Yesterdays Joel Salatin meeting

Read "you Can Farm" and got excited, then started doing some math and thinking ... then heard Salatin speak on a radio interview program extolling how you can let the chicken express it's chicken-ness, hmmm in a small covered pen with 50 others? I'm sorry but Mr Salatin in my mind advocates confinement farming, just on a small scale. Then I read "Day Range Poultry" and realized I wasn't the only one disenchanted. So my chickens free range after and with the sheep, they seem happy, many are 3 years old and still laying. Some of his ideas are just revamped older ones with funny names, not to take away from him but he should give credit where credit is due.

Just wanted to add that some farmers around here feed their cows clover seed. I just move around where I feed hay to the sheep & goats, since they are more complete digestively speaking. And I do rely on the soil's seed bank - weeds are okay in my book as long as they are green and palatable!

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Liese,

That's a good way of thinking but for here or in Texas where I'm from..wandering chickens don't live for long unless they're confined plus I would think keeping them confined in a roomy tractor would enable them to pay more attention to food eating and turning up the soil and they would be safe from predators. Just a thought.

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Ted H

You may all go to Hell, and I will go to Texas.
-Davy Crockett

Hi Ted, Well to my way of thinking if you feel the hens must be confined for safety then a system like Day ranging, Balfour or similar would be more likely to allow the hen to express her chicken-ness. Those tractors he advocates are too small for the numbers and if you look in the archives of Pastured Poultry@yahoo you will see lots of posts where people are losing 5-10% & even more from wet, from heat. Even if looking at things from an accounting POV - that's tells me that the system is flawed. But really with chickens who needs them to be forced into very confined spaces to keep their attention to eating? Chickens are always eating - well, when they aren't preening and making dust bath holes. I have one group that lives with the sheep housed at night in a mobile hen house, the other group is in the goat shed where in the winter we use a deep pack system and they really do a great job. If I wanted them to work on the garden I'd just move the house in there. Everything is fenced and the house is closed at night so predator worries are pretty small. Personally I think putting up fencing is easier, faster and maybe even cheaper due to longevity than building all those fiddly tractors that will blow away, rot away, etc. As you can see I have no use for that system and I do not believe in confinement farming - call it what you will.

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I was one of those that got all excited about "Pastured Poultry Profits" and the like. I have seen tractors in action, and think they are entirely too crowded. Sure, it maximizes how much you get per acre of land, but the birds are confined and not how God intended them to live. They are better off in a secure fence where they can roam and find what they want. Naturally, animals don't rotate pasture or get caged in, yet they do just fine. The problem comes when we try to make natural things work in unnatural situations. I decided to keep our birds free roaming inside the largest, most secure fence I could build. I use some electric, and am working on a boundary fence that engulfs this giant 1 acre I own. The chickens do their thing and love it here, we are getting a couple sheep this spring for meat. That is all we need for us, and we sell lots of chickens for premium prices. May look into selling more eggs if I can find a regular market. Currently, I have one large restaurant that wants our special birds that live free, eat organic, and have no soy. That is just what this place wants, and we have found customers that want the same. Best use of our little chunk of land is a large garden, chickens, sheep, and maybe a pig (with all the meat around, I just don't see the point in the pig, though) I see Polyface being a giant eco friendly farm with lots of ideas, but I do not want to be Joel Salatin. He has way too much on his plate, too busy, too many things to manage. I want to do just what my family can handle taking care of on our own, enough to pay the bills and save a little. I am glad he does what he does, but I don't want his life.

Mark

Joels layer tractors just move the birds shelter into the field should they need it, along with food and water. The birds are out on the grass all day inside the fenced area (which is large) but NOT in the tractor. I don't know why he doesn't do the same thing with his broilers? They are in the enclosed tractor and can't get out. Granted, they are moved every day, have shelter from predators, that sort of thing... Anybody know why the two are done differently? Maybe one was the precurser to the other. He also raises broilers in a green house in the winter time, so pastured isn't the only way he does it. He keeps rabbits in a cage above the broilers in the green house btw.

Cindyc.

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Here is a thought to why he does the chicken tractors for the broilers. Is it because he uses cornish x chickens that were specifically selected for confinement operations and they don't do well outside of them? I don't know if that is the case, I was just throwing it out there.

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Probably because the eggs would get so dirty from the over crowding. And again my point would be "shelter from predators" is meaningless if the chickens die from becoming wet or have heat stroke. "shelter from predators" does not need to mean confinement within pens which is on par with how veal used to be raised.

If I recall properly he has used a hoop house to raise chickens, pigs and rabbits - you know this sounds so smart, but in actuality can you imagine how bad the ammonia smell must be in there? Now if you were talking a few hens, 1 pig, a couple of bunnies it might be do-able but at the numbers he's talking about I can't see how even deep, deep pack is going to absorb all that urine/feces. I do admire his enthusiasm but I find a big disconnect with the what/why he preaches and what he does - obviously he doesn't.

