Raising your own food is easy! Pastured Poultry Setup that works!

guys today's video is gonna be a good time we're gonna be moving our hundred meat birds out on the pasture it's gonna be fun come along today and we'll learn a little bit together on the Stoney Ridge hey there folks this is Josh Stoney Ridge farmer welcome back to the farm it's a warm day here in the Stoney Ridge farm in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina and what we're going to be doing today is moving our baby birds we bought chicks I guess they've been in here for two and a half weeks in the brooder and we're gonna be moving them out to the mobile coop today so come along as we take our chicks who are clearly ready let's show you real quick they're crowded we've got a hundred baby meat birds and we're gonna be moving them out on pasture and I'll talk to you all about what we do how we do it our entire setup so the first thing I got to do is get busy and mow this little section alone so we're gonna go grab the Swisher and we're actually gonna take the dogs come on go ride and go water we're gonna take them limb take a dip in the pond it's about 80 degrees out here and the dogs get hot so let's go to the pond get the mower mow this area and we'll talk to you about how we move our chicks all right [Music] let's go folks miss your first time to the Stoney Ridge farm welcome to the farm this is our dream this is our home it's 150 acre farm here in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina we're taking it from a briar patch to what you're about to see a very beautiful place so we're gonna let the dogs go take a dip cool off a little bit we'll put them up and we'll get busy working with our baby chicks water get that water sit fit and the dogs love water watch this water what so every day when I'm off work or when I'm here I'll let the dogs come down here to the pond and swim around a little bit when it's warm outside because they're hot I can tell they're hot now we don't keep our dogs inside these are not inside dogs they stay outside all the time some people don't like that yeah whatever do you want that dog that's been swimming in the pond on your couch I think not I don't think you could handle that smell less you just want to live in filth that's a dog it's a farm dog that's what they do they protect our animals and they also watch after our chicks if we're getting ready to put outside we're gonna run up grab the swisher mower and get busy mowing the yard here and then we'll move our whole chick set up for you and show you how everything works come on kids come on unforeseen problem this is the unforeseen problem we are up here at the tractor shed picking up the swish your big Moe and I started up backed it out and it just died well why did it die a squirrel or a rat or something chew through the darn feel aligned on the Swisher big Moe that's a bummer man guys if you haven't seen this mower on the channel we've got a pretty awesome discount code it's nearly a thousand bucks off I'll post it down in the video description for you this is a Swisher big Moe it's a monster 66 inch mowing deck that has an interchangeable deck over here well it's way over there it also has a brush hogging deck too so if you have a small acreage like I don't know three to five acres or something like that and you're mowing and you're mowing pastures and you're mowing lawn this thing is an awesome machine so let's fix it and get to work should be as simple as removing a couple clamps here back here's our new filter slide the old one off the new one in cross our fingers if that isn't a bad spot right there slide this guy off this should be a pretty simple fix it's like that guy on probably should cut this bad piece off but we want to get the job done for the day so we'll take care of that at another time when I'm not busy okay set that on should be good to go all right that should fill up with fuel back in business look at that why in the world would a squirrel or a rat want to eat that let's get busy [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] this is our mobile coop it is 12 by 10 it will house 35 to 50 birds it does absolutely awesome we move it every single day or we do this other setup that we're getting ready to do today now you can see a circle right here of tall green grass and we're getting ready to make another circle so this is premier one shock or not poultry netting will set this 150 foot section of poultry netting up right here we'll move our mobile coop into that section we'll Jack it up on one side so the birds have a safe place to go a place to go in the shade and they can explore grass now what's so important about getting your birds out on pasture this is the way a chicken is supposed to live this is how we fertilize our yard this is what we do this is how we establish pasture land this is how we establish good soil we move our birds out here on pasture now why don't we cut the grass well we need the grass about that tall so that the shock are not poultry netting goes all the way down to the ground because if we put it in this tall grass over here the birds would escape they could go up underneath now the poultry netting serves two purposes the poultry netting serves as protection from from predators for the birds and it also serves as a way to contain the birds now this is shocked or not netting it's a little bit different we'll go over and get a close-up of it here in just a minute but we use a solar fence charger and a-tellin tell a check sixty solar fence charger and there's a reason why we're using Intel a shock 60 it's because it works because it's reliable all right this is the shock are not fence you see how it has poultry net and it has it looks like almost badminton netting well that is at the bottom probably on the first 12 inches or so and it keeps the little baby birds from escaping now once they get a little bit bigger if they start pushing up against the net it might give them a little jolt and remind them don't touch the fence now if a critter comes up like a coyote or a fox or something like that and touches their nose to that boom it hits and it shocks the snot out of them now on all four sides of our mobile coop we have lighting we have solar motion lights so what does a predator fear the most being discovered so think about that it's a very cheap insurance policy let's go get our birdies and we're gonna go ahead and set this all up and let them loose in here [Music] okay this is the until a shock 60 it is a solar-powered self-contained movable fence charger and it's designed basically for this premier one fencing but you can use it on pretty much any fencing so we have a ground rod that's our ground rod this is our ground clamp negative there we face this South since we're in the northern hemisphere bashing in the ground just like so then take our little clip here we didn't cut it and we'll clip it on to our premiere fencing right here so we just clip right there this will connect these two pieces of fence it slides together and then we'll hook our positive clamp to it okay just like so that's how easy it is to hook up power to this now you just press a button over here and you get a flash about every 2 or 3 seconds something