Coming Soon to Your Table: Pastured Broiler Chickens

To show you how we create that flavorful bird sitting on the platter on your dining room table, we would like to take you on a journey that starts on the day the chicks arrive at Morning Star Family Farm.  At the same time we will share with you our top reasons for raising chickens the way we do.


Reason #1...We know what the chickens eat.
You are what you eat.  Do you know what happens to the health of an animal when it consumes genetically-modified foods?  The 2008 Emmy-award winning documentary Food, Inc. attempts to answer this question and the conclusions are unsettling.  One conclusion is that the large-scale production farms are managing to make a profit at the sacrifice of the health and living conditions of the animals and, ultimately, by sacrificing the flavor and nutritional quality of your food.  Our solution to this problem is to raise our chickens on pasture.
Before the chickens get to the pasture, we need to ensure, from the day we get them, that they have a great, healthy start to their life.  We pick up our chicks the day they are hatched at Abendroth's Hatchery in Waterloo, Wisconsin.  The hatchery could send them through the mail, getting them to our farm the day after they hatch.  But sitting in a box on a hot USPS truck would stress the little chickies, and stressed chicks often get sick.

Cornish Cross broiler chicks start in our brooder

When we receive them, the chicks are still living off the rich proteins and fats of the egg's yolk sac.  When they arrive at our farm, we stick their beaks in fresh, warmed water to teach them where to find a drink.  This helps to prevent dehydration and encourages them to drink on their own.  Their natural instinct to peck will lead them to the free-access, certified organic, GMO-free feed we provide--rich in nutrients from cracked corn, whole roasted soybeans and other wholesome ingredients--all custom-ground and mixed for us at a local, certified organic grain mill.


Reason #2...The birds are healthier on the pasture.
According to Jeff Mattocks, a leading authority on poultry nutrition, the #1 cause for disease among poultry is poor air quality.  Tens of thousands of dollars are spent by the mega-industry farms in their livestock and poultry barns to import the air quality of the outdoors to the indoors.  By raising our birds on pasture, their air-quality is as natural as can be.

Moving Day!
Three week-old chicks move to the pasture pen.

Reason #3...The birds are under less stress and more content when on pasture, making them more delicious!
This may sound like some sort of psychobabble, but it has been proven that chickens raised in low-stress environments grow better.  This translates into a more delicious and flavorful bird.  We provide that low-stress environment through the sturdy structure of the movable pasture pen.

Our 10x15 foot pasture pen,
welded by our 13 year-old son, Raphael

Our version of the pasture pen is a 10 foot by 15 foot structure made of welded conduit.  This provides the skeletal framework on which we wrap chicken wire fencing.  A tarpaulin roof over half the pen provides necessary protection from both sun and rain.  The other half of the pen in open to sunlight for the chickens' daily dose of Vitamin D.

Rex, poultry guardian extraordinaire

Our chickens enjoy having plenty of room to move around in the spacious pen.  Between the sturdy structure and our roaming guard dog, the chickens are safe from both aerial and terrestrial predators.  With constant access to pasture as well as certified organic, GMO-free feed, the chickens' ability to forage for bugs and eat chemical-free grasses and legumes allows them to grow in a natural way.  The pen is moved daily to give the birds a new area to roam in and to maintain variety in their diet.  If you look closely, you might catch a smile on one of those chickens!

Content, curious chickens

When we first began our life in farming, our goal was to become self-sustaining.  Since then, more and more of our friends, family members, and now customers have become interested in our venture of pastured poultry and have been positive and encouraging in our method of raising animals.  Much of the interest seems to come from the growing desire to find good, healthy, and delicious food.  We hope you will find all of that here at Morning Star Family Farm.  Our first batch of meat chickens will be ready for purchase in August 2012.  Feel free to email us or call to place your order!