We keep a variety of heritage chickens and turkeys.  The main focus here is a colourful egg basket for the kitchen counter .. because they are stunning! And you can't beat the personality of the turkeys and peafowl. These guys are just fun to have around.

, 

The Facts on Free Range Chicken

Chicken is by far the most popular meat choice in our country. It's versatile, easy to cook with, fast and always available. The white meat will pick up any flavour it's paired with, while the dark meat is full of natural chicken flavour and is a very cost effective option. The birds can be grown quickly and in copious quantities at one time. The factory farming approach to chicken is a realm that can be easily fallen into as it is the quickest and most time effective option .. grow lots, grow them once and be done for the year, or do it all again. It is also generally the most cost effective method as well .. grow as many as you can and cut the losses.

And ... it looks like this. Literally a carpet of chickens lining the floor of a building with no windows or access to outside. The birds live here for the duration of their lives, all 8 weeks of it. No room to move, they sit and eat all.day.long.

Truth be told, the type of chickens that are mainly used for meat production are not bred to be an active type bird. They are programmed to eat and grow and that is what they do. They grow very big, very quickly thus allowing us to have continued access to our favorite dishes come dinner time. 

So that's great. But of course that is not how we do it.

The nature of the birds is hard to overcome. Their instinct is strong and they are hard wired to it. We grow a couple different types of meat chickens here. As mentioned .. the meat machine white broilers as seen in the above picture are a great way to grow lots of chicken quickly. And we use that to our advantage but we do not do it the conventional way. We allow them free access to an indoor and outdoor environment. They have shelter if they choose but we don't feed them there. We encourage them to move around the grass pasture and search for food. We provide locally sourced grains in various locations around the field which we move around. The birds are forced to overcome their "sit and eat" instinct if they want to eat. We put their water source at the opposite end of the field, encouraging them to travel back and forth throughout the day. This method has proven so beneficial in the health of the birds. By moving around they develop significantly less joint and leg problems .. and they act like normal chickens! We find them preferring to scratch around the grass looking for whatever chickens look for while essentially ignoring the food buckets. This is what free range chicken is all about!

This method of chicken rearing requires the weather to be in our favor. Since the birds are not contained within an environment we can control, we need them to be able to survive on their own. For this reason we bring the birds in seasonally after the pasture has grown in the spring and the weather is warm enough to sustain them. Our supply of free range chicken is always in limited quantities as we do not and will not entertain the conventional methods of mass producing chicken. We grow only what the grass can support always!