like that so it's not constantly energized it just sends a pulse of electricity out there are a couple batteries inside this thing and that's how it maintains a charge so it'll maintain a charge through cloudy days it'll maintain a charge overnight it does great let's go get our birds and we'll show you how we know it's time for our birds to come out of the brooder and go into the pasture alright the answer to the inevitable question Josh how do I know when to take my birds out of the brooder when they're getting crowded when they're getting big enough to jump out of the brooder or when they start getting feathers ok or in a situation like this it's 80 degrees outside the low temps are going to be around 65 so over the past 4 days I've taken the heat lamp off of these birds I've let them start getting that sleep and wake cycle so nighttime it's dark daytime it's light I'm feeding them 12 hours on and 12 hours off now that's how you know so once your birds are feathered out they are ready to come out of the brooder now you won't get as many feathers on the Cornish cross birds as you're going to get on the Ranger broilers the Ranger broilers are a little bit smaller they consume the same amount of food they have to live a little bit longer before you process so in my humble opinion the Cornish cross is the best bird for your meat you can get a rainbow Ranger but the rainbow Ranger is going to forge a little bit better it's a little tougher a little more robust bird it's better on pasture however it's also better free-range however the Cornish cross meat bird grows so fast and you can't just let these birds live on grass they won't just live on grass they have to have a high-protein food in order to grow to get big enough to process the Cornish cross bird will be somewhere around six to eight weeks in the rainbow Ranger or Ranger broiler bird will be somewhere between six and ten weeks something like that so they eat more rangers eat more grow slower better for foraging better for free ranging a little bit tougher bird however I'm a huge fan of the Cornish cross birds everybody makes fun of them they say our feeding up steroid you're doing that it's just a breed of bird that's bred to grow fast grow big robust breast and have tender juicy meat that's what I like about the Cornish cross now we're gonna load these guys up in buckets basically and just take them down there and let them loose for their first time in the grass can't wait to let our chickens be chickens probably about one pound and you can see he's totally feathered out and he's ready to go first it's pretty normal go figure it all out all right so they're all introduced to the new coop all I got to do now is put food and water in here I'll show you the type of feeder that we use and the type of water that we use it works the best this is a Brower type feeder for mobile chicken coop I have two different kinds some with a round bar up top and some with like a serrated bar up top and you can get all those at premier one and I'll post links down in the video description Coria so we're going to go ahead and fill up their feeder get some food in there put some water in there and the birds have everything that they need so for our feed we are using an organic feed mix from Reedy Fork farm it is absolutely awesome we wet our food so in other words our food starts out looking like this we put a little water with it and we feed it to our Birds we take these three buckets which are full of yuck right now because it rained like nine inches the other day but we'll take those three buckets and we'll stay two days ahead all the time with our feed we don't want it to firm it but we do want any seeds in there to sprout and when you wet it like that it releases sugar so we don't want drunk chickens we just want chickens that have food that's easier to digest and helps them put on weight faster so they poop less and they gain weight faster that's what we found if we wet the food first pretty cool sometimes it's really hard to get wet food in your feeder you can pour it directly on the ground or you can pour it in the feeder for this first bunch I think I'm just going to pour it directly on the ground I really don't want to feed them too a wet and nasty of a food as soon as I move them out in other words this is stressful on the birds so changing up their food formula right now is not the right thing to do so we're gonna feed them dry food and then over the next few days we'll start introducing them to wet food you don't want to shock your animals same thing goes with cows you can't just put them out on fresh green forage after they've been eating hay in Grain it'll make them sick so it'll give the chickens the squirts we don't want that so this is our water setup right here this is one of our waters I like it you just basically set this down in you make sure the spout is down the hill and it has a big ol lid on it here so that you can just pour a five-gallon bucket in there so that holds about five gallons ish something like that and that needs to set almost on level ground and you need the spout always facing down the hill we're gonna go ahead and fill up our feeder and that's it that's awesome our birds are out on pasture got a big ol clump of food right there it got wet it's all good chickens will eat most anything guys so if you don't have backyard chickens yet consider getting them you can do this we're on 150 acres here you can do this on 1/3 of an acre and you can feed your family that's gonna be almost 2 years worth of food for us and our family it's just absolutely unbelievable guys so thanks a lot for joining me here on the Stoney Ridge farm today a lot of questions let's answer some questions that I've gotten do the birds need to be brought in at night no do they need a roosting pole no do they get out sometimes yes they do they do and that's why we want our poultry netting down as close to the ground as we can and that's why we mode first so we got to keep an eye on things do they are they protected from above no they're not protected from above so you got to think about that guys if you got a lot of hawks and owls and stuff like that in your area most of the time the birds will sleep underneath the shelter so owls probably won't be a problem but hawks in the daytime could be a potential problem so keep an eye out know what your property's like and if you need a net over top puttin that over top that's how we do our pastured birds here on the Stoney Ridge farm guys and that's how we know how it's time to get our birds out on the pasture it's hot it's beautiful and I'm gonna get inside and cool off thanks a lot for joining me today on the farm ask me any question you want to guys please post comments and questions down there jump in pound the like button subscribe to the channel I'd love to have you back here on the Stoney Ridge with me see you next time whoo one more thing guys will move this apparatus at least once every five to seven days depending on the manure load that the chickens are leaving behind so once they start getting to the point where they're digging holes and damaging grass that's when we start moving them okay that's how it works [Music] Pierce we had some ways those Denise Tony Reed whoa