You've Never Seen Food Raised food like this! What we've learned will save you $$

Bertie's check these guys out I'm being chased by a herd of chickens hey folks this is Josh Stoney Ridge farmer welcome to the farm today we're going to be talking about pastured poultry in this video is gonna be a little bit different I titled this video to catch your eye because we're doing something different than other people are doing I started out with a conventional chicken tractor like this but I've learned we tried some different things this year I'm going to take you along and show you what we've done at first I thought these were just gimmicks at first I thought what we were doing here was not the right thing but I'm finding out that my birds are actually utilizing more food so there's less food waste there a better bird there are more robust bird they're actually moving around they're running they're walking they're not the lazy Cornish cross that eats it's by the feeder and just pecks and eats they move around they get sunshine they're healthy and they're going to be great for our family so come along on the farm blog today as we talk about our meat birds and some great tips for you raising meat birds for your family or for production alright [Music] so before you get distracted it's hot out here and I'm going to be sweating money into the video that's just it that's just a reality of living out in the country living on the farm and working on a farm so I'm going to be wet by the end of this video this is our mobile PVC chicken tractor and at the end of the video there'll be a link on how we built this and how we use this this is good enough to house 50 chickens for probably the first five or six weeks of their lives and then it starts getting too crowded for 50 chickens so what we did this year because it got so crowded was we picked up this shock or not fence from premiere one fencing the Shocker not fence will shock your birds if they're trying to get out or predators if they're trying to get in but it has a tight mesh at the bottom so when they're baby chicks they won't get into that mesh and they won't get shot we don't want to shock our birds and if you know how an electric fence system works there's a solar charger down here and basically it sends a pulse of electricity out well we turn it off during the day and on during the night to keep the Predators out we have had no troubles with predators with this premier one fencing which is super duper awesome so I wanted to get you out here today because we are four days out from processing these birds four days out from putting these birds in the freezer so we'll have an awesome video on how to process meat birds and we learn a little bit about streamlining our operation every year that we do this this has been the biggest learning year for me when it comes to how to raise these birds so conventionally we'd been putting feed in the feeders and it's been a dry feed let me show you what the feed looks like so this is our dry feed it's an organic feed it's from Reedy Fork farm there'll be a coupon code in the video description below they're a local farm but no matter where you are in the country you can still order organic feed from these guys it's great feed however it's a little bit on the dusty side and I thought to myself one day I was out here and I was filling up the waters for the chickens two and three times a day meaning 10 to 20 gallons of water these birds were going through per day so I just so happened to dump some over in the feeder holy cow the birds went nuts for it so they went right down to the feeder and just started gobble in the feed up that was soaked in water versus drinking the water ding-ding-ding a light came on in my head let me show you what we've been doing with our feed and other people are doing this and I thought this was just some crazy hippie tactic to you know show you let me show you how we ferment our food oh my goodness it actually works there's less food waste when you look at the chicken manure it's actually manure and not chunks of corn and chunks of soybean and chunks of undigested food what was happening before was we were wasting food we were putting food in for our chickens and it was just getting pooped right back out it wasn't breaking down in their digestive system so what this is doing is pre digesting the food and releasing sugars let me show you let me be the first guy to tell you that part of farming is experimenting and part of farming is trying different methods and trying different things and different tools and different ideas and sharing in those different ideas here on YouTube if you're raising meat Birds for profit you can do this raising meat birds for profit if you're raising meat birds for your family just a small amount of meat Birds you can do this raising meat birds for your family I'm telling you I'm getting less food waste I'm utilizing more food I'm saving money I'm getting a better bird a cleaner bird and a bird that moves around better which means in turn that I'm getting a stronger bird a bird that's healthier and a bird that's going to have more immune resistance for me when I consume that bird in other words when I consume a bird that has good immune resistance it helps my body with its immune resistance so what we have here are two buckets of feed these two buckets had water added to them one of them was two days ago and one of them was three days ago I'm going to show you the differences in these buckets so this is just feed it's all basically swollen up and you can see that it's all the way to the top of the bucket and this one's almost overflowing well these buckets were only filled up about halfway full when we filled them up so we put half a bucket of feed in and then we filled the bucket to the rim with water and the feed weld up the first day it swelled up the second day it started fermenting what happens to starches which is what these feeds are is basically a starch a heavy starch like a potato when we soak them in water and what happens is those starches start to ferment or they start to sprout and that causes the release of sugar those sugars that are released is what the bird is using to grow so what we're doing is taking starch and turn it into sugar and saving the birds part of their digestive process now as we're saving the birds part of their digestive process that means as they eat the food they're actually taking in the moisture that they need they're drinking less water which is basically just running right through them they're