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Actually he said something about NOT using crosses, but I don't know, as I said, I was in over my head.

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I am so glad to see that there are several here who view Joel's work through totally open eyes.

Let me say up front that I think he's a great advocate and also has his thumb on the way of the future when he speaks of regional sustainable farms. But the fact to the matter is that he inherited his land, he charges for his seminars, he sells a lot of books, he writes numerous freelance columns for various alternative-ag publications, and he uses interns (who pay for the privilege) to work his farm.

All of this to me is innovation on his part, and so I am not dissing it. Yet, how applicable is it to my operation? For example, when one reads his books about how it's possible to support yourself on 5 acres with chickens, it is a bit hard to take some of his premises at face value when one actually knows how he runs his own outfit.

I forget the title of that book, but it turns out once I read inside it that Joel says a man and his wife, each working 50 hours a week raising chickens and eggs on their 5 acres, can make $25,000 a year. Whipping out my handy calculator, I divided $25,000 a year by 52 weeks, then divided that by 100 hours a week (2 people at 50 hours each) and came up with $4.81 an hour. Now it isn't real clear whether that $25,000 was gross income or net income, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt and said it was net, after expenses. Still, $4.81 an hour is way below minimum wage, with no insurance or other benefits.

Joel's real strongpoint is in the management methods he advocates, most of which are transferrable to more mainstream agriculture. I'm glad he's out there. But I also know there are some starry-eyed folks who will buy into his other stuff, and they are gonna lose their shirts in doing so.

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Jim Steele
Sweetpea Farms
"To avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing." -- Robert Gates

In the hours that I spoke with Joel Salatin several years ago he strongly encouraged me to read not only his books, but a great many others as well. To take a close look at the way others run their operations, to get to know my climate and its peculiarities, and my local laws and regulations so that I could determine for myself what I could make work and what I could not. He freely admitted that his specific methods and equipment would not work for everyone, but that we should find those that would. More than anything what he is offering is an example of what can be done for anyone willing to work hard, work smart, and not be afraid to innovate.

I raise my birds much differently now thanks to the likes of Joel Salatin and Robert Plamondon. I'm doing it better, faster, cheaper than I ever did before. They have also convinced me that I can't make a living at this where in the past I used to think that it was possible. That's OK, I've come to term with that. But I can make some side money and use them to achieve some other desirable goals as I go.

Joel's books are not intended as a step-by-step manual for recreating precisely what he did, but as an example of what innovative thinking and the willingness to work hard can accomplish.

.....Alan.

Yea, that is the impression I got. He said to find what works in YOUR eco-system, for you, to deversify your streams of revenue, to honor the way your family/community is hard wired in your plan, to research and be knowlegable... I didn't get the impression he wanted everybody to do things HIS way. He would say, if writing and speaking is a strength of yours that YOU should be doing it too, but if you can't stand to talk to people, maybe you should think of getting somebody else to sell for you for a percentage of profits... that sort of thing. You increase your customer base and therefore your income in either case.
Anyway, I see everbody's points. Anything can be done to extremes... I have just begun to research all of this... Honestly, I only just learned how to process a chicken last weekend! I am sure I will go to many more meetings, read many more people, and work toward what will work in my situation too. For me, I am not sure I WANT to be a for-profit farm. I would just like to make enough money if I am producing anyway, to pay for my own food! In that way, I give my husband a significant pay raise and bring the "economy" back into home economics! I can't see the children and I being able to accomplish much more than that and still do other things we need to do. Who knows? But is sure was an educational meeting, and this thread has been educational too. Keep it up! I appeciate learning from everyone elses experiences, since I don't have many of my own yet where it concerns farming!
Cindyc.

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I do believe deep bedding is able to keep the smell down. Have you tried this and not had success? I haven't had a chance to do it yet, but from conversations with people that do deep bedding in hoop houses for hogs (and I know hogs stink!) it works very well and keeps the smell down and the precious nutrients in the bedding to be used later. There is a growing population of hog farmers in Iowa doing this exact thing, so I assume that if it works for hogs it will work for chickens/cattle/whatever.

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The book you are talking about is, Pastured Poultry Profits. I think your math is off a little though, because in that book he talks about the couple only working for 6 months and making the figures that he quotes. Also, I don't believe he envisions the husband and wife each working 50 hour weeks the entire time. Mostly you are just moving chickens, filling waters, and giving feed. That isn't as time consuming as it seems (I have a backyard tractor with many less birds, but it takes me all of 2 minutes to collect eggs, fill water/feed, and move the structure ... plus, I don't have a handy moving device like his so I have to shuffle mine across the ground). So, I took the $25,000 (like you I don't know if it is gross or net) divided it by 26 weeks (your not producing broilers in the winter), dropped the hours down to 40 per person each week (I still think that is way to high, but there will be very busy days when you process), and with those numbers I came up with $12.02 per hour. Not great, but I believe it is more representative. Plus in theory you could take the rest of the year off or have other money making things going. Do I think everyone can do this? No! I don't think I can do it, but I think it could be one piece of the greater pie that is my farm. When I add in cattle, hogs, laying hens, berries, garden, etc. then things start to pencil out better.

