How to get started raising chickens on pasture!

guys in today's video we're going to show you how we can raise chickens our front yard flock right here on the Stoney Ridge Farm you don't need a farm to raise your own food we're putting the chickens out on pasture today I hope you enjoy hey there folks this is Josh Stoney Ridge farmer welcome back to another gorgeous day here on the Stoney Ridge Farm today is the day we put our baby chicks out on pasture now you're wondering why I'm wearing this silly hat it's because it's hot and the Sun is beating down and we got to protect that face and them ears from that bright Sun so today come along as we get busy putting our baby chicks out on the pasture it's the first time they've ever seen grass it's always fun it's always a special day on the farm Stony Bridge [Music] guys welcome back back to the Stoney Ridge Farm it is an absolutely gorgeous day here we do pastured poultry and we do mob grazing with our cattle we're getting ready to start an eggmobile it runs around the pasture behind the cows to help eat all the fly larva Please Subscribe the channel I'd love to have you back pick another video after this at the end of this video there'll be links to the construction of this chicken tractor and stay tuned for chicken tractor 2.0 this is something that you may have never seen before it's an idea that I had I built a PVC chicken tractor and then all of a sudden I see them all over the Internet so it's pretty cool very flattering so what we're going to be doing is we're hooking up to the Honda Pioneer and we're pulling this down this is a storage area that I store a few pieces of equipment right here so we've had it stored up here the coop caught the wind and blew over the fence and landed and cracked a little something on it some of the PVC pipes we've got a little bit of a repair to do shouldn't be too bad very simple repair we're going to tow this down pull it out and the very front yard you can raise pastured meat birds on a third of an acre or less guys you can do this in the city you can do this in your yard just check with your local municipality and make sure that it's lawful I guess or by the time you get your chicks out there and your neighbor reports you and you have six weeks to get it out of the yard it'll be processing time so I say go against the grain man let's hook this thing up and we're going to pull our own down to where it goes super light guys I'll show you how this thing moves around but for long-term storage which you can't do pastured poultry in the snow in the wintertime this is what we do we take it up there and we store it so you can move this around the farm anywhere you want to move if you've got a large piece of property or a small piece of property while the chicks are really young we like to keep them near the house so we don't have such a predator problem [Music] nice that's home they will move every single day block to block to block sometimes twice a day all through the front yard right here this is how we passed your poultry we don't have to go out 50 miles from the farm it doesn't stink it feeds the yard it's awesome guys so every day when we get ready to move the chicks we simply grab this little rope handle that I've made and I just pull and it pulls super easy we can probably do it with three fingers here just like that just slides and Glides right along I get a lot of comments about this and I get a lot of questions hey man why don't you put some wheels on that well what are wheels gonna do out here on wet ground they're going to be plow points okay this stuff slides it just slips and slides right along the ground now we talk about the height the height of this wire is two feet so we've got about well more than two feet so we've got almost two and a half feet of clearance from the ground to the rooftop does that make the birds hot no it doesn't make the birds hot because it's open all the way around guys they're protected from the weather they're protected from the rain and it doesn't roast them we use a silver tin called Galvalume the Galvalume is something that reflects heat so dark colors absorb heat bright colors reflect heat so Galvalume helps to keep the birds cool also now if it's 110 degrees and you come out here will those birds be panting absolutely will you be sweating absolutely that's Nature's Way of cooling you off if you've got a cat or a dog it pants is when it gets hot and so do chicken so don't be surprised if you see that that's what we have here these chicks are from Murray McMurray Hatchery the white leghorns will not stay in here the Cornish cross meat birds will stay in here for about six to eight more weeks before they are processed for food for us here on the farm the white leggings will go into a new Coupe design that I'm coming up with that is a mobile Coop own a wagon and that wagon will be pulled throughout the farm to follow behind the cow so that they can scratch through the manure eat all the worms eat all the larva and make delicious Farm Fresh grass-fed eggs awesome let's start getting baby chicks oh Nature Boy here we go guys what are these tell me what they are in the comments if you guess right you'll be entered to win a Stoney Ridge farmer hat tell me what those are we're putting them in the bushes over here there's something that are important folks we got to move pretty quick these little white leggings fly you just put them in a bucket let them in oh my goodness these birds are getting big too big for the brooder there you go guys there you go this is not the permanent home for all the chicks okay a hundred of them will be leaving oh I am worn out [Music] that was a chore guys absolutely let's show you what we got in here so these guys seem a little crowded it's okay for them to be crowded they're only going to be in here in about a week and then all of the layers which are the smaller ones are going to come out of here okay so the bigger ones like this Cornish cross meat bird will stay and the smaller ones will go so this is the feeder that we use and we're using some organic Kickstarter right here that's what it is it's from Brower I'll post a link down the video description we'll set this guy down in here and the birds should go right to it start to eat some food and I'll show you the waterer and this is a three and a half gallon waterers now you always want to make sure that the spout where the water comes out is facing downhill and you're never on a perfectly flat surface this is designed to sit on a perfectly flat surface so we simply take a piece of wood and prop it up it's just that easy just simply slide a piece of tin right over top of it guys absolutely fantastic if you're worried about Predators here's our Predator solution so I have motion lights solar motion lights that are battery powered these stay on the outside perimeter of the coupe what does a predator fear the most being discovered so that is our mobile chicken tractor again the leghorns will be out of here in about a week maybe a week and a half and the meat birds will live here until it's processing day and then we'll have good Farm Fresh grass-fed poultry which is going to be absolutely delicious and we'll be able to offer our friends and neighbors awesome eggs and we'll have some Hogs that we can also feed those eggs too so guys thanks a lot for joining me that's our pastured poultry setup for our chickens absolutely fantastic typically this is only for meat birds if you wanted to do laying hens I would only suggest doing about four or five and you got to put a nest box in there so the laying hens can lay moving it every day with four or five laying hands will be a very laborious task so I honestly don't recommend that I recommend you build a chicken house put your laying hens in or you do what we're going to do in a future video we'll show you how we build our mobile Coupe so we can cruise around and use chicken manure to fertilize the farm guys thanks a lot we'll see you next time on the Stoney Ridge waves don't erase all right folks welcome back there we go blooper this thing's doubling as a driveway scraper right now buddy come on can't see the front camera there we go buddy