I can't get to the specialty markets and me being a night shift worker as well makes it quite difficult to make arrangements for something I would be buying on a regular basis. And buying online would just make the sustainability element go right out the door.
i am so pissed off about this. i have an autoimmune problem were chemicals make me ill.. and i noticed i might have a problems with eggs, but i wanted pastured so i could make sure it was the eggs and not just the way they are raised. i got an allergic reaction to the organic pastured vital farms eggs and smaller reaction to just the yokes alone... fuck... i will need to find some actual pastured eggs and retry this because i love eggs and my diet is already restrictive enough.
Over half a billion people use the (mostly human body based) imperial system, why “spread negativity” on us for not choosing to exclusively use the arbitrary metric system? ;)
That's a heck of alot to comprehend but you did great. Because my area of work IS pasture management here is what I saw from visiting farms like these or seeing them from Google Earth with stationary barns. Chickens like safe places so if the barn is open (small 2'x8' doors to the outside), only a fraction actually go out. That leaves many birds hanging around the buildings or still inside, because that's were the feed, water and nesting boxes are. Where then does the pasture part of an egg come from? From the few that "access" the outdoors. I have found that most of the manure is in the barn and around the barn and not out in the pasture. The barn manure is usually spread on other lands to mitigate fertility buildup, however that's not what we see in pasture pictures. I came up with a rotation grazing system for 5000 birds around a stationary system and needed over 3 acres per week of 8" thick forage then move to another paddock. The given concerns from the farmer needing to collect eggs and practice animal husbandry daily is real. They are trying to get better but chicken behavior is thwarting the "ranging out" to eat the forage. Forage near barn decimated, forage 100' away over grown. I actually suggested using an outside concrete feeding area where hens would have free choice grass baleage or green-chop. It would give more hens the opportunity to eat green food and influence egg quality. Think mini-outside feedlot. Not exactly what a consumer would be thinking. If I want integrity pastured eggs, I buy from a farmer who is moving his flock "however big it is", daily and I can actually see what he is doing and trust my gut. The green-washers are doing the best they can within the system they created at the price-point everyone can live with I guess. It's a mere substitute for the real thing.
Troy Bishopp The Grass Whisperer Great points! Chicken behavior and tendencies simply don’t lend well to stationary barns. They are jungle fowl and do not like to leave the covered / perceived protected areas to forage in open fields. They are in fact prey animals, people tend to forget that.
So you're kinda saying the Joel Salatin method is the best one?
My grandfather did this from the 30's through the 60's. They had coop's and fences they moved every few days. Little sheds in runners they pulled with a farmall a. Seemed pretty economical and seemed to work well. In the 60s they remodeled the dairy barn and focused on that.
It's definitely better than stationary for land, animals and soil
@@troybishoppthegrasswhisper3703 I suspect so myself, even though I don't own land yet, to make my own experiments and see with my own eyes. But I believe Joel Salatin's method is not only better for the animals but also cheaper and easier on labor too. (from what I've seen about it)
Love this format John.
Thanks buddy!
VERY interesting! I'm just a 2/3 acre backyard homesteader raising a dozen hens and trying to create some pasture. This is very helpful, including your links - thank you! And for those questioning how far from the coop that chickens will roam, well my chickens somehow have figured out the perimeter of our yard and will NOT CROSS THE ROAD - bwahahaha!
The reality is probably that most of the birds spend most of their time in the barn, and don't even use the 108sq ft available to them. Most of the poop probably accumulates in the barn, where it can be scooped up and sold to organic veg growers as fertilizer.
Thanks for the valuable information as always! I do not farm but I am in the food service business and appreciate the thought process behind the business. It helps me understand the root of where our food comes from and how it effects the earth we all share. Versus just shopping retail and mindlessly making a purchase based on what's on sale.🐔🐓
I have a question or observation.... i watched your math... and it was good BUT your assuming all the poo is outside would it be safe to assume some manure would be left in the barn and that POO would go in a different area?
Very interesting john, thank you. You brought up some very good points.
Great video! Does this math include the pooping done in the barn? That would presumably account for about 50% of manure output and make a pretty big difference to the numbers. It still has to go somewhere of course, but if it's composted with a carbon-rich bedding, I would guess that the increased carbon would allow it to be safely spread on pasture that was already near its maximum nitrogen load. Don't know really, just curious. Thanks for the great content!
Alec H. This math is based purely on 100 percent pastured (layers are in mobile trailer). That being said, it would cover the manure being laid in the barn assuming they were spreading it..
I was thinking the same thing. These birds probably spend most of their time close to the barn, and drop most of their poop in or near the barn. Still deceptive marketing though.
