Local Eggs – Pradaria Farm

Challenges of a Small Farm

August 4, 2016 Pradaria Farm4 Comments

When I first started farming about five or six years ago I could get organic whole grains in 50 pound sacks locally. This was great because it created the opportunity for me to mix my own ration for our chickens, as I’m sure a number of backyard flock owners love to do as well. With a small flock it was easy to mix and use 3-4 hundred pounds at a time and feed it out over a month or two. But after a short while the 50 pound sacks dropped, unannounced, to 40 pounds. The price remained the same. Then access to the whole grains came to an abrupt end altogether without any clear cause. Frustrating to say the least. We were forced to start feeding processed feeds in 40 pound sacks because that was the only available organic feed. It worked for a short time, but the quality was questionable and the price was too high to make a profit.

Certified organic feed can be a challenge to get at the best of times, especially for us at our small scale. So our next step was to push our production up to the next price break. We increased our production by adding more Turkeys and egg laying hens so we can order 1000 pound of feed at a time. That way we could use up the feed in a reasonable amount of time, because unless the feed is in a whole grain form it loses its nutritional quality over time. This worked well and we were able to build a productive small farm business.

But once again after a short while our access to the 1/2 ton sacks came to an abrupt end without clear cause or warning. We found out the day we tried to order our next batch of feed. The only option’s now for organic grains are to go back to getting grain in 40 pound sacks (not an option) or jump up to the now 3 ton minimum, meaning we have to order no less then 6000 pounds at a time. Wow, thats a lot of feed! We can and do feed this much in the course of a season but the hard lump to swallow is where and how to store this amount of grain. When you are at the scale we are, you just have to take it as it comes and is just the nature of running a small business. But it would seem that the mantra of “get big or get out” is still strongly with us today in agriculture.

The Evils of Plastics Part 2

June 2, 2015 Pradaria Farm1 Comment

The ideal cover for our chicken house needs to be water-proof, create shade, be light-weight, and not disintegrate in direct sunlight or pollute. Challenging in its own right but add to that a shoe-string budget. This makes it nearly impossible to meet all the criteria. However.
Four to five times per season, we order our feed in bulk and it comes in giant 2000 pound sacks that are made of woven plastic mesh. Needless to say 4 to 5 sacks a season really start to build up, taking up room in the barn.

In the quest for an alternative, I hit on the idea of using these sacks for chicken housing. It could be a win-win. They are roughly 6 feet tall by 4 feet wide and our houses need a 8 x 12 foot roof. The real ah-ha moment came when I realized that if I cut the sack in half on one side and remove the bottom, the sack laid out flat becomes 4 x 12 foot tarp. Two sacks and you’ve got a roof!

Now I realize that this is pretty close to what we were previously using. But they meet many of the criteria (including lasting a lot longer then the tarps we used previously) and most importantly we are taking potential garbage and giving it a second life (I would rather use it on a chicken house then send it to the landfill). But best of all it’s free.

It’s not all roses however. It has one glaring fault. It’s not water-proof. Which seems silly if it’s intended use is to store grain, even if temporarily. To remedy this problem, we used 5 mil clear plastic that does degrade in sunlight and placed it underneath the sack. This means that water doesn’t get into the chicken house, but the feed-sack tarps keep the plastic from degrading in the sunlight.

Viola! New chicken house cover!

Locally-Adapted Chickens Part 1

March 31, 2015 Pradaria Farm1 Comment

Here it is! Our first article regarding locally-adapted chickens. It’s been a long time coming, considering that it was a year ago last month that we brought up the subject. The idea and research took considerable effort because producing one’s own chicks is very convoluted.

Turns out that breeding chickens is a lot harder than it seems. Who would have thought?
It has taken just about a year to wade through all the different systems and styles. Look for this, watch for that- -it can be a lot to take in. Settling on a breed alone can be a daunting undertaking (we will cover this in more detail in the next post) and many of the great old production breeds no longer have people willing or able to hold them to the standards they where created with, making it difficult to find some breeds of chicken.

It can be easy to get caught-up in getting the very best birds money can buy and searching for the right bird with the right qualities takes time. I’m not suggesting that this isn’t a proper route to take, but sometimes time just isn’t an option. We selected our parent stock out of our existing egg-laying flock. It took time and some false starts to pick out our breeders, but we settled on birds that had been with us for at least 2 years. We had a feeling that the highest preforming chickens of that age in our production system would help to jump-start our local adaption. We have yet to prove this.

This is the first set of Rhode Island Red chicks that we have hatched on-farm.

Chicken Creep

July 14, 2014 Pradaria FarmLeave a comment

I would like to think that we get a little smarter season to season, and in this case it’s actually true. Check out ”Learning to Roost”, one of our earlier posts, to see how we used to do it. We often have to introduce chickens of different ages together and this can be a little challenging. The adult birds could and would hurt or kill small, young chickens. So the goal here is prevention. The chicks are also on a more expensive, higher-protein feed that the larger foul don’t need to be consuming. But of course they think they have to have some.

With all that in mind, the best way we have come up with (well, we didn’t technically come up with it, but you know) is called a creep. This is an idea that is often used with larger livestock. We simply adapted this method to smaller livestock.

As you can see, we’re not getting any points on our quality of workmanship, but it allows the chicks to mix with the larger birds as they feel more comfortable with their place in the flock. Keeping the bigger chickens out, we can feed the little ones a different feed freely. Its a win-win.

When the chicks are too big to get into the creep, they have no choice but to mingle with the adults. Once the two flocks are integrated, we remove the creep.

Overdue Update

February 11, 2014 Pradaria FarmLeave a comment

The past couple of months seem to have just slipped by like the snap of the fingers. Wasn’t it just the holiday season? Well we had better share with you what we have been up to.
This is a quick overview of some projects we are working on right now. We will post more in detail about these projects as they move forward.

Our sheep have been enjoying this dry, mild weather and have decided to have some lambs! A little unexpected but no complaints here.

We are also working on creating a locally adapted flock of chickens. This way we can help in a small way to protect of some of our national birds.

And most importantly we are moving our farm from Ashland to Talent! We are extremely excited about this move.

Shape of the Egg

June 2, 2013 Pradaria Farm1 Comment

Uniformity is an industrial ideal, not something that is regularly found on a farm, and perfection is often the way in which food is presented in grocery stores. But nature has other ideas. If they’re grown organically, there are sometimes spots on apples, eggs that are crinkled, and holes chewed in lettuce.

These are some of the eggs that didn’t make it into the egg cartons that we sell, for no other reason than that they aren’t the size and shape that we, as consumers, associate with eggs. But they are in keeping with nature’s infinite diversity and (trust me) they are still just as tasty. I had no idea that eggs came in different shapes and sizes until I started raising chickens on a larger-than-backyard scale, and a lot of the eggs that grace my table look like this.