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It says 20 acres too BTW, but that is kind of beyond the point

I like his books and I like his ideas. I do not want to emmulate them though. I want to take the meat and spit out the bones and see what will work for us. We will use what he says for guidance but adjust it to fit our needs.

My husband desires to get out of the hourly wage working for his dad. We would like to have a farm that supports us with a bit of extra with maybe a part time job. I don't want to get bigger than that.

Pastured chicken, which I buy b/c it tastes better that the nasty mushy supermarket stuff, is nonetheless confined. Works out to about 1.2 sq feet per bird. Not too much room, and the cornish crosses that he uses surely are too dumb to forage, so......

I've been to his farm, and he makes some money by farming, but all in all, I wasn't particularly impressed.

Anyone can make money if you inherit the land.

Didn't mean to imply I didn't think deep pack doesn't work - we use this idea ourselves with the goats/chickens but with much less stocking density and a 3 sided shed with attached pasture - not in a closed up building/hoop house. And I'd like to point out that you say "keeps the smells down". My position on this is if you are raising animals inside something be it tractor, hoop house or a $500k facility that's confinement farming no matter what the scale, so you can't be slamming Perdue, Tyson, Smithfield, etc. Next you say "the precious nutrients ... to be used later", well now you're in a position of needing machinery to get that stuff out and spread around. Wouldn't it be less cost and labour intensive to raise whatever you will out in the pastures where they spread it around - even Salatin extolls that but rather than being content with a seasonal system he's advocating bringing it all in ... like the big boys. Now I'm not telling you how to farm, you do things your way, I'll do it mine and Joel will do it his but let's just be consistent between words and deeds.

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Yer right, ebook, and thanks for the title. In the book, Salatin writes, "A couple working 50 hours a week for six months a year on 20 acres can NET $25-30,000."

Giving him the benefit of the doubt, $30,000 divided by 26 weeks = $1153.84

$1153.84 divided by 100 man-hours per week = $11.53 an hour, no benefits (Salatin overstates this hourly figure as "$12-$20" in his book)

My local McDonald's in Huntsville is hiring right now at $10.

So what's the difference? While McDonalds holds no career interest for me, it's a good comparison. The difference is that I do not need to invest capital into land, equipment, fuel and other overhead to trot down to Mickey-Ds and pick up my $10 an hour.

Joel says in his book (using his figures) "fixed costs run $1.80-$2.00 per bird." He says each bird ought to bring in $3 profit. Salatin says "machinery investment runs between $10,000 and $15,000." He suggests cutting that by buying used equipment, but because specific used equipment is not always available, I'll use his $10,000 figure.

Now, Joel says "for six months, the couple works hard, producing 10,000 broilers..."

Enter the trusty calculator. To start on this biz on Year #1, I will spend $20,000 on birds at $2 total raising cost each, plus $10,000 in equipment, for $30,000 total. In each subsequent year, I will spend $20,000 on birds at $2 each, plus upkeep and repair.

Point being, if I do sell them all and all turns out well, for $11.53 an hour in pay I have an annual expenditure BEFORE I EVEN BEGIN TO MARKET MY BIRDS of $20,000-$30,000, based on the figures used by Salatin at the time he wrote his book. (I think they are even more favorable to his thesis now, since the $3 profit per bird has not risen much, but the input costs certainly have in the ensuing years.)

Trotting down to the local Mickey-D's for that $10 an hour with no cash outlay is looking better and better.

Then consider the risks involved...predators, bad weather, disease loss, loss of markets, shifting customer bases, etc. And interestingly, Joel left out land acquisiton costs (in my area, the very cheapest 20 acres will run you $70,000 without any buildings or fences), taxes, farmhouse and facilities construction and/or maintenance -- all the little things that go into a true cost accounting. All he wrote about was what it cost to actually raise the birds, not to build or maintain facilities. As far as I can tell he allocates NOTHING in time or expense to marketing -- perhaps the most time- and labor-intensive portion of the workload, since if you don't sell them, you don't make money.

Gee, at McDonald's, all I have to do is put on a uniform and come to work on time!

My point being, agriculture is and will remain a low return on investment game. Joel Salatin is providing much-needed advocacy for husbandry and management, but those are his true areas of expertise. He does a disservice when veers from his expertise areas to paint these rosy economic pictures and encourage people to buy into them.

