How We Raise Our Animals
Everything we offer is raised and grown by us, William & Emily. The way we raise our animals is the most important thing about our farm.
We prioritize raising our animals with slower methods for a couple reasons:
1. We believe that our farm should build up the land, not consume it
2. We believe that raising animals slowly gives them the best quality of life and produces an amazing-tasting product
What does it mean to raise birds on pasture?
Our chickens and turkeys are both raised the same way: on pasture, in mobile chicken coops. This means that for the first few weeks of their lives, our chickens & turkeys are kept in the barn in a brooder. This brooder keeps them warm and safe while they're still small, then they are moved into mobile chicken coops once they're big enough to handle the fluctuating temperatures of the outdoors.
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Once the birds are moved outside, they continue to eat a chicken/turkey grower feed purchased from a local feed mill. Being on pasture does not provide enough nutrition for our birds, so this feed is important. They have the advantages of being on grass, too: clean fresh pasture every day, unlimited fresh air flow, space to walk around, and bugs & grass to forage.
Our chickens are processed when they are full-grown at 7–8 weeks old by an inspected facility in Ontario. Our turkeys are likewise processed when they are full-grown, which is around 14 weeks for them.
What about your farm eggs?
Our laying hens are a totally different breed of chicken than our meat birds. Our flock consists of a mix of different breeds, but they all have one thing in common: they are laying birds, not meat birds! Meat birds are bred to bulk up quickly and don't get old enough to begin laying eggs. Laying hens, on the other hand, are bred to lay eggs predictably for a couple years before they start to slow down.
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Our laying hens live in the barn and have an outdoor, fenced-in run. They spend lots of time outside and every now and then we let them out to forage in the evening. Did you know chickens instinctively go back into the barn to roost when the sun goes down? This allows us to let them roam freely without having to round them up at the end of the day. However, we do not allow them to range freely all day because we want to keep them safe! It's not unheard of for a fox, weasel, or coyote to take out a whole flock of laying birds, even during the day! Since this isn't a risk we want to take, we keep them in their run unless we're home to "supervise". Our eggs are collected daily and washed before we put them out in the fridge for pickup by our subscribers.
