Correction: In the podcast episode, I state Garoleen is producing 7,000 broilers. That was an error in my interpretation of her numbers. She’s actually on track to produce 3,500 broilers on pasture in her fourth year. That still a fantastic trajectory and that growth is the point, as the numbers will fluctuate from year to year.
Pasture-raised broilers make a great side hustle, but when you’re farming a niche product in a rural community, sometimes you need to think creatively and efficiently to make the business work. That’s what Garoleen Wilson from Jhawk Farm in Kansas discusses on episode 89 of the Pastured Poultry Talk podcast.
I first met Garoleen through my work with APPPA in 2016 as I was planning a cross-country seminar series. We had talked about potential seminar locations in Kansas. As luck would have it, we did not go to Kansas during that tour, but Garoleen did get involved with pasture-raised broilers.
Her start in pastured poultry was heavily influence by a bout with uterine cancer. Cancer caused her to focus on clean eating and made her seriously evaluate what she was eating. Garoleen’s story is one we see play out regularly through the pastured poultry producer community; as people seek better food, they often times turn to producing it for themselves and others.
During her research, she found the Pastured Poultry Talk podcast and binge listened. She’s since sought the comfort and wisdom of the pastured poultry community through APPPA has been steadily growing her pastured poultry side hustle ever since.
Garoleen went from a few family hens to thousands of broilers by the end of her third year. By her fourth year, she’s adapted the pastured model to fit her farm circumstances and create some of her own efficiencies. For example, Garoleen day ranges broilers inside a electric netting with regular flock moves to keep them on fresh grass. The day range model suits her time constraints and labor requirements.
Mobile Brooder
To reduce stress on the chicks when moving from the brooder to the pasture, Garoleen and husband Joe use a round, mobile brooder that can be drug from the brooder barn to the pasture. This eliminates the handling stress of crating, transporting, and unhandling. The brooder has a door that allows the hens to unload themselves. Check out this video from Jhawk Farm to see the mobile brooder in action.
Handling Full Chicken Crates with Ease
In the podcast episode, Garoleen made a few things clear. This is a pastured poultry side hustle, so she didn’t have time to waste, and she’s not getting any younger. These two points really punctuate the loading and handling of crates full of market-weight broilers. The practical solution? Use to rollers to move the weight onto the trailer instead of the legs, backs, and arms of the farmers.
Garoleen and her chicken catch crew can load chickens into a stack of crates. Normally, each loaded crate needs to be lifted and carried onto the trailer. The physical exertion and wear on the body from moving chickens is a real health concern. To make the handling of full crates less work, Garoleen and Joe repurposed roller conveyors to easily move the stack of crates from the pasture shelter onto a stock trailer.
Two tracks sit on the floor of the trailer beside each other. Another set of rollers connect the trailer floor to the ground. Crates are stacked on a piece of plywood to make rolling the stack even easier. After the stack is loaded onto the stock trailer, short blocks of wood are placed between the bottom crates to maintain air flow around all sides of the crates.
At the processor, unloading crates is a one person job. Garoleen can roll each stack off the stock trailer and onto the processors unloading area in a matter of minutes.
Watch the Wilsons load crates in this video:
Advice for Future Pastured Poultry Farmers
Garoleen encourages people to start small if they think pastured poultry is something they’re interesting in pursuing. She’s taking that advice in 2019 by raising just a couple dozen turkeys for Thanksgiving.
Resources
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