New chicks in the brooder
You may have noticed from our order form that we curently offer two different types of chicken (and there may be a third soon-see the no soy posting). We have been raising chickens for 7 years now. A few years ago, we were excited to have an opportunity to get locally grown, organic grains and we made the switch to using those and working with Central Indiana Organics as our feed supplier. We have gone through a transition period that can be expected anytime you make a change in suppliers but after adjusting the protein rations this spring, we are again extremely pleased with how the chickens are growing out. They are dressing out beautifully and taste great! This being said, as you well know, the cost of organic feed is expensive and so the cost of our organically fed chicken has gone up over the last few years. Because we are a small operation and have flexibility, we realized we could offer choices to our customers. We want to grow exactly what you want. So starting this year, we are offering our pastured chicken fed organic grains and our pastured chicken fed natural grains. These natural grains are known to be non-GMO but may have been grown using conventional crop treatments; we are still using organic supplements. For those of you that want to make sure you are eating a locally grown product and a product produced in a humane, environmentally sound manner the naturally grown chicken may be the answer for you. For those that want to stick with purely organic than we have that option available as well. As is expected the certified grains have never been sprayed with any pesticides or herbicides. Please note that though the grains have been certified organic and we have not had chemicals on our pastures for over 8 years, we have not gone through the certification process ourselves yet.
You may wonder how we keep track of the different feed options. We raise the chickens in groups of 200 chicks in the 4 different brooders we have. Each batch of chicks has a clipboard that follows it through the brooder and on into the field pens. These clipboards are marked with the appropriate feed requirements so the staff member doing the feeding can check which feed to use. We have different bulk feed bins to hold the different feed options. Each day notes, including how much and what type of feed, are recorded. To make a decision on what type of chicken you would like to preorder please go to the bottom of Our Products page and click on the order form.
Thank you for your continued support of our farm!
