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Industry Changes
Raising poultry on pasture isn’t exactly new. Most broilers,
layers and other domesticated fowl were raised outdoors before the
advent of the now-dominant confinement method in the late 1950s.
Since then, large corporations have become the primary producers
of poultry in the United States developing “vertically integrated”
practices that allow them to capture nearly 100 percent of the multi-billion
dollar annual market. Today, vertically integrated corporations
control almost every aspect of how broilers and eggs are produced,
processed and sold.
Individual farmers still participate, but as contractors who agree
to meet standards that usually include furnishing climate-controlled
confinement houses to hold 25,000 birds or more. Each house costs
as much as $140,000. Poultry companies usually supply farmers with
chicks and feed needed to bring them to market weight in about seven
weeks. They also supply subtherapeutic antibiotics to prevent disease,
growth promotants for faster weight gain and drugs to control coccidiosis,
common in concentrated operations.
The vertically integrated corporations then typically manage the
slaughtering and packaging process, paying contract farmers by the
bird, with feed and heating costs factored into the equation. The
system has helped make chicken a low-cost staple for American consumers.
But some farmers and consumers question whether, in the process
of achieving that efficiency, values they consider important –
autonomy and independence for farmers, the welfare of the flocks,
and the taste and quality of their meat and eggs – have been
lost. To meet a growing niche for poultry raised differently, a
number of growers are choosing to raise birds in alternative ways,
most of them reliant upon pasture.
“One of our key findings is that the system has real advantages
on diversified farms,” said researcher George “Steve”
Stevenson, director of the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems
(CIAS) at the University of Wisconsin, who won a grant from USDA’s
Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program in
1999. “What’s really nice about pastured poultry is
that it folds in with a whole range of other enterprises.”
Poultry System Options
In the early 1990s, Virginia farmer Joel Salatin published a book
detailing a new system to compete for the small but growing niche
of consumers who want to buy poultry raised outside the corporate
system. His Pastured Poultry Profits, 10,000 of which have sold,
explains the innovations Salatin made to the old practice of allowing
poultry to range free around the barn lot. It lays out production
strategies alongside promises that readers who follow his methods
can net $25,000 in only six months on 20 acres.
Chickens are raised in floorless, 10’ x 12’ x 2’
pens containing 75 to 90 broilers. Producers move the pens daily
to fresh pasture. While receiving exercise and fresh air foraging
for plants and insects, the chickens drop manure that adds fertility
to the soil. Producers buy day-old chicks between April and October,
then move them from brooders onto pasture after a few weeks.
According to many, Salatin’s book sparked a renewed interest
in raising poultry on pasture. The book details how to brood chicks,
rear birds in pens, slaughter, dress and package the birds, process
eggs, and sell poultry products.
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