This weekend we discovered a real treat and resource, University of Minnesota Extension classes. Our local extension has a particularly good teacher and advocate for small scale, family run agriculture–Wayne Martin. This weekend’s class was on “Getting Started with Broilers (chickens for meat)” and was held at UMore Park.
Another really rare opportunity came when my parents agreed to watch our 3 older children so we were able to attend and learn together.
This is the U’s second batch of 100 Rock Cross Broiler chicks. These birds are bred to reach market weight in 6-9 weeks and are the meat standards across the country.
Last year Wayne, in the background, kept his chickens in moveable pens like this one which he designed to be relatively inexpensive to build and easy to move. But with this year’s extremely wet conditions he worried about the chickens on pasture and so decided to keep them penned this year.
We are eagerly gathering information and dreaming of the time when we will have enough land to grow our own chickens. Ray from L and R Poultry and Produce shared her experiece raising 1,000 broilers a year on her farm in Kenyon. She said she had read recently that chicken has now surpased beef in the barbeque meat of choice in the U.S.
The information that we found most valuable however was about freedom ranger chickens that were bred to be good foragers and live on pasture in small homesteads. They take a bit longer to mature (12 weeks) but the flavor and nutrition is supposed to make it well worth it. We especially like that they come from a small, family owned hatchery in Pennsylvania Freedom Ranger Hatchery. Kendall and Ginger Fox have 5 beautiful children and a growing ag business. We love supporting other ag dreamers.
Hopefully in the next couple of years we will have our own chickens to offer our customers.