Joel writes, "Just remember, a couple working 50 hours a week for six months a year on 20 acres can NET $25-30,000. That's better than a city job."

People do buy into this stuff hook, line and sinker, they do sink their life savings into it, and they often lose everything by doing so.

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Jim Steele
Sweetpea Farms
"To avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing." -- Robert Gates

I profit about $8 a bird for my truly pasture raised birds. They average about 80 sq ft per bird. That is alot of room for a bird that lives 9 weeks. I go all organic and sell at a premium. I don't have a huge customer base, but the one I have is loyal and willing to pay. I figure I will PROFIT, all told about 6k this coming year on having 800 birds. Last years flocks paid for the fencing and still turned a good profit. I only have to handle 800 birds a year, most of the labor done by my 11 year old, and I pay to have them butchered. I can do this on an acre if I rotate the pasture right and spread the birds out over 6 months. Sure, it isn't the money he promises, but I have little cash outlay and don't have to butcher. We spend maybe 3 man hours a week on the chickens, and every 3 weeks a whole day going to and from the butcher and delivering birds.

So, let's say we have 35 hours from day one to butcher into a batch of 150 birds. Profit from 150 birds is 1200 bucks. That converts to about 34 bucks an hour, and the kid does most of it. He can keep his chicken tractors, I will keep raising Freedom Rangers.

mark

Keeping with the economics that Jim and Mark are pointing out - it would seem that the idea of 2 people working a farm without an outside job providing bennies, IRA/pension is not really realistic ... unless you inherit the farm and infrastructure, equip., etc. Even putting aside the hourly comparison of a fast food job, the facts are that it does take many hours to not only raise this food, the marketing/selling becomes your life. But that's what retail takes. I had a small optometric practice, the office was open 8-9, M-F, 8-3 on Sat, that's when I unlocked the door and doesn't include all the hours before, after and on Sun doing paperwork. Plus the fact that you spend all waking hours thinking about what to do better, how to market your products, etc. Small diversified farming doesn't seem any different in my experience. If you start figuring hourly wages - well just forget it, too depressing. But if you love what you are doing, if it improves your standard of living this has to be costed in somehow, maybe just not in the $ column. But, and this is a big but, I think most people would be smart to have one partner out there with a job and bennies. Not only does it take the pressure off but it covers those pesky health emergencies.

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Wow ... I really, really didn't want to start a ruckus. I'm was just trying to point out what I infer would be the Salatin view point. Here a couple of my thoughts from the most recent posts:

1.) I don't think "anyone" can make money from farming if you are given the land, I think you need to learn, work hard, etc. But, it sure does help. On the flip side, Allan Nation and others often talk about the money to be made renting land and grazing, and it seems like Salatin does mention in his You Can Farm book that the most profitable farming would be vegetables which doesn't take very much land ... so, really it depends on multiple things.

2.) I do think you can make deep bedding work even with high density ... the ceiling just gets closer to your head as the winter rolls on ... plus you need an inside place for all those layers. Nutrients to be used later. Of course you will need machinery to do that ... maybe a tractor with loader and a spreader, but compared to what you need in a conventional farming program that is nothing. Also, don't forget he sends in pigs afterwards to root it up. I do think he is being consistent between words and deeds. Me on the other hand, I'm still formulating all of my thoughts and ideas so if I was inconsistent then I understand. To me the most important thing to see with him is that he isn't trying to be a subsitence homesteader, rather he is trying to provide food for his region that comes from the region and generates business in the region (or something like that). It is just a different mind set.

3. I won't work at McDonalds ... period ... But, I do see what you are saying. There are risks involved in whatever you do so you have to weigh all the options and make the choice that is best for you. As far as the health care, IRA, and all that stuff. That is up to the individual. I know plenty of people that don't have health insurance by choice. They may have a little for emergencies, but in theory if you are eating healthy, living well, and such then you won't need that. Does McDonald's offer those things? Nevermind, I couldn't work at that place! If people are buying into it and losing everything then well, I don't know who to blame. Just don't blame me

4. Freedom Rangers sound great!

5. Wow, I'm glad not everyone is doing the same thing! I'm glad not everyone's youth group in town is the same (I'm a youth pastor) otherwise what diversity would there be for the students who are all at different levels. I'm glad there is a Fareway and a Hy-Vee and a Super Wal-Mart in my town ... so I can choose the Fareway. There are tons of options out there and so much to be learned. Hey, I've been extoling the virtues of pasture farming everything on my blog ... and then yesterday I spent the afternoon in a big 'ol combine. Hypocrite? Well, maybe ... but I really enjoyed it!

**By the way, I think this is some GREAT DISCUSSION and very helpful for anyone doing or thinking about doing ... I just hope I didn't offend anyone, because I know that the internet doesn't convey the true meaning behind all messages :baby04: **

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