actually producing less manure and more feed is going to build bulk in other words more feed is going to build meat on these pastured birds now supplementing these pastured birds is the grass here so what we do is we let our Birds we feed them in the morning and we basically put a five gallon bucket of feed which equals two of these five gallon buckets we'll feed them early in the morning and we'll feed them late in the evening when the Sun is shining bright they're up underneath this shed that we have built for them the chicken tractor and when it's cool outside in the morning they'll gobble down food and when it's cool outside in the evening when the shade gets on the land they'll come out and they'll gobble down more food we use a couple different types of feeders and waterers and I'll show you the feeder that we use this thing is SuperDuper awesome for mobile chicken coops you can see the birds they come running when they start seeing this feeder so we have not fed them yet this morning because we're going to move them whenever we move them there's a huge drive for these birds to eat so we'll take the feeder we'll set it out where we want to move them we'll let the birds start to eat will drag the chicken tractor over to where it goes we'll put the fence around it and then they'll be set up on a new paddock of grass and we'll leave them on that paddock to grass for four to six days in other words these birds will be processed this Thursday this will be the last place that they move unless we want to move them to a fresh patch of grass the day right before we go ahead and process them now the reason we want to move them to a fresh patch of grass the day before we go process them is because we want to reduce the manure load when we process our birds and you'll get more on that if you watch our pastured poultry processing videos we've got two videos out now and we'll have a third video coming out for this year's pastured poultry we're learning every year there are awesome tips and tricks that we can teach you with raising meat birds for your family and for selling so let's get busy moving the coop I'm gonna get you a little close-up and show you what's going on here so one of these is fermenting already and that'll be the one that we feed first we want to kind of keep an eye on what we have I have four buckets going on here so basically every other day I'm filling buckets whenever I dump this out I'm filling it back full and putting water in it and letting it start to swell up and release those sugars again now this is where we're going to set up our chicken processing area so I want to move my birds as close as I possibly can to that chicken processing area it's approximately 30 yards from where the birds are now I want you to watch this and see how food driven these birds are also if you've ever raised Cornish cross birds you know these birds are inherently lethargic they don't run they don't move they plop down they eat they sit they don't move these birds are different what we're doing here has made them different it's super awesome so literally it's taken me about 45 seconds to take up the entire fence really neat I'm gonna lay it out and drop post so life is all about systems here I've already picked up my fence I've laid it out right here and we'll start sticking stakes in the ground once we get the birds up here [Applause] [Music] here's what the wet or fermented food looks like it's like porridge it's like I guess oatmeal or cream of wheat much more appetizing much more enticing for the birds and as you can see there are some stragglers down there but they'll all flock together you hear me talking to the birds at a very young age I always talk to the birds I always said birdies whenever I was going to feed them and now they know when I say birdy even from the front porch of the house they all come to me because they think it's feeding time look out good I'll get to the chopper this is our mobile chicken coop will this go right up the hill give these guys some shade that's what they're looking for okay so we've got our lightweight mobile coop up here all set up and let's talk a little bit about work a lot of people say man I just don't say it's so much work it's so hard you know those are the same people that are going to the organic food store and paying twenty five dollars a chicken and then going and running on a treadmill against the wall and trying to get exercise when you could be raising your own food and getting exercise and learning instead of running into a wall at the gym what makes more sense to you so here's our food at day one and here is our food at day two and here is our food at day three you see those bubbles working off that's what we're looking for bubbles see those bubbles I think they're camera shy you see them they're all starting to work their way back towards that mobile coop they know where the shade is they know what's up it's amazing being able to heard pastured poultry like this pretty cool something else that I think is really cool is you don't have to pour it in a feeder you can just dump it right out on the ground and the birds will go nuts for it we'll go around and we'll Snug up our fence just basically pull it tight take your foot stretch it out and pull it tight I found that when you install this fence that trying to make it a square just puts an undue stress on the fence so I just make it one big round pin just that quick just that easy another minute and a half and we're all installed this fence is super duper cool and again we don't have to turn it on during the day because the birds aren't trying to get out it's more to keep predators from getting in now don't overcomplicate this in your head there is no crazy super duper science to this we're just wetting the food down if you put in yesterday's wet food or the day before or the day before either way it's not going to hurt anything we're just wetting the food down the longer you can wait if you can hit that 3-day mark you'll get more sugars more starches will break down into sugars it'll start to ferment and it'll be better for your birds so if you can work out a little system and keep track of it it'll be better I hope you guys have learned a lot and enjoyed this insight into what we've learned this year raising our meat birds thanks a lot for joining me here on the Stoney Ridge please pound that like button subscribe the channel if you're new here and we'll see you next time on the Stoney Ridge farm [Music] here at we had some way supposed to be stone Tyrion whoa