My pastured birds are in a mobile coop. They go in at night and do a lot of pooping on deep bedding which gets composted every three months. Because of this, I can get away with much less than 745 sq ft / bird. But I figure just less than 1/2 that, not 1/7th.
You are right, you're not a math guy. Thanks for the entertaining video. We had some great laughs in class.
Glad you were entertained Joe. What class?
Great Video my friend. Mucho informacio.
Probably they don’t overload the soil because they poop in the barn and the poop is exported to composters who make compost at $30/ yard
It’s funny that the first commercial on this video was vitals farm bragging free range chicken!
Hi there, what eggs do you feel are the best eggs to buy?
Another factor to consider when contemplating raising livestock is the amount of space required to grow the feed for the animal .. taking chickens as an example, with .25 lbs/day/bird, and 8400 lbs of grain (corn)/acre, each bird needs an additional 473.4 square feet of space to grow the feed. 92 birds/acre .. lets see: That is a little over 54 acres to supply those 5000 birds, not counting their pasture space. On the small scale, if I wanted to raise chickens on my little 1/3 acre, I could sacrifice my vegetable garden area (60'x48') to grow feed for the chickens, and wind up being able to keep 6 chickens .. assuming perfect laying from those birds, that would be 2 eggs/day per person in a family of 4, but have no fresh vegetables .. not a good trade!
John, just started watching your channel. Watched your series on raising poultry for meat. Do you still raise the cornish/cross or freedom rangers. Are you still making a profit. You may have addressed this is another video, but have not had the time to access all your videos. Thank you.
very nice
Thank you!
Great advice. Seriously appreciate it. Amazing how formulaic it all is. Thanks for simplifying it for us. BTW, what’s with the wood paneled wall behind you? I’m dizzy 🥴
Can thank you enough for this video. As a newbie raising pastured poultry, this helped clarify so much. My math brain loved it 😁
How long do you recommend to rest an area before putting chickens on it again?
He says a year for the meat tractors in one of the videos.
This is actually very area/soil dependent. The average CornishX will consume about 15lbs of feed over there life with probably 3lbs of that in the brooder and 12lbs in the field which is about 100sqft assuming you’re soil type application rate is 4000# but there are a lot of variables to that. We probably hit the same ground twice a year, however we plant spring and fall forages in our pasture to use up the manure. The key is you need a rest period relative to your growing periods. Most northern farms may only have a 6-8 month growing period to use up nitrogen, whereas in Florida we can grow forages year round. We can use up nitrogen throughout the year in more than one planting which increases our carry capacity per acre. The key to all of this is you have to know your soil and it’s water soluble nitrogen levels throughout the year to make this judgement for your land.
Don’t forget that “ free range “ chickens only go outside for an hour or so a day. Rotate the birds on the same small acreage.
“A lot of ground to cover” 😂😂
So does that mean you could have 17,285 eggs a year per acre?
The problem is not really how much space they have access to. It's how much they actually range over!
Let's say a chicken never goes farther than 50 yards away from it's feed and water. That's 70.650 sq ft for 5000 chickens, so something closer to 14 useful sq ft/bird...
The exact distance a chicken will go depends on many factors. If nothing is done to make it happen, it's not much. There's quite a bit of litterature in France on how to make the bird go far from the building using tree plantation (for example www.produire-bio.fr/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/CASDAR_Parcours-Volailles_Typologie_140130_Synthese.pdf or www.parcoursvolailles.fr/)
I want to become an APPA fangirl! XD
I wish truly pastured eggs were available at the grocery store. I don't have a car so I can't get to the specialty markets and me being a night shift worker as well makes it quite difficult to make arrangements for something I would be buying on a regular basis. And buying online would just make the sustainability element go right out the door.
I haven't measured it, but I think that by observing my chickens 0.09 Lbs of chicken poop is roughly one poop. Wet, not dry. Don't step in it!
Wow I just watched a 16 minute video on chicken poop. 💩
i am so pissed off about this. i have an autoimmune problem were chemicals make me ill.. and i noticed i might have a problems with eggs, but i wanted pastured so i could make sure it was the eggs and not just the way they are raised. i got an allergic reaction to the organic pastured vital farms eggs and smaller reaction to just the yokes alone... fuck... i will need to find some actual pastured eggs and retry this because i love eggs and my diet is already restrictive enough.
Poop efficiency!
Over half a billion people use the (mostly human body based) imperial system, why “spread negativity” on us for not choosing to exclusively use the arbitrary metric system? ;)
Found the American 🤣